Mt. Mitake

Today I went to Mt. Mitake, which is located quite a ways out west of Tokyo. From central Tokyo it takes over an hour, but from where I live it was more like 40 minutes because I live slightly west of Tokyo already.

I went with three of my buddies, Adam, Amanda, and Ben, all from my training group back in February. We didn't know much about the mountain or how to get to it really, or what it would be like. When we got off at the train we were seriously in the middle of nowhere. It was quite shocking. It was very still and quiet, except for the cicadas. Though, by the time we reached the top of the mountain even those cicadas had finally shut the heck up.

It turned out to be quite a walk from the train station to the actual bottom of the mountain. With a lot of guessing, and matching our unreadable Japanese fold-up map to other large, wooden, unreadable Japanese maps scattered around the area, we were able to find it. The walk to the mountain had some great views though. We followed a small path along a rather impressive-sized river. I've never seen a river so clear and so blue. I guessed that meant it was a very clean river, but I really have no idea why. Regardless, it looked gorgeous and refreshingly inviting. There were lots of locals fishing or sunbathing on the shores. There were also lots of little makeshift wooden bridges that I found quite novel and picture worthy. Every so often a little spurt of houses and shops would appear and then quickly disappear. It was all very country and quaint.



When we finally found the bottom of Mt. Mitake we were able to take a cable car up quite a large portion of the way. We stopped for a bit of a ramshackle picnic involving sticks of fish and processed cheese (really disgusting, please don't ever eat this), a block of 700 yen Brie Cheese which Amanda thoughtfully shared and spread upon Ritz crackers for the rest of us, an assortment of nuts, raisins, chocolate, and Calorie Mate, the energy bar that comes in an irresistibly vintage-looking box. We also had cans of Dr. Pepper from one of the many vending machines on the mountain. There are vending machines literally on every block in Japan, and mountains are no exception.

After our feast we took the chair lift the rest of the way up to the official viewpoint area. We couldn't actually see much. It was ridiculously hazy, but some photographs that we decided not to purchase informed me that you can see the Tokyo city skyline from the mountain. It's just too hot and hazy in Japan right now. I'm gonna say it was probably almost 90 degrees fahrenheit.



At the top of the chairlift, we also found a map that revealed the presence of some temples and a waterfall on the mountain,. We eagerly set out to find them. We wandered our way through the mountainside through charming little town-lets that were delightfully rustic and old-looking. We saw a lot of interesting new vegetation, impressive trees, old thatched roofs, old buildings, old machinery, old ladies, and a huge group of children all wearing identical little blue hats and devouring big slices of watermelon. I really wanted to steal it from them. It was also pretty much one of the cutest things I've ever seen.


That was, until we came across another huge group of children. They were sitting on the ground watching each other take turns trying to take a baseball bat to a watermelon. The watermelon was placed in the middle of a big blue blanket, and they had to attempt to smash it after donning a blindfold and being turned in a circle three times by some motherly-looking woman. It was quite an odd sight, especially as they were sitting in front of building that looked like an old temple.



After a long hike through bits of forest, winding cobblestone streets, and mazes of children taunting us with their watermelon, we found the temple. Well, you know the drill: the usual temple stuff. It was red, it was pretty. It had funny roofs. Lots of white paper fortunes were tied to wooden things. There were statues.




We soon started looking for the waterfall. We walked down a ridiculous number of wooden steps, thinking to ourselves we'd probably have to climb back up them again soon. Boy, were we painfully correct. The waterfall wasn't the most impressive, but I quite enjoyed it. I can't say I've really seen that many waterfalls, so I was pretty excited about it. I enjoyed it so much I even took my feet for a dip. Here's proof:



Then we had to make a mad, crawling dash back up those treacherous wooden steps that wound up a densely forested and brutally steep hill. We badly wanted to catch the last cable car down the mountain, so that we could then catch the last bus back to the train station. We were not about to walk all the way back to the station again. Those stairs nearly killed me. If I really want to think about climbing Mt. Fuji sometime soon, I better start getting more exercise. And I was even employing the ever-handy Rocky Mountain step I had learned from my superiors back in the day at camp. Supposedly it saves energy if you lock your knees at the end of every step. Well, it probably did work, but I just didn't have that much energy to begin with.

Anyways, as we boarded the train we were totally drenched in sweat and totally gross and totally proud of ourselves by the end. It was a very peaceful, refreshing trip to the countryside. I was really happy to get out of Tokyo for a day. And there were barely any tourists around. Absolutely none of them were foreigners, other than us, of course. It was quite a satisfying day, if I do say so myself.