Today I did a bit of wandering... though I think towards the end, I did get a little lost since I had noooo idea really where I was geographically. In an attempt to justify hours and hours of video gaming today to myself, and to check out what was up with this Bitchu-Matsuyama Castle Festival, I decided that today was going to be a good day for walking and set off walking up the mountain. It's a really pleasant walk to the hiking point. There's also a hiking route available but yeah, I prefer concrete sometimes (especially when there are loads of bugs...) plus the concrete path that the cars drive up is also actually quite beautiful, especially when the rice has been planted (and even more beautiful when the rice has grown all green or is almost ready to be harvested). The hike up to the castle is nothing new, since I've done it several times. It's been a while since I've gone all the way from the bottom to top; last time with my parents we took the shuttle bus up. I thought it was going to be a nice little hike full of exercise, no more than two hours, two and a half tops.
Yeah, nope.
The festival bit was kind of small, and mostly consisted of banners lining the road all the way up to the castle from the base of the mountain (next to my house even). They had shops selling Takahashi things (yubeshi, a kind of yuzu flavored mochi, and "Indian yakisoba" made with curry powder and tomatoes) up near the shuttle stop, and the shuttle was free as well. Oh, at the top, right outside the castle, they had armor that you could pay to dress up in (or were free if you were a child). I think there were other things going on as well, but alas, they were at times I wasn't there.
There was a path leading behind the castle that you didn't need to pay to get into - the castle you need to pay 300 yen and I've been there a bunch of times, plus they weren't doing anything inside for the festival thing - so I took that. You get a pretty nice view of the back of the castle and the little... housey thing that's really old. But behind that, there was a little path leading downwards, and it piqued my curiosity.
It didn't look like it was in too sad a state - or well, it looked as if it had been maintained somewhat, so my brain reasoned that clearly, this meant this was a path that went Somewhere. I'll just check it out, since I want to know where this path goes, I thought. I won't be walking for too long. This was my reasoning for not walking back about 100 meters to get my water bottle refilled.
The path, to start with, was wooden stairs that disappeared into the forest. Leaves - probably from the winter and fall, now that I think about it - were around the path, but someone had clearly swept them away from the center of the steps. Earlier I had seen a sign that had the kanji I so often see with "no smoking" signs... and I wasn't sure if that was a "don't smoke here" sign or if "this path is forbidden" sign. I'm going with no smoking. Yeaaaaah. Probably was that.
The path eventually led to a small bridge, that led to a small clearing. Ever curious, I decide to follow it "just a little bit further" and then turn back. From the clearing, I went up a bunch of steps that twisted and turned like a snake before finding myself before a small sign that indicated that indeed, these paths went places with Things to See. The signs were the standard ones they had in the city that indicate in both English and Japanese the Destination as well as how far away they are. So I figured that this was definitely a legit path, and continued on my way to what I thought was another part of the castle ruins. Actually, they were kinda that, but it was just kind of a clearing with stone markers. The site for where the ruins would be of the castle, and also, a little further down, a suspension bridge!
Oh, I passed another man who was really surprised to see another person walking along the paths, and he warned me that there were poisonous snakes in this area. Thank god I've played video games in Japanese! They taught me the word for poison hahaha. But the guy was like "uhhh... be careful."
When I saw that there was a suspension bridge from the signs, it was like, "well, I'm going to walk to at least the suspension bridge, since omg what, there's a suspension bridge behind my house in the mountains?!"
There was indeed a suspension bridge! It was green, and on both ends there was this cage with two sets of doors... I guess since the mountains have monkeys and they don't want the monkeys on the bridge?
On the other side was a nice concrete path... so that piqued my curiosity even more (plus I had slipped a little on the sand on the way to the bridge, so I was trying to find a way back that didn't involve going back up that). It even had rope dividers between the two sides... so instead of turning back across the suspension bridge (since my original "plan" was only to go to the bridge) I went up the path. Wee~
I ran into another, equally startled, man who said something about a parking lot and a shuttle bus, so I went off to find said parking lot. And I found it (plus a sign with warning about monkeys). There was one car. No sign of shuttle times or anything. Reaaaaaally didn't know where I was, though there was a map. I did puzzle out that I was in a place whose kanji I couldn't pronounce, and that the city was about... 4.2 km away, and the castle was a good 1.2 km away. Eventually, this old man in a truck also came to the parking lot, so I asked him about where I was and where the paved road went, and how far away the city was - just in case.
Turns out that the road was 4.2 km, and it led to a place called Narai (...town?) that was a bit inland from Takahashi. Yeaaaaaaah. We concluded that it would be better to just return on the same path I took and go back to the castle. The old man also helped me find a nice walking stick, since he too warned me about the same type of poisonous snake, called mamushi in Japanese (and apparently in English too, though there are two types: the Japanese mamushi and Tsushima mamushi, which only lives on tsushima island in between korea and Japan). He was giving me advice on what to do if I see a monkey, and so I asked him what to do if I saw a snake. His advice was to run away haha, but also that I should try to scare it away with a long walking stick. Then it came to his attention that I didn't have one, so we went into the forest, found a stick laying around that looked about the right height, and made it into a walking stick (though due to its suspicious length, I think it was a walking stick someone already made and then left behind).
Walking stick: acquired.
Thankfully, I didn't run into any snakes on my way back (tons of bugs though, and blue tailed skinks) and while I didn't see any monkeys... I definitely heard a bunch.
All in all though, my adventure took somewhere around three hours, so by the time I made my way back home, exhausted, it had been a four hour trip! That was with taking the shuttle bus back down, since my legs were reaching that point where they really needed a rest. I did walk/jog the rest of the way down, and saw one of my third year students working at his part time! That was a fun little interaction. Going out took way longer than I thought, but way more interesting as well. Also, racked up TONS of steps on my 3DS hahaha. The 3DS has a built in pedometer, so I was using that to kind of keep track of how far I walked. (Apparently, it was about 13,868 steps)
I should really explore Takahashi more often! I'm constantly finding amazing and beautiful things. :) I'm really going to miss it here.
Oh yeah, speaking of amazing things, I went to the Naruto whirlpools with one of my JET friends. They were pretty cool to see, even if I was slightly disappointed at first (since they are definitely not the permanent, end of the world, ship destroying whirlpools I thought they were). But it was fun. We went on a boat into them! That was even more fun. I miss being on a boat. Maybe I'll write a proper entry about that later with pictures. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment