Today was a holiday for me – the Autumnal Equinox. I got a phone call this morning from Sara, and we got a chance to catch up and see how everything was going. It was good to talk to her, but I admit I was still a little groggy – she caught me sleeping in.
After getting up I cooked a big breakfast of hash browns and eggs, and then got my hiking gear together and hit the trail. I had heard from Mr. Hayashi about hiking Mt. Rokko, which is one of the large mountains above Kobe. The weather was cool, but it wasn’t raining – perfect weather for hiking.
I had some trouble finding the trailhead, and although I could have asked someone, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the response. After some exploring, I found it, and started climbing up the mountain. There were lots of people coming down, but nobody (but me) going up. I think I was at the right mountain, but who knows? It was about a 45 minute hike to the top, and it was fairly steep climb. It felt great to work my legs hard again.
At the top, I ran into a giant wasp, and I tried to take a movie of it, with marginal success. Check out the movie here (2.5 MB), and you can see what I mean.
Afterwards, I was climbing along the ridge of the mountain away from Kobe, and stumbled upon an old amusement park, and explored that area for a while. All of the equipment was showing it’s age, and wasn’t really protected from the elements.
I’m not sure when it was popular, but it had this sad, nostalgic feeling combined with a weird creepiness. When I first got there it was empty, but people started showing up while I was taking pictures, and that made it seem a little less spooky.
It turns out that there was a more direct way to get to the amusement park from Kobe, so I followed that way back towards the train station. I was able to stop at a small restaurant and have lunch on top of one of the hills, near an observation building. They also had a coffee shop up there, and plenty of beer. This makes two out of three mountains that I’ve climbed in Japan that have had beer at the top. That’s a very pleasant trend, I think.
Stinky, sweaty, and exhausted I jumped back on the train and headed back home. The hike turned out great, and I’m hoping to do it again on a nicer day. Tomorrow it’s back to work for me.
