They told us that they're going to do a hiking tour on Sunday, the only one they offer, that you can do without professional equipment. So, we had another meeting on Saturday and were luckily able to convince them, that we are fit enough to do 3 hour hike and that we have a health insurance.
The adventure started 6:40am at Hiyoshi station were we met some of the clubmembers and started the 2 hour train ride to the submontane of mount Takamizu. It was so nice to see, how there are less and less houses and more and more trees... I really missed the nature after more than two weeks in busy Tokyo. The actual hike started in a little village on an asphaltic street, but soon we came into the forest and it was going up and up. The weather was foggy and quite cold, but this made the atmosphere mystic, like I imagine forests myths. Suddenly we could hear music out of the fog, it got louder and louder and we ended up at a temple, where there was a ceremony going on. Further more the served hot amasake (a Japanese drink out of brown rice), it was just the perfect place to take a break and enjoy. On the sumit we had a picknick and the Japanese even carried water and cooker to make coffee, tea and popcorn. The most challenging thing was the hike down, because it was really steep and everything was wet and slippery. I must admit, that I would have preferred to wear my hiking boots and can understand their anxiety about our equipment. I'd probably laugh too, about such tourists in Switzerland... ;-)
At the bottem of the mountain an Onsen (Japanese public bath) was awaiting us. We all took off our shoes and were led to a room with little tables and straw mats on the floor. There was also tea and pillows to relax. We took our showering stuff and went to the actual bath, where we were a bit helpless, because we've never been to place like this. A Japanees girl showed and explained us that we have to sit down and wash our body completely before going into the water, after that you take water out of the bath and deplete it over you body to get used to the temperature. It was a bit special to sit naked on a little chair and scrub your body, but we finally managed. The bath itself was for two people to sit down and really, really hot, I guess between 50 and 60 degrees at least... it felt like thousands of needles on my body. After I went out my head was turning around and I even felt a bit sick. Luckliy it only lasted for about 5 minutes and then it felt very good. I was so relaxed and almost slept in on the way back...
Some impressions from the hiking tour:
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