A Fantastic Hike

20th May, 2007

Kakagowa is another town one stop away from Himeji, which is where we headed for the day. It is such a beautiful place kind of like a country town. There are beautiful mountains surrounding the town and we were fortunate enough to be able to climb Takamikura mountain. The first part of the hike was fairly steep. That part went for about 20 minutes or so but then after that the rest of the climb was fairly easy. These sort of activities are right up my alley so I thoroughly enjoyed it. We were lucky to have such a beautiful day too. We finally got the top after about an hour of climbing and the view from up there was amazing. I could have sat up there for hours just looking at the scenery.





























Up the top was Takamikura Shrine. This was also amazing to see. How they got to build the shrine on top of this mountain was beyond me. I was glad that it was there though because it was fantastic to see a shrine in the middle of nowhere.

Once we had seen the shrine we hiked to another temple where there were Yamabushi – which are mountain priests. These mountain priests apparently do a lot of fasting. I am not sure how long exactly they fast for but I know they do it. Anyway as we were walking towards the temple we could hear the sound of a conch. The mountain priests were blowing them. It was really cool to hear it while we were walking through the mountain. We finally reached the section where the yamabushi were and we discovered that they were performing some kind of ceremony. It was very interesting so we stopped to watch for a while. The yamabushi were chanting various words, using a bow to fire arrows into the air, blowing conch horns and they also lit a pile of leaves which was meant to take everyone’s sins away. This ceremony only happens once every 50 years so we were extremely lucky to have been in the right spot, on the right day and at the right time to get a chance to see this. It was absolutely amazing to see.

After we watched for quite a while we walked back around to where we began our hike which was in this magnificent park with lots of sheltered areas, playgrounds and grass for people to play, relax and have BBQ’s in. We had packed a BBQ lunch and were very excited to experience our first BBQ in Japan – Japanese style. Instead of the usual gas BBQ’s we were using a coal one. There was no traditional sausages, chops, patties and salad – instead we had a feast with: wieners, kebabs, chicken, carrots and beans rolled in beef, squid, corn, onions, eggplant, pumpkin, rice balls and I’m sure I have forgotten some other food. It was a very different style to what we were used to. People were just cooking things and eating off the BBQ. I enjoyed this style of BBQ just as much as the traditional ones at home. I tell you what – there was no coming away feeling hungry after this was over with. The food just kept coming and coming. The BBQ was chocker block full at all times. It was fantastic!

After feeling very full we headed to a temple located near the park we were in. To get to this temple we had to walk through the largest Tori gate in the world. This Tori gate was made out of titanium. It was massive. The temple was also very cool to look at. There were lots of interesting things around this temple for us to look at.
























I really enjoyed everything that I experienced today. It was definitely a full on day and I was exhausted by the end of it but I had a terrific time and I might even go so far as to say that this was one of my most favourite things that I have done so far.