Trip 13 to Japan - October and November 2025 - Page 6

I awoke to a lot of rain, as predicted correctly by the Japanese Bureau of Meteorology, who unlike the Australian equivalent still have a functioning website.

Very grey and rainy. Luckily a train did not come while I was standing here.

When I arrived at the garden I expected a huge crowd. I think this is everyone. It was very quiet. Entry is $5.

I think this is a museum of roof tiles?

I did the less popular northern loop first, while it was still raining. The path was quite muddy.

Dead. They look like the same ones in the lake at Ueno in Tokyo.

This is where the duck hunters operate from.

Not particularly colourful in the rain.

A lot of very big fish. They gathered in a number of places around the lake.

No entry unless you have a reservation at the cafe.

There are a lot of little lakes in the garden.

A small waterfall if you look closely.

There are multiple opportunities to fall off a bridge.

Note the profound lack of other people?

More cafes.

A redundant photo.

I like the little bits of fog.

You can climb up some slippery rock stairs for a higher view in a few places.

Very weird photo, the way the hedge is trimmed it looks like the photo cut off in the middle of the screen.

There is a tiny little red bridge.

Over to the castle now (entry $2), which is about 2km away with the entire journey between garden and castle under a covered shopping street. Here is an old bridge. Not sure if old.

I enjoyed the bridge.

More of the bridge from the castle annex.

There is a bit of a view of Takamatsu, but not a very good view.

The gardens are nice, the rocks are slippery, still not really any other people!

This gate was recently newly re constructed, again.

I seemed to take the wrong route and was getting further away from the castle.

Gate with a view. The moat is interesting, it is sea water, there are not many castles in Japan with a sea water moat.

Behold the tiny castle.

Now for some dark interior shots. You have to take your shoes off. It is wooden inside.

Here is the view from the top. Not much of a view.

And there is the sea, and a ferry, and a tiny bit more castle.

All the silly signs at the base of the pillars ruin every photo. One of them warns that if an early earthquake warning occurs, flee now in terror.

One last pic of tiny castle. That is too many pics today.

Here is Takamatsu JR station. The actual JR Takamatsu sign is strangely unlit.

Here is the convention centre with the cylindrical closed off observation deck. I tried to get up there but I could not.

Nearby, and lights in trees. It is almost illegal to have trees in Japan without lights in them.

I decided to explore further within this compound. There are a few restaurants and tourist group extorting stores.

A not very busy bus station area, with a lot of nice reflections.

And for dinner, soba, with fried tofu, and beef on rice. So noodles AND rice. Hmm. No vegetables of course, the Japanese are terrified of them.

Night castle. I hand held this!
Tomorrow is a hiking day, I have changed to a shorter hike as I will have to do 2 days of hiking in a row to catch up due to the rain today. There will be very famous shrines and probably a lot of staircases.

Exiting the station at Kotohira, and I was surprised to find it to be a sizeable city.

I went to Kotohira on the JR line, here is the station. There is a 7-eleven inside, and I stocked up there, but there is no need as there are numerous other convenience stores around.

Here is a giant lantern. It is right near the Kotoden station, which I will use to get back to Takamatsu. I do not really understand what this would have lit up when it was used as a lantern.

A city with random gates for no reason. There will be a lot of gates today.

Great weather today.

The path up to the start of the staircase is a tourist extravaganza.

The stairs are a big deal apparently, people buy a stick and get stamps etc. I believe there are several hundred to the top shrine.

First shrine, well probably not, but first shrine photo.

An early view. There will be a lot of views today.

More gates.

There was a mix of ages, but mostly Japanese people as far as I could tell. I am constantly shocked at how unfit younger people are these days. I blame uber and scooters.

I am standing near a public toilet, there are numerous in the shrine areas.

The next shrine was rather difficult to get a clear photo of.

But wait, more shrines. This one was doing a changing of the guard ceremony. That's what it is isn't it?

I like those little mountains that stick up in an otherwise dead flat landscape. You will see a lot of these little mountains today.

Top shrine. The crowds had already thinned out by now. Finding the actual hiking trail beyond here requires a map or local knowledge. You have to back track slightly, and they have hidden it, there is just one small hand drawn sign. Yamap is your best bet, I needed it today.

OK, one more view before I leave the concrete stair cases and shrines behind.

A view from the hiking trail, but soon, dark forest.

At first, after a landslide enforced roped detour, the trail was well defined.

It even came to this nice area with seats and what the map claims is a waterfall.

More view from a gap in the forest on the side of a steep mountain.

I cannot really convey it properly in photos, but large sections of this trail were on a 45 degree angle to the hill, muddy and slippery, with my outside foot constantly sliding a bit, and the risk of falling and sliding down a muddy hill.

I was relieved to leave the dangerous part of the trail behind me (for now!) and emerge at a road at the far end of the mountain range.

Looks like some kind of sacrificial altar, but according to the map, it is a camping area.

Except... this is an ancient tomb. I have never seen anything like it before. The sign showed ancient half naked Japanese people dressed like Egyptians.

There is a viewing platform for the tomb, but the view of the mountains below is also great, mildly spoiled by the wire.

My path then took me back through some bamboo, with ancient walls hidden within. I will now head up the central ridge of the mountain range.

Nearer the top the trail became more of a garden path.

Here is the top. No other people. And I saw almost no one beyond the shrine stairs all day.

The view from the top, with a bit of the viewing platform.

Same view, no viewing platform. The light was not great in this direction, also a lot of smoke.

Right at the top is the usual array of communications equipment, and a road. There was a giant fence with barbed wire on this road, more so than usual.

The start of the way down was also a road, quite unusual, a cleared area on the left of the road. Also here you can see the only 2 other people I saw all day.

Weird how they cleared this area for seemingly no reason.

Eventually the concrete road became more of a 4wd track. Fast progress along here though.

But then I was back on muddy slippery poorly marked trails, follow the pink ribbons.

It was a long descent, with a lot of hanging onto trunks and half sliding down. I was happy to get to this point.

Then I crossed another road and...

Time to go back up again. However this bit of the trail was a lot less muddy.

Nice view in a different direction. I saw pigs near here! Apparently they are dangerous but they seemed quite small to me. I urinated here to assert dominance.

Nice clouds and view.

That is the mountain I half slid down following pink ribbons.

Almost at the end, and it is a giant statue.

Behold, the rather large city of Kotohira.

It even has a small Shotengei.

I ran through the city to make this train on the private Kotoden line, made it with 5 minutes to spare. Although trains to here are at least every 30 minutes, so it would not have been much of a wait. The ride back was an hour.
It took me ages to type all this nonsense about all these photos, so there probably won't be too many more tonight!

Now for shotengai from above. Check out the roof. I was.

Despite being a Monday, quite busy. Those flags of course have some kind of locally famous pokemon on them. A lot of people are crowded around under the flags near the pokemon shop playing the pokemon gambling game.

The best upper view of the Shotengai is this one, near Tiffany's.

This sign is above a barbers shop. I have no idea at all.

Well well well, a Shotengai with a train running through it. I never thought I would see the day.

Next I ascended the big store I posted a photo of the other night to the top level expecting there to be restaurants. There were not. Instead, manhole covers.

And finally my rather disappointing dinner of omurice. At least it had a salad. This place served a bit of everything, they should probably specialise in something and get good at it.
Now I will work out how to get to my hike tomorrow, I am certain IC cards will not be accepted.

Here is Takamatsu station near dawn. Great weather, great light, great clouds. Today was a cash only train ride, 1200 yen (about $12) in each direction.

An hour and 10 minutes later, Motoyama station. It is really in the middle of nowhere. Getting off was the honour system. no one to check tickets.

Some of today's low mountain range. I walked a few hundred metres out of my way to visit a convenience store to stock up on supplies.

I paused for reflection and inhaled some farmer smoke.

First gate of the day, but nowhere near the most famous.

However this is probably the nicest shrine of the day.

The hike start is not too far from the station, it starts at a location labelled as a county park, I can see that part of the mountain used to be a quarry.

I could have stopped and played a round of mini golf, of course there was no one else around. There are however toilets and vending machines.

There was a nice rock face / waterfall near the car park.

After a brief stair case, here is the first view of the day.

The actual hiking path starts here, hence the sign.

The hiking trail today was a proper trail from the start, but never really muddy or slippery or dangerous in any way, but be aware, no other people, well almost none as you shall see.

Parts of the trail had been recently maintained.

There were a lot of flat bits suitable for jogging, but there were a lot of spider webs and giant spiders, I had to walk with a stick in front of my face. Thankfully my course today meant I doubled back over much of my path, so I could run on the bits I had already removed the spiders from.

There are a lot of labelled summits on the trail, but the highest is under 500m. Today is all about the view.

And so here is the first of many view photos to come.

More little mountains protruding out of very flat farm land today, more than yesterday even.

But also islands in the sea (ocean).

Great views with great clouds.

As always there is a satellite spy station on one of the summits, and a hidden road to get there. You only have to walk on it for a hundred metres or so.

Interesting clouds. The whole coast is little cities between little mountains.

Top shrine! But I am not even half way through my hike.

This is the view most people see.

It is also the only spot that I saw any other people at all, because they walk up this stair case from the sea, but not to see the shrine....

Instead they puff their way up the stairs to see the gate in the sky.

Takaya shrine if you are looking for it on google maps. Here is a landscape view.

I pushed on to the next summit. It has a water tank.

Great views all day.

There was a little bit of colour around, but autumn is late this year.

Next view, with a rope. I suggest yamap if you want to do the course I did as there are a few different choices to make.

Also a surprise wheat field.

Every few hundred metres, another view point.

Almost at the furthest point from the start where I will turn around, and it got colourful, I think some of the plants here have been planted deliberately by humans.

Redundant view.

I think that is basically back in the direction I had come from.

Or maybe that is, not great light on this shot though.

This area near Shihoyama was really nice, I was very surprised there was no one else around.

I now started to run most of the way back, confident I had knocked all the spiders down.

I look a lot like myself in this photo.

Nearly back at this point.

I had timed it (by accident) almost perfectly to meet the once an hour train, but still had enough time for a rare photo of a farm that is not burning any rubbish.

5 minutes until my train comes, what can I do to kill time?

The stance... but a weak stance. This is my new favourite shirt, $8 at Big W.

And then it was time for a 70 minute ride back to Takayama, for much of the journey I had the train to myself.
Once again this took a while to type up after a long day, so not too many photos later.

The end of the famed Shotengai. I think I may have posted the same photo the night that I got here.

The giant drug stores are a weird concept. Complete with a logo that shows a happy girl with sleepy eyes.

A surprise underpass in the middle of nowhere, with no choice but to use it. I spent some time down here trying to figure out why it was here, I could not come up with a reason, the road above was not busy.

Behold, YouMe town. Not the best angle to convey it's substantial size.

Inside reminds me a bit of a Shinkansen station. Most malls are long and narrow with a hole in the middle between floors. This one was more like a multilevel warehouse as wide as it is long.

An excellent food court. It was called Food Marina, despite being far from the ocean. I like all the empty seats, allowing me to sit far away from anyone.

And here it is, Okonomiyaki. 1,000 yen. A real bargain as it was delicious.
To get to Okayama tomorrow takes about an hour on the slow train, I will have to invent new ways to make that take all day.