Saturday Hike in Hakkoda Mountains

It's Thursday here and I'm finally getting my last post from the weekend done. I'm feeling a little off schedule. But next Monday I am going to get right back on track with a post about the Takko Beef and Garlic Festival. Hopefully we don't get rained out because the fog has started rolling in again. We had such a nice sunny reprieve.

We set out early Saturday morning. Ian and I were almost late for the vans. Which would have been sad because we would have been out 2000 yen - about 25 bucks. It was about an hour out to the mountains. We got to see black steers grazing a very rare site in Japan. There were a lot of trees so you really couldn't see much by way of scenery on the way up to the mountain. We stopped at an onsen that looked a bit like a Swiss chalet. There was a fountain there that you could fill your bottle up with fresh mountain water. The first half an hour was like climbing the side of a mountain, literally. You were like taking huge steps almost vertically. Everybody was going single file and I was trying my hardest to stay as close to the person in front of me as I could. You should have seen we weeze. Ian of course was up front with the much fitter dudes. I would just like to point out that I was one of three wives on this trip - and one of four women. I told the guide when we got to the top of that part that I might need to reconsider the rest and go home. But luckily after that first half an hour of craziness everything was much easier. Though I would say the whole hike was probably moderate to advanced. In other words, tough for the gals that don't do PT three times a week. But I made it despite the weezing!

It's kind of difficult to really describe the hike without having a map to show you but here is a brief synopsis. It was 4 hours long. We went up between two mountains, then up to the top of the smaller of the two. Along the top where there was a huge crater because it used to be a volcano. Then we went from the top of that mountain down a little bit and then back up to the top of another smaller mountain. This one only had half a crater because the other half (side of mountain really) slid down into the valley. We hiked along the top of that and then down into the marsh lands again to the gondola, which we took down to the onsen.  The next few paragraphs will be little tid bits about interesting things we learned on the hike.

When we got to the top of one of the mountains there was this huge pile of stones. The guide didn't really give a good reason for there to be a pile of stones in the center of a hiking trail except that maybe they were the same as cairns in Ireland or something. I came across a passage in my 30 year old guidebook about another mountain in the area that is considered the gates of hell (I'm not kidding - more to come of this one). In the book it says that after people die their spirits have to pile stones until they have a pile high enough that they can go to paradise. There are also demons that thwart them by knocking the piles down. So living people will help them by picking up stones and piling them. In this picture there is a little shrine on the pile but at the pile on top of the mountain with the crater there wasn't a shrine.

Another interesting bit of history about these mountains was the accidental death of some Japanese soldiers. In 1902 a group of 210 Japanese soldiers wanted to train to brave the Siberian winters and what better place to do it than the bitter winters of the Hakkoda mountains. It was almost freezing up there, in the middle of the day, in September. I don't even know what these guys were thinking. The soldiers got caught in a freak blizzard on the first day they were up there. By the second day 70 men had either died or disappeared into the blowing snow. On the third day only 30 men were still alive. The very heroic Corporal Goto decided that he was going to go out alone into the blizzard to try and find help. The next day rescuers found him frozen standing up near the village of Tashirotai. Standing up! That's determination. Only Corporal Goto and ten others made it through the ordeal but many limbs were lost. They call it the Hakkoda Death March.

Ian in front of the crater with his panda hat.

The gondola ride down the mountain could have been funner but I was very dehydrated, packed in there with like sardines (there was literally a woman pushing people into the already full gondola) and it was swinging gently. I was trying really hard to keep my lunch down. The onsen afterwards was lovely.

So if you are worried about being naked in front of women that you only met 4 hours ago the military is not for you. Non of us had ever been in an onsen and of course the guide and anyone that had been to one was male. That's the beauty of onsens, mandatory nakedness but segregation of the sexes. So we tried our best and I think we scared all the Japanese ladies away. They really didn't come back to the water till after we had left - sort of like scared birds - I don't really blame them. Obviously there are no pictures of any of this. We enter into like an antichamber were we take off all our muddy duds and put them in baskets. Then you open the glass doors and go into the actual onsens. It was a big room with shower fixtures all along the walls and the hot spring pools down at the end. What the Japanese ladies did was they first washed themselves with the shower heads while sitting on these blue plastic buckets that were stacked in the corner. We didn't understand this at first so we just showered standing up. Though they were short showers. There was pink stuff in a bottle and white stuff. We just lathered up with whatever. The shower it's self was worth it after the hike. Then after showering we got in the natural hot tub. And you just sit and chat and stew. There was also a tub of cold water if you want to shock yourself by going hot to cold. The wonderful thing is the water was just the right temperature, not too hot not too cold. When we were done we got out, showered, and got dressed in clean clothes to go to dinner.

I am going to admit it, I passed out in the van on our way to dinner. We had a really awesome dinner at the a hibachi grill place. We were sitting on tatami mats at low tables that have little grills int he centers of them. You order huge plates of meat - Japanese Beef! We got a variety plate with beef, chicken, pork, and some sort of chewy organ meat - I'm putting my money on tongue. All of it was marinated beautifully and was just wonderful. We didn't really bring enough money with us to get the full course meals that other people got but there was ice cream for desert, and interesting noodle and rice dishes for sides. It's surprising how used you get to having rice with every meal. I was a little sad that we didn't get a side of rice. Oh well. It was a fantastic meal and there were tons of wonderful conversation. I was really tired by the end of the meal and I think I even slept of the way back to Misawa. A full day of adventure indeed! Here's the Album Hiking the Hakkoda Mountains

New Furniture, The Beach, and Earthquakes

This is the third day of rain but I think it is going to let up a little today. Luckily, we had a few hours of reprieve while we visited Shipwreck beach on Saturday. I wanted to gather more seaglass for art and presents. The Davises had never been out to the beach so we packed a picnic lunch and some buckets for glass and headed out. It was a good haul. I decided to collect crab shells (lots of dead crabs) and more rocks this time. I now have a huge jar of sea glass...yes mom, some of it is gonna make it your way. So shipwreck beach doesn't have any shipwrecks and it isn't even on the Pacific. It's on the edge of Mutsu Bay - that big bay at the top of Honshu island. According to my 30 year old guide book to nothern Japan (literally the only resource in the library that comes close to mentioning Misawa) The bay is best know for it's sea scallop farming which completely turned around the economy of the region. The area is also know for it's wintering of Siberian Swans. Apparently, the winter is mild and they like it better than Siberia. In late November they migrate down in a huge noisy flock. There is a bird viewing sanctuary near the beach so I smell another trip idea a brewing.

We stopped at a famous onsen on the way back from the beach. It had a cute little sign and was called Rocca Pocca. We didn't actually get in the hot spring waters, we still don't know the procedures. After we had locked our shoes away, I went to talk with the guy at the desk. He didn't speak English and I was a little miss understood by the lady that did so we didn't end up staying. So many excuse mes later we got our shoes back on and vowed to try it another trip. It is supposed to be the deepest onsen in Japan - according to the guide book. There was some shopping and food inside the onsen. As we were done putting on our shoes the lady confirmed my suspicion that it was free to walk around and shop but that we needed to pay to enter the hot springs. I also asked her about what looked like a brewery on the other end of the parking lot. It turned out to be a Shochu distillery which also had a tour that was kind of expensive. Shochu is like a miracle Korean alcohol that it nearly tasteless and messes you up hard core. Needless to say it's a party necessity out here and one of those products that would make a fortune in the states that isn't sold there for some reason. People buy huge cases of it and try to PCS with it. The next time we go out to the beach and feeling more adventurous we are going to have to take the tour and dip in the onsen.

 Sunday was more subdued. We ended up buying a dining room table that seats 6, a must in our house. It's a really beautiful dark finish. The only thing is that I will need to reupholster the chairs because they are stained. The surprising thing is that it only took one station wagon load to get it here. We had also bought and entire bedroom set complete with a bed frame, dresser, vanity with mirror, and two side tables. We are getting pretty set of furniture now. Sunday was spent taking down the loaner furniture and then stashing things in the studio until we can get it given back. We still don't have our things yet, hopefully we'll find out what's going on some time this week or next.

Another rather interesting even that was spread out through out the weekend was a bunch of earthquakes. We had 9 on Saturday by the count on the internet. I only really felt three of them. One in particular hit at 4am Saturday morning. I was sleeping on the couch because I was having a hard time sleeping that night. It literally felt like Ian was shaking the couch to get me to wake up. It took me a bit to open my eyes to see that the whole house was shaking and all the furniture was moving around. It was a pretty violent shake that lasted a good 5 minutes. The internet said that it was a 7 something. It hit and then subsided for like two minutes and then a second earthquake hit, not nearly as powerful as the first. I didn't want to get off the couch because I wasn't sure that I would be able to stand. Ian came out of the bedroom after the second quake. We decided to just go back to bed since there were no sirens. We had gotten home from a party earlier that evening. The cap from the grenadine bottle wasn't screwed on right. It must have been knocked over during the quake. When I woke up the next morning to do dog chores I thought some one had died because it looked just like a pool of blood. That's how I spend the first hour of my morning scrubbing grenadine out of the carpet.
 Here's the link to the rest of the pictures of furniture and beach fun. New Furniture, the Beach, and Earthquakes

Misawa Shrine and Komaki Onsen

Ian has been doing FTAC (orientation for your first base) so I get the car during the day. Which means that I grab my equally adventurous gal pal and we start exploring Misawa. The one thing that I've been meaning to see in Misawa is this Shrine tucked back in  these tall woods in the middle of town. We actually found it but it seemed to be closed. But we did walk around the grounds, ring the bells, and donate for our payers.

Shinto is a very interesting religion because it has hundreds of thousand of Kami (gods) that come in all shapes and sizes, some nice and some mean. Pretty much everything has a god related to it. Religion is a little funny in Japan because Buddhism and Shinto kind of blend together. The Buddhist spiritual figures become Kami. From what I've read, Japanese people sort of believe that Buddhism has to do with the afterlife and Shito is more about your life in the hear and now so that the two religions can be blended without actually contradicting each other. I describe the process of ringing the bells and praying at the Shinto shrine in one of my past blog posts.
A this shrine we kind of made things up because there were no instructions in English and nobody to copy. But we paid out yen and got a piece of paper that we unfolded and refolded. There were characters on it that we couldn't read. I'm assuming that they are a prayer to the kami of this particular shrine. Then we tied it to the string with the other prayers.

After the shrine, we decided to go out and get lost some more. We started going towards Towada (another town a ways away) but then decided to turn back and check out the Misawa train station. It's important to know these things. I saw a sign in really large pretty black caligraphy so I randomly turned and low and behold we found the onsen (bath house/hotel/resort) where I learned to do sakiori weaving. Unfortunately all the shops were closed. But we had a lot of fun walking around all the trails and taking in the beauty of the grounds. They just happened to have two tiny little horses outside the main lobby so we had to pet them.

Yes, that is indeed a bamboo fence. It was really fun to just wander around and look at things - very peaceful and relaxing. I am going to try the onsen some day - as soon as I can get a friend to come with me...I'm too scared to be naked in front of a bunch of naked Japanese women all by myself. I guess Komaki Onsen is a very famous resort the people come too from all over Japan. There's a hotel and a whole bunch of buildings we didn't know how to classify. I think I'll want to soak in a hot tub more in the winter anyways so it might be a while before I try it out.
On the way back from the onsen we got lost. Like really lost - like in the middle of suburbia Japan on one way roads in my huge station wagon. We were weaving and winding around in circles for a good ten minutes trying to find civilization again. Their houses are really squished together and none of the streets are named or straight. On top of that there was not a single flat piece of road, it was all really steep hills that I had to navigate on really skinny roads. It was terrifying. But soon we were back on the main drag going towards the base. Just keep following the water towers. P.S. Don't get off the main roads in Misawa, that causes heart attacks. 
Here is the link to the photo album. I've described all the pictures a little better so you get more of a sense of the trip. Misawa Shrine and Komaki Onsen