| -- Short Hikes In Japan -- |
 |
|
|
| My trip to Japan was conceived originally as hiking vacation, so I would be remiss if I don't talk a bit about my hikes. My first jaunt was a warm-up hike up Takao-san near Tokyo with my cousin Kimie. The train ride is about 90 minutes to Takao-san-guchi, a small village at the trailhead. The hike was unremarkable in most respects. The trail is hardly spectacular, but is certainly a pleasant, easy hike up through the forest til you reach the plateau at the top, which has shops, drink machines, and other amenities. From there, you get a view over Tokyo to the north, and on clear days, can see all the way to Fuji-san in the south. Of course, the Mountain Scenery Gods thwarted me from seeing Fuji-san.. These hazy conditions persisted through most of my hikes. The Takao-san trail continues on along a ridge to other mountains, and can be made into a 6 or 7 hour dayhike, but we really didn't have time, and chose to return to the trailhead via an alternate route, and rewarded ourselves at the end with a nice snack of soba before heading back to Tokyo. My next hike came a few days later, while I was based in Kyoto. This hike was planned as another warm-up hike before tackling the Omine-san trail. (A hike that I eventually decided not to make, in favor of hiking the Kirishima Traverse; See next chapter.) This is a distance hike over rolling hills and past some interesting shrines and sites. Information on this trail is sparse in English, but was covered in one of my hiking books that I brought along. The trail begins in Tenri, which is a small town in Nara Prefecture, and ends in Sakurai, another small town. The total distance isn't that great; about 15 miles. The trail (which is called the Yama-no-be-no-michi trail) is nonetheless an interesting one. The main route follows an old pilgrimage road through a largely rural setting, punctuated by small villages. From Tenri, one walks east to Iwagami-jingu, an exquisite little shrine that is one of Japan's national treasures. They have an interesting old relic there which is believed to date back to the 8th century; a sword with 6 odd hook-like serrations (It looks rather like a rusty cactus), and some strange-looking fluffy white chickens wandering about the grounds. From here, you head south, first through a forested area past some minor shrine buildings before you leave the forest and find yourself walking through a series of farms. Most of these farms grow rice and persimmons, but I also saw kiwi fruit arbors, mandarin orange groves and Asian pear trees. I was surprised to see that kiwi fruit grow on what seem to be thick vines. Occasionally you run across a table with an 'honor box' selling fruit for about 100 yen a piece.. I was happy to buy some nice juicy pears for the walk that way. The road itself is sometimes a dirt track, but much of the way I found myself walking on old cobblestone sections laid down hundreds of years ago. There are paved areas close to the various towns. After a spell, you reach a small village called Takeuchi, which is interesting mainly for its moat. It doesn't look like it would have kept the town very safe, but it was probably a lot bigger in centuries past. The houses are mostly old-style traditional Japanese buildings from the Edo period. I didn't see many people. I wonder what they would have thought about the red-faced gaijin passing through their town in the sweltering heat. Continuing south, you pass through more fields and farmland, following the signs to Chogaku-ji, a pretty little Buddhist temple. Paying your 300 yen admission fee, it's worth it to see their garden, which includes a famous image of the Buddha. The temple also serves somen noodles which are supposedly the most famous somen in Japan, but there was nobody there to prepare them for me, so I had to content myself with pears and onigiri for lunch. The next leg of the trail was the main reason why I chose to hike this route. There are two enormous moated kofun (burial mounds) along the route. The first, the burial place of the Emperor Suijin (r. 97-30 BCE), is the larger of the two. Kofun take many forms and sizes, but these two are huge keyhole shaped, moated hills covered with trees, and surrounded by wide moats. You can't see much of the mounds themselves, as people aren't permitted on them, but you can view the outlines of them through the brush, and see where they put down flagstones on the moatside to prevent erosion. Emperor Keiko's (r.71-130 CE) kofun is slightly smaller, but easier to get a good look at. The Japanese only buried their royalty in these mounds for a relatively short period, ending in the 7th century. The largest is the tomb of the Emperor Nintoku (r.313-399 CE) in Osaka, which contains more mass than the Great Pyramid. That should give you a sense of the scale of the objects I'm describing here. Moving along, I passed a couple of fairly interesting smaller shrines, including a sacred spring (at Saii-jinja) , and a large and impressive Buddhist temple (Byodo-ji) near a small town called Miwa. The shrine is famous because it was founded by the prince who made Buddhism the state religion of Japan (Shotoku Taishi), and is the destination of the old pilgrimage trail. From there, the hike to Sakurai is fairly uninteresting. My hiking book suggested that the trail stop at Miwa, and that's probably not a bad idea if any of you attempt the trip yourselves. The scenery on that last leg is nothing special. My third minor hike was down in Kagoshima prefecture.. again, it was a warm-up hike, although this one was more difficult. It was a 15 mile hike up to the main viewpoint of the active volcano Sakurajima and then back down. You have to take a ferry across from Kagoshima City to the Sakurajima port. There are two ways of doing this route.. by bus or by foot. The problem is that the route is exactly the same. I chose to hike, but at several times along the way wished I had taken the bus. Going up was a grueling business. The day I chose to go up turned out to be sweltering hot, and one has to hike alongside the road. Unfortunately, I found that the road has little shade, and there was no wind at all, so after I got about half-way up, I was definitely feeling the heat and sun wearing me down, and I was sweating like crazy. Nonetheless, I continued to plod onward, and after what seemed like a lifetime of uphill hiking, finally reached the viewpoint. Once up there I was rewarded with a cool breeze coming in off the sea, and a great view of Sakurajima. I stayed up there and quaffed beverages while I cooled down. Sakurajima is a very active volcano, although it was quiet while I was in the area. Kagoshima residents are well accustomed to the occasional shower of ash, and there are rare violent eruptions. The last really serious eruption, in 1914, buried several small villages on the lower slopes, and created a land-bridge to the east, turning Sakurajima from an island into a peninsula. Today you can see the remains of these towns, including a torii gate buried up to the top in lava. All I saw was a little sulphurous steam far atop the active peak, Miname-dake. The hike down Sakurajima was a lot more pleasant, and a lot quicker. The breeze that had started while I was up at the viewpoint followed me all the way back to the Kagoshima ferry. Should any of you decide to go up Sakurajima, I recommend taking the bus. |