I went Hiking today with a bunch of folks, and we climbed the glorious and beautiful Mt. Gozaisho. To keep with the weather topic for a moment, I started the day wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and a zip-up sweatshirt over that, and after about 10 steps up the mountain, I was really, really wishing I had brought a pair of shorts. I've never had that thought half way through November before!
The start of my day today was interesting to say the least. Our day was supposed to start around 7:00 a.m., which is about 3 hours earlier than I would ideally like to wake up on a sunday, but our train schedule was tight, to say the least. I woke up to an odd smell in my apartment though. And for those of you who might be questioning my hygiene at this point, I take offense to that! The smell was coming from my kitchen. Apparently, my roommate John had started cooking some udon last night when he came home from the bar, but forgot about halfway through and accidently left the burner on with the udon broth to boil over night! When I finally figured out what was going on, the broth had turned into a lovely little charcoal briquette in the bottom of out pot! That was the high point for the day until we actually got to Yokkaichi. After that, we had about 7 minutes to get all of out things prepared for the day and head out the door. I live about 9 minutes from Tsushimmachi train station, and the train we needed to catch to make it to our connection left at 7:50. We left our apartment at 7:46 and missed the train by a minute! Talk about disappointment. Here we went through all of this effort, and we weren't even going to make it to the mountain! Fortunately, we have very smart and well prepared friends with internet phones. We managed to catch up to the express train by taking the limited express from the next station and we eventually found our friends and started our trip to the mountain.
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Usually, my least favorite part of a hike is the trip down the mountain, but Gozaisho even had an answer for that. For about 1.000 Yen, we were able to take a gondola back down the mountain to survey the trail we had taken, The view was spectacular. I love Colorado, and no doubt the Rockies are a more spectacular mountain range then the one I was hiking in today, but there is one thing they can't offer. That is a view of the ocean from their summit. I don't know if I will ever become accustomed to my proximity to the sea, and honestly I hope I don't, because the view from the gondola on the way down the mountain was unbelievable today. Mountains and the sea. That is pretty much Japan in a nutshell.
Sorry for the extended post tonight, but I have one more thing I need to talk about. Old Japanese people are crazy! They put the vast majority of elderly Americans to shame. I can't tell you how many people that could have been my grandparents passed our group on the trails today. It was crazy! In Japanese old man is ojiichan, and old lady is obaachan. "Don't let the Ojiichans beat you up the mountain!" was pretty much our battle cry for the day. And last but not least, I thought I would include one hilarious picture. This was another common sight on the trails. One poor father carrying his completely passed out child on his back up a mountain. Talk about dedicated parenting!
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