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.
As far as the mountain itself goes, it was pretty excellent. It might have been the perfect hiking experience. I went with wonderful people, the weather was as close to ideal as you could hope, the climb was great, and the descent was made infinitely more enjoyable by the fact that we rode a gondola down instead of climbing. The hike was great. There was the perfect combination of wooded trails, steps and bouldering. Most of the bouldering was done in what I think was an old river bed that wound its way down the mountain. All that was left of the river was a small, spring-fed stream that tumbled its way through the rocks. It might have been small, but the stream was beautiful and refreshing! Sorry to keeping hammering on the weather thing, but it was warm enough today for a quick dip in a mountain stream to be refreshing rather than freezing, and it seemed to carry only a slight risk of pneumonia. Don't worry Mom, I feel fine! 
Mt. Gozaisho is a pretty popular mountain, and the summit is accessible by a gondola as well as the many hiking paths. The gondola's wheelhouse also housed a cafe and a souvenir shop. There are few things more welcome after a great hike then hot food and cold beer, both of which were served in plenty at the cafe! We decided that since we had worked so hard to get to the top, we would take our well earned break in style. There were plenty of things to do at the top besides drink and eat. There were ample opportunities for silly pictures, and we did our best to make use of them all! Check Facebook for the other good ones, these are just two that I am in! 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.
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