Friday - Public Holiday!

Public holiday today! I love Japan and all their public holidays – it means a lot of 3 day weekends, and chances to go see more places (since the sun sets so early here, you can’t really do anything after school cause it gets dark way too quickly). Woke up at 6:45am this morning, had some leftover fried rice for breakfast, and then set off at 7:30 to pick up three other ALTs. We set off for Myōgi at 8:00am, very behind schedule (supposed to set off at 7:45am) so we arrived late at the parking lot, but we weren’t the only late ones so that was good. We had to sign up our names with the police/park staff, because apparently someone just died from hiking this week! Myōgi has a lot of rocks and cliff faces, and chain work, so it is quite easy to slip and fall to your death if you’re not paying attention, but otherwise it’s not too dangerous really. After making some last toilet trips and checking everyone was here, 3 people headed to the difficult summit hike, and the rest of us headed off on the easier archway hike. The hike was so super fun!! My understanding of “hiking” is like what we did in NZ, basically walking up a mountain trail. But hiking here in Japan is much more, and at Myōgi there was a lot of chain work. This is basically some chains attached up a path (?) of boulders that you have to climb – you hold onto the chain and climb up the boulders using the natural footholds there. There were quite a few of these chain bouldering runs, so it felt like rock climbing + hiking in one! The hike was a lot shorter than I thought, and we reached the top after just 45 minutes. Enjoyed the views and took a lot of photos, and some of us climbed out further to higher peaks (which you had to climb more chains to get to) and spent some time just sitting there enjoying the view. The autumn leaves had actually started on their decline, and Myōgi was no longer at its peak (despite the autumn leaf website telling me Myōgi was just in the beginning stages of its autumn leaf stage…) so the autumn colours weren’t that impressive (a lot of yellow, orange, and brown, rare bits of red, and mostly bare trees) but the view is still impressive because of all the rocks/cliff faces.

We had lunch at the little lunch area just below the highest part, and then hiked back down. The hike down didn’t have chain work as the trail goes down the mountain the other way, past the shrine. At the shrine there was another little part you could climb up, this time with no chain work but a ladder, so that was fun, and another great view to enjoy. The hike was honestly so much shorter than I had expected! I thought we’d be climbing for a few hours at least, but our easy archway hike AND the hard summit hike both finished in roughly 2 hours (not counting lunchtime). After that, we drove to a really nice onsen (峠の湯) which the senior ALTs suggested. It was a really nice onsen!!! Only ¥600 (for 3 hours but that’s plenty), and it was really high quality – clean modern facilities, outdoor baths, and a wide spacious relaxing area. After we finished at the onsen we drove back to Takasaki and had 回転ずし for dinner.