7 November 2015
Mosquito mountain camera failure
A day trip by train and bus to Mount Oyama
Enough of this not going up a mountain bullshit, I may still be sick sort of, but I am going anyway.
I made my plan the night before, selecting my mountain to be small yet challenging, not too far away and cheap to get to. This narrowed it down to Mount Oyama which is quite near Hakone to the west of Tokyo.
To get there, I had to go across town to Shinjuku, then change to the Odakyu line, which then took about an hour on an express to get to Isehara, where you then join a long line for a bus that moves very quickly to take you another 30 minutes away.
When I saw the bus line, I thought my day was pretty much over, but they just kept bringing more and more busses and I was on board in 10 minutes.
The road to the start of the mountain path is hilarious, its only one lane shared in both directions by a snaking traffic jam. Small men with orange batons and walkie talkies are permanently stationed every few metres to wave you through or into a parking bay to let traffic pass.
I would say it was an efficient system, except at least 50 people were employed to get my bus to the mountain.
Once there, it looks really very steep, and there was no way to really take a photo of it due to trees. Turns out it was really very very steep, some of the steepest steps I have ever encountered.
It being a Saturday, there were lots of people, the difference here compared to Korea is they were mostly young people, I was old, in Korea I am young... for a mountain climber.
Japanese people still like to gear up for the occasion, but I think many of them prefer the gear to the hike, as an amazing number of people were wearing shoes I am convinced had been purchased specifically for today and only today.
There is a hilarious difference between young couples, and groups of young people of the same sex.
The young couples feature a girl complaining in a high pitched squeaky voice the whole way, whilst the guy laughs at her especially if she falls over.
The groups of people of the same sex are either guys teasing the slowest of the group, or girls exercising girl power and cheering each other on.
I know I am still not 100% well after this relatively moderate length climb, as I sweated gallons for no good reason, and my legs were pretty shaky on the way down, things I would not expect to occur in a 4 hour hike.
Still I made it, and I did not stop at all.
My camera however malfunctioned of sorts. I did not realise for ages and so missed many good photos, but the screen was flashing 'no card'.
It must have rattled loose, because I never open that compartment to take it in or out, its probably not been opened in years.
Unfortunately, instead of having a black screen with a big error message, it appears to take a photo and just flash 'no card' in orange in the corner, I did not notice for at least an hour.
So there are no photos from the top, it was clouded in anyway, and I re took some photos on the way down which would have come out better on the way up when the sun was still out.
Last minute update, as I type this I turned on my tv that has no English channels at all, and a kids cartoon was on, which features no talking of any kind, just garden gnomes vomiting rainbows, for 30 minutes.
Squeezed on a bus, which amazingly cost as much as the train ride. I guess they have to pay for all the men coordinating the passing of vehicles on a one lane suicide road.
Once off the bus, you go through a linear shopping mall selling mainly spinning tops that funnels you into the cable car station.
No cable car for me though. I waved at the suckers standing in line.
Instead, steps were the order of the day. Very very steep. Eventually they became natural rock outcrops with the occasional log staked in place, which were even more dangerous.
I took photos of them but my memory card issue means I dont have them.
The leaves were a rewarding kaleidescope if thats your thing.
There are 3 temples along the way. I wonder how they get the stuff up the hill to build them, pulled it up on the cable car I suppose. But how did they build the cable car track, pylons, station?
Perhaps the cable car has always been here, since the dawn of time.
Redundant temple photo, the next one is better.
Now we jump to the moment I realised I had been taking photos that had not saved, by which time I was half way down again and the cloud had arrived. Still, colorful leaves.
Back below the cloud, the best I can do to suggest I was up high at some point. There were not a lot of clearings in the trees to take such photos, even at the summit.
These are the steepest steps I have ever climbed up (and then down again) in my life.
A twilight appeared just as I needed it to, note the glistening gold on the roof. The leaves here really were that red.
One feature of this mountain is all the potted colorful plants everywhere, they even had them at the summit.
Inside the temple was a flower display, I have seen a few the same around Japan the last few days.
If you like flowers you will like todays update.
Random photo of different colored trees. Probably still a bit early for peak autumn.
There were lots of huge spiders! On the internet I saw photos of dead snakes too, but I didnt see any myself.
Who knew Japan had snakes and spiders?
Once I got back to Shinjuku it was very dark and gloomy, and I was inexplicably exhausted.