22/11 Climbing Mt. Takao

Shinjuku station is plastered all over with them. Huge posters showing a Mt. Takao covered in autumn colors, that is. After seeing those posters everyday for a couple of weeks I thought it'd be nice to go, so I suggested to E that we'd do that, and so yesterday we hopped on the local train heading for Takaosanguchi to climb our first (?) mountain. When speaking about seasons in Japan, autumn is well known for its beautiful striking red, orange and yellow hues. Depending on which part in Japan you are, the trees usually change colors from late October to some time in December. Tokyo entered the kouyou (紅葉) season a week or two ago, so it was perfect timing to go see the leaves in Mt. Takao.

We originally wanted to get out by ten, but were too tired and went out an hour later later than planned instead. Which was good, for a reason that will be mentioned later in the post. :D There's a local train from Shimotakaido going straight to the Takaosanguchi station, so we hopped onto that one. Sitting on the train for around 90 minutes lets you see a lot of the suburbs of Tokyo, and even if it was my first time seeing these places, I still got this sentimental, natsukashii feeling. At times we almost had the whole train for ourselves.

E and I took a lot of pictures, and most of them are of the same things. E's camera caught the colors much better though, so I hope she won't mind me showing them here on the blog. :D Oh, and I also need to say that the colors were much more intense than shown on the pictures, for most of the cases. It was impossible to catch, so if you think the colors look amazing on the pictures, just imagine how stunning they were in real life!

1. Such beautiful colors already in the start! Seemed like it was worth coming here after all! This is the billboard the climbers were greeted with once you exit the station.
2. Just a picture of the surroundings.
3. We've started walking! The first part was more like a shopping street in terms of both crowdiness and atmosphere. It was still beautiful though.
4. We hadn't even started actually climbing yet and we already went photo-crazy! Greens, yellows and assorted browns and oranges all mixed up.

1. Official starting point! I just need to say it again, the colors were breath-taking.
2. 3.8km to go. よしっ！行こう！
3. But before that, another picture...
4. Autumn Wonderland.

As we climbed the mountain, we noticed that the higher we got up, the greener the trees were. Except by the cable car stations, where the trees suddenly got red again. Hm, conspiracy anyone? And oh yeah, you could actually ride the cable car up to the top if you didn't want to walk by yourself, but then again what's the point? Of course E and I chose to conquer Mt. Takao with our own feet! :D Though we were very tempted to just hop onto the lift a couple of times... There were a lot of people climbing the mountain that day, and there were actually lines forming on the climbing paths. Orderly, too. The ones going up kept to the left and the ones going down (at 13:00?! How early had they been up?!) kept to the right. As expected from Japan!
To think that even mountain climbing would be crowded... I got tired pretty fast and it was mostly me who begged E to stop for a chocolate break. ^^; Hohoho...

1. Our first stop! Still quite a bit left until the top.
2. Lots of other people taking a break too.
3. Every single one of the ojizo-sans that we saw had gotten red hats put on. They'll be able to survive the winter now!

Actually, the halfway point was just around the corner (around 15 minutes after we took the pictures above) and that's where people changed to the next cable car. Needless to say, E and I felt very proud of ourselves having gone all this way by ourselves. Spurred by this energy, we didn't even think of taking the optiton of going up with the lifts/cars! But who could say no to a food break? :D

1. People getting off the cable cars.
2. Mochi dango being made!
3. They were d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. :D Mmm mochi! I want to eat it again...
4. Closeby to the lift station. What are people looking at?
5. Oooh. This tree. With the sun in the back, it really stood out. But I don't think it warranted such a huge crowd. If I gathered a group of people and just stood somewhere looking at a plain rock, I bet lots of people would join us just for the sake of being in a crowd.
6. Fading mountains in the distance.

The rest of the road up wasn't as harsh as the first half. We passed a shrine (of which I'm too lazy to post pictures of because it's getting late ^^;; hohoho...) and saw typical shrine-y goodness. I'll just skip to the end!

The last obstacle was this flight of stairs!

At 15:47, around two and a half hour of climbing (including breaks) we finally reached the top! Yaaaaaay! We did it! And this is the good thing about getting out later than planned which I mentioned before: we timed the sunrise! :D

1. Colors, colors.
2. Incredibly red leaves. They've sort of got a blue tint to them on the photo, but imagine the brightest red you know and you've got the color of the leaves on this tree!
3. We were really there!
4. The reward of our hard work comes in the form of a sign proving that we got to the top. Yay!
5. But the real reward would prove to be a couple of steps ahead...
6. Fujisan! (Barely visible, but if you squeeze your eyes you'll see a faint shape a little to the left of the center.) I'm glad we made it to the top. :D The sight just seemed to be so much more meaningful when you've worked your way to it!

We walked around the area a bit and felt proud of ourselves, until we finally decided to head down. Thing was, we were so exhausted that we were ready to throw this pride away and ride the cable car down, but it turned out that it was 30 minutes from the top so we just decided to walk down and see if we'd find it. When we did, the line was so long that we just decided to walk down all the way instead. But not before we had a manjuu (饅頭) each! And then we ended up buying another one to share because it was sooo good. *w* (Mooom, can we eat 叉燒包 when I'm home again? I really miss it!) By the time we were finished with the manjuu, it had already gotten dark and we walked in almost complete darkness. Luckily we just needed to follow all the other people going down. A lot of them brought flashlights so there was no problem getting down safely.

Feeling dead tired, E and I slept most for most of the train ride back to Shimotakaido.

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23/11
Today, we got out and really felt the pain reminding us of the exercise we got yesterday. Well, at least me because I ignored the stretching. Also, after the JLSP course ends on the 3rd of December E and I are going to Kyoto for a couple of days! \o/ Bought tickets for the night bus and booked a room at an inn just today, so we're all set! Yay, Kyoto, we'll see you soon!