Takao-san

After a night of partying with the neighbors upstairs on Friday night, I awoke late Saturday morning with a headache and little motivation to do anything. I had thought I'd be visiting Asakusa and Ueno in Tokyo with some housemates, but after they decided to wait until Sunday, I had to figure out what to do with my Saturday. I have absolutely nothing against them, but unlike my housemates (who are mostly here for more extended periods than myself) I am only in Tokyo for a month and I feel like I can't afford to lose a day without knocking something I've been meaning to do off my list.

Earlier in the week, my co-worker Mariko had told me about some cool mountain shrines in her hometown about a 1 hour train ride away. I almost decided it wasn't worth it as I wasn't ready to get out of the house until around 1:30pm. But the train fare was pretty cheap and I decided to just go.

By 3pm I'd arrived at Takao-san Station at the far western edge of the Tokyo Metropolis region. The station is right at the foot of Mt. Takao and the rest of the huge mountain range, with a short path to another station with a funicular that takes you halfway up the mountain.

At the upper end of the funicular there is a base station with a restaurant on the edge of a cliff - not a bad place to sit and have a pint of beer. It was already kind of late in the day, though, so no time for sitting around.

Shortly after the start of the trail, there is an option to purchase a $4 pass to get into an area where a large number of monkeys are kept and cared for. I decided I needed to see some Japanese mountain monkeys, and it definitely ended up being worth it. After entering a building with glass windows that allowed you to get right up next to some of the biggest monkeys...

I was able to climb up to the roof where a trainer was talking in Japanese with some other tourists.

After spending some time on the roof, I went back downstairs where a trainer had brought out a baby monkey and was letting some others pet him. He was very well behaved except for the moment I decided to videotape him:

As I climbed further up the mountain, some low clouds had descended and covered the trees of the forest in an atmospheric mist. At a few look out points over the mountain range, I could see other peaks being revealed and then being hidden again as the clouds slowly moved across the landscape.

As I passed under a large torii gate, the pathway started to be lined with wooden red lanterns signaling the entrance to the area of shrines. If I'm not mistaken, this entire mountaintop is dedicated to Tengu, a winged, long nosed, red faced Shinto god. He can be seen at numerous points along the way, from statues to masks to the stores at the bottom of the mountain.

I was surprised at the number of structures atop the mountain, as I had expected only maybe one big temple. There were numerous smaller shrines leading up to the largest near the top, each one perched high atop a steep staircase with views out over the trees and the roofs of the other structures.

After I finally made it to the last shrine, I thought about heading back down, but I could tell I was close to the very top of the mountain so I decided to keep going. Another 20 minutes and I was at the top, along with several others who were hanging out up there. There was a large viewing platform out over the mountains. The sign at the lookout said that Fuji was out there, but unfortunately, as is often the case, Fuji was hidden by clouds.

I hiked back down and took the train home, arriving back at the apartment by around 7:30, glad I had to decided to make the trip.

Once again, I'll post a big update of photos at some point soon. I just want to weed out the bad ones so I don't put up a bunch of crappy photos. Stay tuned.