A Very Short Hike

On our island, the tallest peak is Ichizuchi-san. I'm always hearing about people climbing it, seeing pictures of people climbing it, etc, so we packed up and headed down the general road towards the mountain.

I would not recommend this course of action when going somewhere new, but in our defense we googled it first but found nothing. We talked to some Japanese people and had a friend with an iphone on hand though, so that seemed good enough at the time.

After getting off the main road, we went up a small, winding one that was about a car and a half's width wide. Hmm, let me clarify. A "minica" and a half width wide. I was feeling regret and nausea 5 minutes in. Huge buses would be racing down the narrow road and blasting through blind corners, it was not a fun drive. The iphone soon lost a single and we began following the pilgrimage tour bus.

We never made it to the mountain, but found a beautiful lake, some likely feral puppies (cute nevertheless) and the official mountain shrine where there were pilgrimage visitors by the dozen. We also found a short trail leading to what we guessed halfway up was an electrical tower access point. We were feeling a little hot and static-y, and noticed a lot of overgrowth and no other people, so we decided it was best to investigate other paths to the top.





The walk to and from the temple was actually tiring enough, so we decided to head home. On the way we stopped by a new favorite spot, "the big tree." It has a big tree, a small shrine and a stream that makes a sound like it's raining really hard. We got really creative in naming the location.





It was a nice day, and we did find which road leads to the actual trail. One day, when we are better prepared, we will actually make the trek.