From Okutama station to Mount Gozenyama to Lake Okutama
Dont let the above title fool you. Today was an excellent hike. Lots and lots of photos so I wont type too much here. I say than often then type a huge amount, lets see.
Last year I ran a lap of Lake Okutama after walking along the trail over looking the gorge from Okutama station. As a sidenote, if you are looking for the station in Hyperdia, its Oku-tama.
My lap of the lake was a fantastic day with great photos, you can find it by using the search at the top of the page.
Today I started again from Okutama station, and walked up over the mountains, most notably Mount Gozenyama, and then descended down to the lake.
To explain the title, the first half of the hike was noisy for a few reasons, a political rally was being staged in Okutama town with the loud speaker trucks, a school sports day was happening with loud speakers, huge helicopters were moving stuff up to a mountain somewhere, and someone was ringing a huge bell.
The dam dirty part of the hike was Lake Okutama itself. Last time I was here it was a beautiful blue color, today it was brown. My research suggests this is still because of the big Typhoon that happened nearly a month ago now.
See, that wasnt too long? Onto the pics!
Okutama is the kicking off point for many hikes. It is very likely one of my two remaining hikes will also start from here.
Today I got the holiday special liner, which is a direct train from Shinjuku that splits in half, half goes up the Ome line to Okutama, half goes to Musashi-Itsukaichi. Make sure you are on the right half! The carriages say where they are going to on the outside, but theres no way to know on the inside.
I took a couple of gorge shots before I set off. The light was not great at this time of day. Check out last years visit instead!
Heres another gorge shot.
And here is a view of the little town of Okutama going up the hill. It is a very busy place, lots of hiking shops, 2 convenience stores. Lets get hiking!
Soon after the hike starts, a huge steep staircase. Look how it gets steeper the further up it goes. Unexpected!
At the top, of course there was a shrine.
Nice shrine, but too many trees, no view.
This is the best view through the trees I could find. The loudspeakers from the school sports day were hilariously loud. You can see the sports field below.
There were trees nearly all day today, logging provided most views. Here is some logging due to power lines.
The first couple of hours up were quite tricky in places. Lots of rocks and tree trunks. Also quite colorful.
Very picturesque.
A nice view across the valley. I have climbed that mountain last year! Mount Kawanori I think, that was a great hike.
As there often is, there were a few makeshift shrine areas. Makeshift is probably not the right word.
Really nice rocks and foliage. I dont get to say foliage very often.
Here are some of the tree roots. These combined with jagged rocks and often covered in leaves meant it was slow going at times.
Then there were the sections of ladders and chains! Nothing too dangerous, this is probably the longest chain.
Another view further up the valley towards higher mountains. Hard to access some of them.
Just a bonus view of nice trees and stuff.
OMG!
By now I had passed over a peak with a few people on it, and was now on a lonely trail between peaks. It was quite flat most of the time.
Over the other side of the ridge, nice and colorful.
I heard people.
Here is the emergency shelter. Todays hike had many paths that joined the ridge line from different starting points. This hut is the top of the most popular starting point, my hike was significantly longer, of course.
Summit! It is not that high, but due to going up and down a few times I somehow managed to do 1500m of climbing. More than Mount Zao, almost as much as Mount Bandai.
There were a few other people on the summit. They had mostly come from the lake. I think I was doing this sort of backwards, the first pic today was the bus, most people get off the train and sprint to the bus, get to the lake, then start their hike. I decided to end at the lake to avoid the rush.
Here is the view. Not a great view, but not bad.
And this of course, my huge head, always a feature. Thats a tree behind my head that looks like an awesome hair failure.
Here is Fuji. This is the one view you will get of it all day, so make the most of it. Looks like there is no snow on it currently.
Starting my descent, is that a lake I see before me?
That does not look very steep, but its REALLY steep.
Here is some more steepness. The leaves made the footing very tricky. At times it was choose your own adventure.
The descent was very colorful, and until I got very close to the dam, I only saw one other person. I thought it would be more popular on a Saturday.
Bonus color, and many many leaves.
Rock and color. Clearly I am running out of things to say. I was starting to worry I would not get a view of the lake.
THERE IT IS! Lake Okutama. Looking quite dirty.
And there is the dam. More on the dam when I get down. Still an hour to go to get back to the dam.
It was a surprisingly long way down, with some bonus ropes to hang on to.
Nearly there.
There is the dam. There were people up here at this little lookout.
View from the dam back up the valley. Great weather all day today.
Another view of the dam and the brown dam water.
And the far side of the dam. Its a hydroelectric plant, a long way down.
I had literally, just enough time to run around to a point where I would not be staring into the sun to take this shot, then I saw the bus, and sprinted, and made it on by seconds! Another great hike. Long. I wont be going very far tonight. Only 2 more hikes!
Koreatown in Shinjuku
If you have been watching the news lately, you will see that tensions between Japan and Korea (South) are very high. Japan seems to be getting on ok with the North strangely! This of course dates back to the comfort girl issue. There is now also a drama over an island no one really cares about which is surely just both sides genitalia measuring contest (saying penis in 2020 is considered sexist). I will just put the name of that island here for google to find, its called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese. Just to make that situation amusing, a Japanese university angered Chinese students the other day by allowing a Hong Kong demonstration to occur, which resulted in the Chinese students having a DOKDO ISLAND IS KOREAN protest at the same time. Thats enough politics, I have a point.....maybe.
Tonight I went for a walk through Koreatown. My hotel is on the edge of it. I went there the very first time I came to Japan in 2010. It is much bigger now. It is one of the busiest places in Tokyo, with lots of signs telling people that due to congestion, pedestrians must keep walking at all times. So despite the political tensions, people from Tokyo still like to go buy filter snail face cream.
This is the strangest Don Quijote I have seen. Donki is like Daiso but things cost more than $2.80. For whatever unknown reason, this one exists across a few parking lots.
The alleyways to the main part of Koreatown are very authentic, most shops are selling face masks (make up not tear gas) and nothing else.
Here is the main street. The shots dont really make it look busy, I guess I timed my standing in the middle of the road with everyone behind me to make it look less busy. It was busy. Busy.
Bonus shot of Koreatown in the other direction. I think it has grown considerably in the last 10 years.
I should have stayed in this hotel. So many colors.
Apparently this circus is free. I doubt it.
Sure I went to Koreatown, but all the Korean places were fried cheese coated chicken and had huge lines. So instead I had Sichuanese Japanese food in Koreanese. I really wanted something hot and spicy, and dan dan ramen is my new favourite thing.