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Published: March 13th 2007
Inspired...
Singing in the rain... well, actually we were pretty glad there was no rain!Hello all,
So, John and I were off to Mt Rokko recently, aimed at a hike, but without much of an idea where we were going. We found the path, and even (sort of) managed to follow ourselves on a map... well, for the first bit that was.
We climbed up Mt Rokko and got some views of the city - and even found a strange little shrine in the middle of the forest... I guess for those who want to be buried in nature, it's ideal, but it sure is a surprise when you're trekking along.
Not to mention, we then ran into another sort of shrine/temple, with a large bell. We made out donation and wakened the gods to pray (okay, it was more for the sheer pleasure of making such a loud noise in such a quiet, still place) but really, praying for a safe trip was an added bonus - especially with the two of us!
So we continued on our way, loosing our path and constantly hitting forks in the road... at one point we decided to flip a coin at a fork in the road, since any logical deductions we continued
Trish in a Tree
Where else would I be? to come up with, were in all reality about as useful, it was simply a way of making a decision... (Of course, we always knew how to get back, and really THAT is the important thing!)
In fact, we were following tape at one point, mind you it completely baffled us, as we could find coloured tape at times on trees, but there was never just one band, there was always, red tape, blue tape, green tape, and white tape (on different trees though - not like it was a rainbow path or something...), and occasionally more colours... how does that work? We never did find any of the tapes that branched off in different directions, so we scuttled along the "taped path" until we hit road. Yep - pretty disappointing...
So, we turned back and picked some alternate routes at some of the previous forks. Then, as luck would have it, we found a sign with a map and managed to do some detective work. You see what I failed to mention is that every time the road forked, there were signs pointing in each direction, of course, the signs were in Kanji, so neither of us
The View...
A little smog - but this is one of the better ones... could read them (save the odd word like "of" or "and" - one we picked up the word "fire" but not much else... so we did find a map on the route with kanji and we matched it to John’s map and figured out where we were and which path we wanted to take - it was brilliant - we photographed the sign so that at the forks to come we could pull up the picture and follow the kanji which let us to the path we had decided upon (gotta love digital cameras!!!)
Mind you, being slightly shorted on our hike, we came across a tower on the way out, and decided (yes, I know, I know, against better judgement) we should climb up to the first little platform to have a look at the view... this proved to be far too much fun (I reiterate, I know, I know, a lapse in judgement that won't happen again) but it's really hard to resist essentially what comes down to monkey bars for grown ups!
So, after our foolish pursuits, we made our way back to the town, finding some incredibly odd and ugly dams that were fun
John Ringing the bell...
Waking up the Gods to pray for a safe adventure to climb and watch the sun begin to set and we chatted away - suddenly realizing that the sun was setting and we were still at an unknown location in the forest, we jumped back on the trail and made out way to town, where we sought out some ramen and ice cream!
Next time we'll aim for an actual mountain peak to entertain ourselves!!!
Trish xxx
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