Mt Takao

All right, it would appear that one of the great joys of not updating our blog frequently frequently enough, is that we can hit the archives of "fun things we've done but not blogged about yet" when we have not done anything interesting lately. And, while strictly-speaking that is not a wholly accurate statement, it does make good press. ;-)

It has been raining for the last couple of days, but things are supposed to clear up tomorrow. There's great weather up and down the West Coast right now though; I envy all of you who are outside enjoying .ie w5,hjnnn rgvv lm jbt l ;;;;;
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it. LOL, Robert just climbed up in my lap and made his first direct contribution to our blog. His typing makes about as much sense as his speaking at this point.

Well, I guess in all fairness, Robert is definitely trying to communicate with us now, he just can not speak yet. When he wants to go to the park during the day, he will bring Sarah her shoes, then go either sit in his stroller, or try and put his own shoes on. He has not had a lot of success with that yet, but he does enjoy wearing mommy's slippers:



So, from the archives, here is the day-trip Sarah, Robert and I took to Mt Takao in mid-September:



As you can see on the map behind us, there are several trails leading up the mountain. We took the "Biwa Falls Nature Trail" on the way up, the second one from the left, and it lived up to its name. The trail began paved, turned to gravel, then quickly faded into a dirt track full of large rocks & tree roots. At this point, the stroller became more of a hindrance than anything else, so we strapped it to my back and took turns carrying Robbie up the hill.

Toward the beginning of our hike (while the path was still paved), we passed a small shrine:



We were relatively slow-moving members of a more-or-less steady stream of people making their way up the mountain, and we passed almost as many making their way back down.

Biwa Falls were at about the 1/2 way point of the 3.3k ascent, and we saw several religious devotees standing under the falls, just as mentioned in this brochure.

At the top of the mountain were some flat areas for picnicking, several restaurants, an interpretive center (which would have been more interesting if we could interpret Japanese) and good views:



Robert slept through most of the hike up, so he was not too interested in sitting still during lunch. For the descent, we chose trail #1. This was a fully paved trail that passed through a large shrine complex that sprawled across the mountainside. The forest was not as thick on this side of the mountain, and we had some nice views looking back toward Tokyo and Yokohama:



There were a multitude of souvenir shops along trail #1, as well as a number of snack, drink, and ice-cream shops. To top it all though, there was a park that housed a troop of Japanese Snow monkeys. It cost a couple of bucks to enter, but as you have probably already guessed, we ponied up the ¥ and went in for a peek. There was a handler in the enclosure with the monkeys giving a talk. We could not understand him, but it hardly mattered. There was a female monkey just on the other side of a glass partition from Robbie, and he had a very good time touching the glass and following her as she moved along the edge of her enclosure.