Our first full day in Japan was spent hiking up a Mt Takao (Takaosan) situated about an hour outside of Tokyo.

Standing at 599 meters high and with walking trails up to 3.8km long Takaosan is a challenging walk, which was why we took the cable car to the half way point!

The cable car in itself was impressive with a gradient of 31 degrees making it the steepest cable car in Japan. And even in the bleakness of winter the scenery from the cable car was impressive.

Before boarding the cable car we met an American called Mike who asked if he could ‘hang’ with us. We obliged but quickly realised hew was going be really annoying after he relayed numerous stories that were clearly embellished. At the bottom of the mountain he said he’d been to Seoul once, half way up it was a couple of times and by the time we reached the top, 20 minutes later, he’d been to Seoul three or four times!

At the cable car station the views were already impressive and we stopped to take some pictures. It was clear that Mike didn’t want to wait around for us and intended to take a hardcore route to the top so we ceased the opportunity to get rid of him saying we were going to take the easy trail.

As we made our assent up the mountain we came to a temple located about a 20 minute walk from the cable car station.

The temple, called Takaosan Yaku-ou-in Temple, is said to have been founded by the Buddhist saint Gyoki in 744 upon the orders of Emperor Shomu. The temple was built to show reverence to the Buddha of healing, Yakushi Nyoria.

According to the brochure I picked up, people have been coming to the temple for centuries to show reverence to nature. It is claimed that people who show reverence here will have good luck and avoid serious adversity.

The temple area was full of beautiful buildings. Outside one of these buildings you could pay to write on a pebble. Not being able to read Japanese we didn’t know what others had written but guessed it was probably prayers or wishes. Kat decided to add our stamp to the collection writing on a pebble ‘Kat, Emily and Jenna was here 2006’! I’d imagine a little different to what the Japanese had written!

After looking around the temple we continued our hike to the top of the mountain. The guide map showed a bridge that looked pretty impressive and we headed off on a, not so easy, trail in search of the bridge. However after a tiresome trek, picking our way over precariously place tree routes on narrow paths with a sheer drop on one side, we reached the bridge to find it was rather uninspiring.

Overcoming our disappointment of the bridge we continued our trek to the top only to discover the map certainly wasn’t to scale. The large distance on the map to the temple took about 20 minutes, yet the short distance from the bridge to the top was taking forever and the hills just kept coming!

When we eventually reached the top we were exhausted and made sure we found the easy route back to the cable car station. But not before taking some time to appreciate the view looking down over the expanse of Tokyo in the distance.

Whilst writing this post I cam across this website which has some rather more picturesque images of Takaosan – it even make the bridge look impressive! We visited during the winter, which is not the ideal time to go as the trees are bear and there is not much colour around.

* Posted by j150vsc on 19/01/2007.