lost or what?

My hotel is a street away from Kanda station, which is a station on the Chuo line, which has a special rapid train that comes regularly. I would take it today and change only at Takao. All up about an 80 minute journey. Here is... the view from Kanda station

Here is the view from Fujino station. I was surprised when I woke up that a rain storm was clearing, that was not forecast. Anyway by the time I got off the train, the rain was gone. Already talking about the weather.

The first part of my journey required going through this tunnel. It has a bit reserved for pedestrians and bikes so it wasn't too death defying.

I followed a road for about 2km. Nice scenery as the storm clouds cleared.

Take the left hand path! Actually the right hand path is ok too I think, but as a general rule, always take the left hand path.

Behold, hiking trail! Too early for good leaf colours, there will be plenty of that later.

Tree roots.

More tree roots. The trail was soft under foot, but not muddy. No rocks.

Some sections were smooth enough to run along, so I did. So did many others. I do not know how they run down slippery bits as fast as they do.

This part would be spectacular once the leaves are red.

Not too many steps on the first half of the hike today, these lead up to the summit of Jinba.

View from Jinba.

Very developed trail today, little cafes dotted all the way along at each peak as you shall see.

There it is, the Jinba marker. Person and horse as one body is a Japanese four-character compound describing unity of horse and rider which is pertinent to Yabusame, Japanese mounted archery. It is generally known as penis head horse. I made jokes about this last time. However I remember penis head horse being much larger?

View without penis head horse.

Penis head minus horse.

Here is the next peak of sorts. This cafe has fallen into disrepair. There are views of Fuji along this trail, but it was covered in cloud today.

Behold the devastation!

I was getting closer to Takao now, there were more people. All of them have bear bells. Should I get a bear bell? At times I could hear 20 bear bells at once. The bears prefer people to have a bell ringing, makes it easier to find you.

Hiking trails do not get much smoother than this.

Low bamboo. I know its not actually bamboo, but I like it and I will continue to call it low bamboo.

There is a small part of Tokyo.

Another of the many hikers cafes. Some have seating for at least 500 people.

I went to that lake and the mountains behind it last time I was here. The trail had been destroyed by a typhoon and my descent was perilous.

Time to appreciate some more tree roots.

The final mountain hiking cafe hang out spot before getting to the horrors of Takao itself.

Stairs lead the way. I can hear crowds of people cheering.

Heres the main view spot that people go to. On a clear day you can see Fuji from here. There were really many thousands of people up here, my photos don't show it. I moved on quickly.

The descent down to the cable car station goes past some shrines of course. The idea being that when you catch the cable car up, you go past the shrines to get to the view, and probably pay them.

A bit of colour.

Different kind of shrine. Warnings about staying away from Shibuya for Halloween are very prominent at the moment. Especially if you are a foreigner.

Look in that bag. They bought their little plush toys with them to enjoy the view. There were also many dogs being pushed around in baby strollers, and at least one old lady with a life like baby doll dressed as a princess.

I continued past the cable car station and found this view, and a sign saying alternate path to Takao station. Which is exactly what I was looking for.

The path back is about 2.5km and very lonely. There is a closer train station run by Keio corp, but that then changes at Takao anyway, so I decided to use this mystery trail and walk back to JR Takao station.

And speaking of the station, here it is. That's all for now, it's probably enough?