Long ass hike on Sunday, Mt. Takao
Well, I got up earlier than I wanted since I slept earlier than usual. At first, I woke up at 5am and then went back to sleep. I didn’t have to get up till around 7:15am, but I kept on waking up before my alarm. I got ready for breakfast and went down and had some pizza toast, which was very good. I really liked it. We finished off the salad and had a bit of avocado with it too. It was really nice to have a breakfast like that even though it was too early to eat. I think that I would need the energy today though since we were going to hike a mountain.
We left the house around 8am to Gotanda station. We then took the yamanote line to Shinjuku station and waited for the other teachers at the new Keio line. We bought lunch at a convenient store inside the station. The train ride from Shinjuku station to Takaosan guchi was about 50 minutes. There were a lot of people there that day too. Since it is golden week, many places were full. We took a little chair lift up the mountain part of the ways to get to the hiking trails. We decided to go with path number 3, and not really sure of the reason why. When we got to the top of the mountain, we had lunch. It was very nice to be eating up there and it was peaceful, even though there were a lot of people there. We found a good spot to sit down and eat. But this was only the beginning of the adventure.
From the top of the mountain, we decided to go look at the lake that is near by. Actually it was 5.2 kilometers away from that point after we had already trekked up hill for about 1.5 kilometers. We all agreed and it seemed like a nice thing to do and see. So we started walking in the direction of the lake and about 30 minutes later, we were at a post that said the lake was about 5.5 kilometers away. We actually went further even though we were following the path and all this was going up hill and it was steep too. We were all getting a bit tired at this point. But as we inched closer and closer, we became more excited. It was fun and tiring though. It took us through many areas where we could see plum trees, cedar trees and other forest areas. It was nice and peaceful.
We passed a bridge and got closer and it was fun going down hill too. I took a lot of pictures as we were walking to document the trip. It was fun. We finally ended up at the lake about 3 hours later. I believe that in the whole day, we probably walked about 9 kilometers up a few mountains and down them too. My knees were killing me, but my legs were ok at that time. We sat at the lake and talked for a few hours eating soft serve ice cream. It was bliss and something really cool to be doing for golden week.
On the train ride back, many teachers were dead tired. Some slept and I wanted to sleep, but I didn’t for some reason. I was getting tired though, but it was only the beginning of the trip ride home since I was the furthest away from home. It took me a long time to get home too. I decided to stop at Yokohama station to have dinner at the small little Chinese food place I like to go too, even though the food is average and a tad bit overpriced.
Then I went grocery shopping for tomorrow’s dinner. I wanted to make curry rice, so I needed to get the ingredients for the meal. It was starting to get heavy and I was really starting to tire since I was walking all day and now I had to carry things back home and walk. When I got home I showered and fell asleep.
