Mitsu-toge yama [三つ峠山] - day 2

Day TWO!!! - and after a nice little sleep on the most plastic version of tatami [畳] I have ever come across. I woke up to be able to see a crystal clear sky and Mount Fuji [富士山] out of the window.

After a quick brekkie of rice, we headed out and turned left out of the hut to get to Mitsu-touge peak...the route passed by the climbing area (which looked fantastic!) and took us past some very strange, plastic-looking ice which covered the ground. The path was heavily eroded, which was rather sad, and some of the wooden steps which had been placed to stop soil from transporting itself down hill had been eroded soo much that they had been completely dug out of the ground.

<- The strange ice, which probably developed during the windy cold night.... The peak itself had a beautiful view of Fuji [富士山] and stood at 1786m (just next to a very unattractive television antenna).

So we started our decent into the valley...and on our way, we took lots of photos with mount Fuji...but they weren't as nice as the ones we took near the top, on the account of clouds gathering during the day...and the nice lady at the mountain hut had told us the night before the weather outlook. she turned out to be right. We didn't come across too many people on our way up or down (although a mountain biker did whizz past us at one point) apparently (again according to the nice mountain hut lady) people train on this and other similar small mountains on normal weekends, when they are short of time, making only a 2day hike possible. Then on Golden week swarm to more challenging hikes which are longer. So, it was a nice and quiet hike.

On the way down, we followed all the little signs to Kachi-Kachi Ropeway [カチカチ・ロープウェイ], passing a small shrine, Tenjou-yama [天上山], on the way (quite close to the ropeway entrance).

Tenjo yama [天上山]

The ropeway terminal looked a bit like a theme park in itself and had a platform for viewing the valley and lakes below. We got a good view of FujiQ highland (the amusement park we went to last summer, link here). There were also several statues of a raccoon and a rabbit (Tanuki and usagi, [狸と兔、たぬき・うさぎ]) which we didn't understand at all, but were obviously the theme of the ropeway...

Apparently, there is a folk tale about these two animals, hence the name Kachi-Kachi for the ropeway, the story of the raccoon and rabbit here. There was even a statue on each of the cable cars, one rabbit and one raccoon. We took the raccoon down. Then had a nice rest during lunch...then another rest by the lake side, watching swan-shaped pedal boats being thrown about by the wake if huge motor boats vying for the same space...

After a nice rest in the warmth of the sun, and the company of ants, we decided to try and catch one of the trains to Shinjuku [新宿], preferably a nice express train. On the way to the station we passed a small temple on the way, which had a beautiful stone carving of a Daruma at the door, and a huge daruma as an offering at one of the shrines. Greg was approached by a lady with her family, who was trying to lead him towards the door. I eventually followed over to find that the lady was trying to show him what we probably should have done when we entered the temple gates. At the gates there was a small granite box, with some pebbles in a tray at the bottom. I thought it was for donations, but apparently you are just meant to pick up one of the round pebbles from the tray and pop it into the hole near the top, which then causes the box to make a nice ringing sound.

We had a bit of an argument, well confusion - which was all my fault really for not understanding a very very simple ticket pricing system, at the train station. Where I thought you could do the thing you can usually do in Tokyo; buy the cheapest ticket and then do a 'fare adjustment' at the other (terminating) station. The guard, however, disagreed. So, we were very good and bought the correct ticket. Ending up on the fastest scheduled train to Shinjuku for less than we were expecting; on account of Greg's guide book telling us that the fastest trains to Kawaguchiko [河口湖] on the Fuji-kyukou line [富士急行], where we were at the time, close to double of trains just taking 20 or so mins longer. But apparently from Kawaguchiko the type of train it ended up being on the Chuo Line [中央線] didn't matter. The long train ride was quite nice, especially as we didn't have to change trains, and resulted in a nice nap.

The End.

Mitsu-toge yama [三つ峠山] - day 1

On a not particularly sunny monday we headed off to Mitsu touge station [三つ峠駅] via Shinjuku [新宿] and Takao [高尾], the latter station is not very frequent and also not on JR.

A mountain side love letter somewhere after Tachikawa i think...

We eventually got to Mitsu-touge station just after 1pm, and walked straight into rain. It was only light showering, but it wasn't making the walk much more pleasant or warmer... we came across some beautiful maple type trees in peoples gardens...

Here's the maple and Greg disagreeing with the weather...

After a while of walking through the town/residential area....we reached the beginning of the hike, and after taking a little rest from the rain to have lunch, we started off on the road which lead us part the way up the mountain. I took plenty of little breaks to rest my poor little chicken lungs (which seemed to worry Greg a lot, who was doing his best to look after me having already taken the heaviest stuff in hie rucksack). In fact I think I spent more time resting than walking. Anyway, despite the steepness of the hike when we reached the forested areas, it was much nicer walking and clambering up rocks under the trees than on the tarmaced road. That, and under the trees you didn't notice the rain so much.

Over three hours later we reached the 88 buddahs [八十八大師、はちじゅうはちだいし] all perched on rather a steep hill side along the hiking trail we were following. Despite the sparse signage, it was pretty much impossible to get off the track, as it was well trodden and even if the path did diverge at any point, it was pretty sure to rejoin to the same path no matter which direction you took.

me doing lots of trudging and then some blurry buddahs...

After the buddahs things got a bit more rocky, with the trail winding through some windy, misty and dark valley, where some rock slides had destroyed part of the path in places. There had also been some attempts to make the trail safer my building wooden walkways in places...mainly to span scarier bits of the hike.


On the more exposed top of the mountain the wind nearly blew us off our feet. After a short battle with aeolian forces we reached a very important fork in the trail to take us to the mountain huts. We took the steps to the right and climbed up several flights before coming into view of the climbing area and then finally the hut. We quickly decided against camping in the viciously exposed mountain top, in favour of sleeping in the mountain hut for the night.

Cost of sleeping in the mountain hut:5000円/person

We were two of four guests, so lots of space for us. The lady who was looking after the hut also sat down to have a little chat with us, and very kindly offered us a nice plate of fresh tomatoes to go with our dinner!

A mist covered rock fall in the valley and a very wet view of the climbing wall

Buying Outdoor Gear, Ikebukuro

We were looking for a place to buy outdoor gear in Tokyo, and were hoping that we wouldn't have to trek all the way down to Harajuku [原宿] or Shinjuku [新宿] for ICI (Ishii) Sports, or the big sports shops like Victoria or L-Breath* (which are rather pricey, but there are lots of these; some specialising in golf, or ski...in Jimbocho [神保町] Ochanomizu[お茶の水], and since we had just been to Calafate (nice for climbing gear and some more specialised mountain wear, like packs and clothes) in Mejiro [目白] and not found a very wide selection of stuff we figured that Ikebukuro must be big enough to have a decent outdoors shop in it somewhere...

Anyway, I used my incredible Japanese skills at the 'Toshima [豊島] Tourist office' near the East exit of Ikebukuro JR station, on the off chance they knew of a outdoor shop somewhere nearby. As luck would have it, the lovely lady behind the counter pointed us to TWO! The closest was on the same (East) side of the station that we were on and not very far away! hurrah! The other was an L-Breath...bahhhhhh.... So we headed off in the direction in which she pointed us...we climbed the stars to the 2nd floor et voila! a decent sized outdoor wear shop and it seemed to have a decent enough selection of stuff and even a climbing gear section.

It's here:
2F Inside 'D-Box', 1-43-6 Higashi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 170-0013 [〒170-0013, 東京都豊島区,東池袋1-43-6 D-BOX内2F] If you are interested.

*L-Breath seems to be a sister store of Victoria (a sports goods monster) and specialises/focusses on outdoor stuff...mainly being clothes and equipment...well mainly clothes. less of the equipment.

Naeba 苗場 [01Jan-04Jan]

Our destination: Naeba 苗場 - an apparently trendy place for young people to hangout and look cool skiing/snowboarding.
Purpose: snow-based-fun&frolics

It's 930pm and we're at the West Exit of Shinjuku station 新宿 and we just about had time to find a cafe to have a hot drink before we met up with Rei and her friend at the bus station...we spent a good hour standing around waiting for the bus to turn up....which happened around 11. The bus was a glorious pink, and it's roof was covered in snow (good to know, as we wanted snow), in addition to the pinkness of the outside of the bus, the lighting in the bus had been designed by someone who seemed to want to spread a message of happiness to the world, but had mistakenly thought that this could be best achieved by multi-coloured lighting... The Overnight bus trip itself would have been fine, if the bus didn't stop every hour for fifteen mins and turn on all the lights, just to really make sure that you knew it was stopping.

Anyway, we got to Naeba at 5am, whence upon we had to try and find our hotel...called White Palace...which was appropriately painted brown (Amy pointed this out to me...I wouldn't even have noticed the irony of the name...). Reception didn't open to 8am, so we napped in some chairs in the foyer/smoking-room-of-lung-death. There were several other Japanese (who'd been on our bus) napping on the floor too....which was kind of reassuring. At 7am (maybe they pitied us and got up early for our benefit) the reception sprung to life and we managed to get our ski wear hired (apart from Greg and Akiko who had to go to a completely different shop to get kitted out...not a good enough range of shoe sizes apparently...). By 930 we were on the hotel provided shuttle bus and heading to the main mountain...

Me in some snow...

After scoffing some breakfast we managed to get on to the beginner slope and Greg tried hard to teach me to snowboard. This mainly ended up being, Greg sitting around on the slope for most of the day watching me fall over in slightly different ways...and over the next 3 days I found MANY different ways to fall over while my feet were firmly strapped to a plank of wood. Some methods involved my neck....which my neck was not very happy about, many involved my knees, which had so many bruises they gave up the concept of individuality and decided to create a merger, to form one very large bruise over both my knees...

We had wondered where Amy and Rei had gotten to, as we'd lost sight of them when we got to the ski lifts....after we got down we found that Amy had basically refused to go any where on the slope and had gone for the safe and non-bruise option of having a coffee.

We did stop for lunch, and then we disbanded again to go on our separate slopes to do our thang....or in my case: try not to die.

When it came to dinner time, we all met up near the entrance of the ski resort and waited for the shuttle bus to take us back. We had time to have a nice hot shower and get out of our ski gear before heading to the dining room.

I ate a lot. I was hungry...all that falling over business is hard work, OKAY!?

After dinner there was still time for night skiing! and very conveniently there was a slope just behind our hotel, which even contained some jumping slidey obstacles for the more experience skiier/snowboarder...meanwhile, I was busy imitating a falling leaf and floating down the slope.

Anyway, this was the routine for the next two days, which my body was not very happy about...We did however, manage to get Amy on to some snow, after she bought herself a sled...

And here are some photos of the night skiing to round it up...

Canoe Camp

So, we met at the Tokaido line platform at Tokyo station at 9am for a 915am train and head for Fujikawa, passing though Yugawara on the way. We get to Fujikawa station at quarter to 11 to be picked up by one of the guys from the activities centre, there are already two girls in the car and we are driving to pick up another guy so that he can follow us in his car to the centre.

We drive through some amazing scenery and when we get to the centre we greeted by a little black Labrador called San, we trek down the hill through a maze of wooden walkways down to large shelter, where we have our orientation. Which mainly consists of name games... then we get ready for a little excursion on to a calmer part of the river...

Very close to where we are going to be canoeing there is a big climbing frame with a little zipline...which we all have a go on before choosing a canoe to play in.

There are 2 single canoes, a double canoe, and a Canadian canoe...which we all have a go at...mainly we try to paddle our boats up over a rocky patch where the water flow is much faster. Our paddle-powered attempts were pretty lame, and ended up with some of our instructors standing on the large rock to the left of the imp-sized waterfall we were trying to scale... and trying to pull us up with a rope.

The first people to accend was a multi-manned attempt with the benifit of Charukii powering through. By the end of the afternoon, everyone had managed to get up to the other side at least once, had tried all the boats, and jumped in to the freezing cold river water swinging on a rope and jumping from the rocks on the other side. I on the other hand was the ONLY one to capsize that day... well done wayway! yes, the water was freezing.

Da, Iulia and Nachi trying to scale the rocky part of the river...

People watching me trying to right myself after tipping into the river.

Camp fire dinner, where I had a special dinner after I asked whether or not the large pot of creamy looking stew had milk in and they said yes! Charukii ran to the instructors kitchen to ask if they had any non-cow food...whence I was provided with some really cool gyoza, potato stuff and veggies... which was very very nice of them...then we proceeded to drink and toast marshmallows on the fire that we made...THEN several drinking games ensued including 'Go, Back, Jump', 'Dooby-Dooby-Do' and 'Mafia'. Which everyone got really into and ended up staying up til 2 am playing it...

Next morning, breakfast is at 730am along with some more orientation with Fujikawa river and what we'll be doing that morning.

It started raining lightly as we were starting out....it got a bit worse...but the rain wasn't my main concern.. it was the raging TORRENTS! and the rocks that the water was raging over...anyway we set out and were told to follow where the lead guy was going...so, fine. I tried following...and unfortunately I was following a little too closely to Iulia; who managed to run into a rock and got turned sideways into the current because of it...and I crashed into her (it was all rather slow motion... and hence rather a disappointing 'crash' more of a bump then both of us capsizing...) anyway we both ended up in the water. Which was Definitely not as cold as the day before! but where as Iulia managed to do a proper capsizing...while she was busy with all that... i was busy looking like a pillock and managed to fall over my own rock and slowly rolled over to my right, with the river pounding me from the right... Slowly, I could feel the river filling my little canoe and that there was NO chance of me righting myself...I meeped a pathetic....'errr help?!' and one of the instructors glided upstream (this is quite a feat...but she made it look so easy!) towards me and looked at me in a quizzical manner, wondering what on earth I was doing sideways...I tried to explain to her that I (well my boat and hence ME) was completely stuck ...I got out of my boat and tried to free it. Which failed dismally...on the account of it being 1.) wedged in between two rocks...and 2.) being wedged by the water flow. The combination of which made it pretty buggered. so Nachi told me to let go of the boat....I checked that she meant what she said... and asked... 'let go, and float WHERE?!?!'...

'oh just float downstream....'

yeah...that's helpful...

as I looked towards the rocky torrents which were looking Very hungry for wayway type food. I thought.... well what the hell...why not... so let go of my nice boat...(which was definitely easier than letting go of the stalactite) and headed for the river of DOOM! I did what they told me in orientation, and kept my feet up in the water...to defend me against the large rocks...but the rocks were quite insistent on hitting me and completely missed my feet and hit my arse instead. thank you very much. I was busy being swept away wondering how to stop myself from being drowned everytime I went over a big rock and was drawn into the whirlpool on the other side... as well as being swept into the faster and faster flowing part of the river itself.

Fast = BAD! so I thought I'd try and get my body over to the calmer, less rocky looking areas of the river, by paddling to the left, where I could. It obviously wasn't as futile as it felt while I was in the water because I managed to get my self close enough to the bank for one of the guys to throw me a rope to try and save me; by this time all the other people had been made to stop at the side of the river to watch me fail around in the river. The rope throwing was rather comic. For a start the guy who was trying to save me....ran right past me on the bank as I floated by, and was pointed in the right (down stream!) direction by the other people in our group...and it was quite amusing (even from my position of certain watery death) to watch him make a sudden changed of direction and hot-foot it back downstream from whence he came. THEN, he tried to throw the rope and missed me by about a meter too far from my reach (towards the bank and BEHIND ME!) SO, he pulled the rope back in and tried again... and again the rope landed behind me....by that time the feeling of doom had gone, and mild amusement of the situation had set in. and i thought:

'Sod it I'll just go get the rope myself shall I?!'

at which point I started to stand up...and then i realised that 1) the water was actually rather slow where I was now...the manic paddling had obviously worked to some extent as I was out of the torrents of doom and 2) the water was also shallow. I damn well didn't need saving NOW....and walked over to the bank. Short of a boat and a paddle.

It took the guys a good half an hour to get my boat back...in the mean time we all had a nice rest and biscuits.

which is what we are doing below.




Iulia had managed to float a LOT further downstream...but she was all good...and raring to go! So once we got the boat back we were all good (although I was feeling FAR more feeble!) to go.

I survived the next torrent...and paddled like crazy through them all...

on our next rest, we pulled our boats up on some rock and had a 'jumping into Fujikawa contest' which I just watched... lame, I know. I have no shame. I'd already had enough falling, from the game of 'trust' we played 'getting to know one another' falling into other peoples arms from a height....hmmmm nice.

However, the Granite here is Amazing. It's really grippy even when wet! and so some climbing of wet rock ensued...we also had a chat to one of the guides who runs the climbing bits of the camp too... who was recommending the climbing nearby...

Just as we finished the day the rain cleared up and it was beautifully sunny!

the last photo....of 'good people'!