The Mountain Top

I've been meaning to hike to the top of a mountain in my town. You can look around from my apartment and see all these mountains around. Finally, on Tuesday, I got the urge to do it, wrote it on my after school to do list and managed to keep the desire going when I got home. When I've thought about hiking like that, I've always worried that I wouldn't find a good place to start, because houses and farms butt right up against the bottoms of the mountains. But I luckily chose a good mountain and the right side of it to go up. There was a shrine at the bottom of it and behind the shrine I found a trail that was maintained and led all the way to the tip top. It was nice. It was a nice way to get my legs moving again after the 20k on Sunday, and it finally gave me a chance to see all of Takase from above, something I've been wanting to do. So without further ado, here are the pictures:

This is the heart of Takase, Katsuma. In the distance and to the right is Ninomiya. To the left of that behind the first row of mountains is Asa. To the left outside the picture is Kamitakase and Hiji is to the lower right and out of the picture.

This is the view toward Mino and, further out, Takuma. They are also towns in Mitoyo City. You can see some of the islands in the Seto Inland Sea in the distance. I knew I was close to the sea, but when I was on the mountain I could see it so clearly.

I'd definitely like to make the hike again and regularly. And find other trails to go up.

Half-Marathon

Well I learned about the half-marathon back in September. It was on February 3rd. I thought it would be cool to do another one (did one on Thanksgiving 2006 with my dad and sister). No big deal. Except a few months later and I haven't kept up with my running. Then I'm on vacation in Thailand and Cambodia. I often use vacations to jump-start my running regime back home. But this one didn't really lend itself to running a lot. So it was my New Year's resolution (one of many) to start running again and do the half-marathon no matter what. At the mid-year seminar several people said they were going to do and that they probably were going to just register the day of. Great. I'm a procrastinator so that suited me. I managed to get serious about running again for the past two weeks. Saturday night I check the marathon website to see when late registrations would begin. Except they don't have any. Had to register by Saturday at 5. I text a few friends who seem convinced that you can still race. I go to Marugame for the marathon. No dice. I'm pretty pissed at myself. I had 5 months to figure it out and register. And I blew it. And that was after telling several people I was racing. Including a class of 34 students. Great. But I was determined. So I went back home. Relaxed a bit since the morning was sort of rough to begin with. I woke up at got a migraine which put me out of commission for an hour or so and I left later than I wanted and had to race for a train. I didn't pack up everything I wanted and then the whole not being able to register really sucked too. So after I calmed back down a bit. I loaded up. I was going to run my own half-marathon. I picked this town in Mitoyo that's way back in the mountains with no train station. I said I'd just run to that for about an hour and 15 minutes and then run back. That would be about a half-marathon. You should have seen me. I had my provisions stuffed inside my underarmor. I managed to also stuff in my iPod and my digital camera. It was a great run. The best I've felt in a long time. I let myself stop and take pictures occasionally. Never more that 2 minutes and maybe a total of 10 times the whole run. I think a couple times I stopped for closer to 5 minutes. I was technically in the town by the hour fifteen mark, but I wasn't to a place where I had been before and I wanted to keep running. So I jogged around the town some before heading back. I ended up being gone from 12:15 until 3:45. So probably a bit farther than 20k. But it was good. Here are some of the pictures I took while out. You'll see that cherry blossom season is soon upon us. Apparently there will be official cherry season watchers who will announce when it's officially time to go cherry blossom viewing.

PS. Sorry about the single paragraph. I sometimes forget to indent when I should and I'm too lazy to go back and find the right spot.

One of the first pictures of the run. Some dumped mikan (oranges). Guess after all the freezes they weren't good anymore. Typical Japanese farmer's truck in the background.


Abandoned van. Orange grove in the background.


Mountain views. The ridge to the right is entirely bamboo forest. Cool huh?


And here's a sideview of the bamboo forest.


These are some of the first cherry blossoms.


A mini-snowman. Notice only made of two balls of snow. That's the Japanese way apparently. And his eyes are mikan. Probably because they are everywhere this time of year. And about a dollar will buy 3 or 4 kilos.