Oku-Tama

We went out on the weekend to do a little hiking in the Chichibu-Tama National Forest. We had a guide book that told us of a 3.5 hour hike into the mountains. When all was said and done the total hike took about twice that. Since we planned on a small hike, we went totally unprepared. When we finally found our way up to the peak of Mt. Oodake, we only had about an hour of sunlight left. For the last two hours of our trip down the mountain we were in complete pitch black and it was a steep descent. Really scary. We prayed for help and safety along the way and ended up making it back to town safe and sound, no injuries. Thank God. He provided us with a few unusual sources of light: a Nintendo DS, a Japanese electronic dictionary, and a cell phone, all with backlights and all of which had batteries that died by the time we reached the foot of the mountain. Pretty amazing.


The journey started out with a cable car up the side of the mountain to reach this scenic outlook. In the distance (way in the distance) is Tokyo, about 40 miles away. On a clear day, you can see the skyscrapers of downtown Shinjuku, Tokyo Tower, and Tokyo Bay. From here we, started hiking. Here are some of the pictures on the way up.

This is a the main street in a little temple town about a third of the way up Mt. Mitake.

Here are some of the houses in the town. Notice the thatched roofs. Pretty cool, huh?

At the end of the town is the temple. This is the gate and stairs to the temple.

And this is the temple itself.

From the temple, we continued on. This was a nice paved path through a bamboo forest. It was also our last paved path of the journey. Notice that the number of people dropped off significantly. Most people come to the temple and go home. We continued on...

A really nice waterfall (and nice picture, if I do say so myself).

Erik climbing. This is what the path quickly became. And this is also the same environment we had to climb back down in the pitch dark of night. Yes, without protection, we could have had major injuries. Yikes.

More climbing.

And here are some pictures on the way down.

What Erik looked like in the glow of the Nintendo DS. We didn't even plan on bringing it with us, but figured the train ride was long and Zelda would keep us occupied. Good thing.

Only lit up from the flash of our camera, but look at the surroundings.