Day 84: The Underprepared Hikers
Ahh, there's nothing like getting out of the city and into nature. Or something like that. Conveniently, our train line goes all the way out to Takao, a popular hiking spot about 50 minutes from the city. It's got mountains, coloured leaves, easy hiking routes and a chair lift if you're feeling lazy. This was our kind of hiking.
However, we didn't really think things through when it came to the hiking part of the day so were just wearing our usual stuff. Note to self, a YSL tote doth not a good hiking bag make. Nor do ripped jeans and a leather jacket.
The empty train to Takao.
It's a town that looks like it pressed the pause button about 100 years ago.
The momiji (maple) leaves were showing off for the crowds. The colours were incredible!
Roadside fruit and vegetable store.
We decided to take the trail less travelled and go on Trail no.6. We chose it because it goes past a waterfall and was estimated to take about 1.5 hours. Easy.
Soooo, I think this was the "waterfall". Not much of a waterfall, but the shrine was cool and it was virtually empty.
Change rooms? Do people swim in the water on warmer days? If so, I want in.
For the most part, the trail was fairly easy even for those who were poorly dressed for anything active. There were some spots which were a little rocky and wet, but fortunately for me it was nothing too bad.
These steps were the devil. Seriously the devil. They just kept on going and I wanted them to die.
We made it to the top! We may be smiling but our legs and butts are screaming in pain.
I don't know what these are but they are pretty but will most likely kill you if you try and eat them. That's just a guess.
There's a shrine on the mountain where people lined up and walked through that concrete circle, hit the metal rings with a stick and prayed for something.
Dango is a mountain essential. They get warm and crispy over the charcoals and are like a little reward for your mountain climbing efforts.
Enjoying my mountainy reward.
More dango. If you haven't dangoed have you even mountained?
Hazy view over to Tokyo. TBH, we couldn't see a thing. But hey, the leaves look okay, right?
Due to the god awful stairs from earlier, we decided to get the colourful chairlift down.
It was a good call. The views were great, the colours were fun and there were men strategically placed on the mountain who were employed to take photos of people going past on the chairlift.
Back down the bottom we were greeted by these leaves.
A semi-rare photo of Adam and I that's been taken by someone else. We usually do pretty terrible selfies.
Back on the train to Tokyo...
After all that exercise, we headed over to Vivian's house for some well deserved Domino's.
I used to eat home delivered Domino's regularly when I lived in Tokyo because it was easy and they had an English website. Yes, it can be crazy expensive but if you get the deals it's not too bad. This is Adam choosing the toppings for our pizzas. As you can see he is quite pleased about the whole thing.
This is Anri. He doesn't know it yet but he'll one day find out that pizza is one of the best things in the world.
The Domino's pizzas have arrived! So. Much. Excitement.
Look at these glorious creatures. I made a Hawaiian type pizza with corn because, as I have mentioned on numerous occasions, corn is the best.
