Sunday, June 15, 2008

My Travellings - Mt Takao, Japan

Mt Takao 3rd June, 2006.

It’s was a cloudy cold morning here in Tokyo. We had plans of going out to an amusement park called the ‘Yokohama Sea Paradise’. Its known to be a place for youngsters with lots n lots of exciting rides. But somehow looking at the foggy climate outside we thought it would be better to go to some nature friendly place. So finally we decided to go for a treck to Mt Takao.
Mt Takao – ‘Takaosan’ as they call it here is a densely wooded mountain and is one of the closest natural recreation areas to central Tokyo, offering beautiful scenery, an interesting temple and attractive hiking opportunities. The peak is 599 meters over sea level and offers views of Tokyo, Mount Fuji and as far as Yokohama. Considered a sacred mountain, Takaosan has been a center of mountain worship for more than 1000 years. The attractive temple Yakuoin stands near the mountain's top. Visitors pray there to Shinto-Buddhist mountain gods (tengu) for good fortune. Statues of the gods, one with a long nose and one with a crow beak, can be found at the temple and all over the mountain.
Hey the treck begins – So all geared up, me and my three friends were on our way to explore Takaosan. It’s was about 2 hrs journey from our place to Takao station. The view that we got as we came out of the station was simply fascinating. The station was surrounded on all sides by dense green mountains. We got all d more excited and just wanted to hit the top of the mountains. It even started drizzling a little adding ferver to our hiking campaign. There were cable cars which we cud take to go to the top. But we all decided to walk with the nature n enjoy every minute of it.. Singing and chitchatting we soon reached the first level of Takaosan. The view simply got better and better and pretty soon we were all in the clouds. It reminded me a lot about the Mahableshwer trip which our LnT batch had last year…..Greeting the jappus ‘konichiwa’ all along the way we soon reached the Yakuion temple and the shrine….The guardian of the mountain is Tengu, a red-faced ogre with a long pointy nose, whose image can be found all over Takao.All of us got busy with our cameras capturing all that we could. Near Yakunoin is a smaller temple surrounded by dozens of little statues of Buddha.For lunch somehow we managed to nibble on some strange looking Jappu items. After lunch it was time to conquer the peak of Takaosan. We chose to go by the narrow and the slippery path all the way to the top. It was steep and rocky, with tree roots eroded wooden steps, as well as mud from this morning’s rain, making it a bit of a challenge to stay upright. Here and there the fluting of the birds echoed through the ravine and the fluting mingled with the chuckle and gurgling of the creek running nearby .We reached in about an hour and the view was simply unbelievable...felt soooo great to be on the top….The mountain was shrouded in mist, which really enhanced the beauty of the forests. It also completely obscured the view, and instead of seeing Mount Fuji on one side and central Tokyo on the other, all we saw was an endless white fog. It was just great!!!We started the descend and took a cable car on our way down. Indeed the trip was very fascinating and we enjoyed every moment of it.

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