Hiking across Rokko to有馬温泉

It’s November now but following on from last post, if anyone is interested, for Halloween some of the Ryuugakusei (study abroad students) dressed up as the cartoon characters of my childhood:

can you name them gabrielle? :)

It was only the ryuugakusei that dressed up so the konan students thought it was pretty awesome.

Last week we met up with other Leeds Students from various other uni’s in the Kansai area, which felt like I was getting a bit of home back. We didn’t do anything special but seeing everyone felt great, and the resturant ‘Joyfull’ (spelt like that) we ate at for breakfast had great hot chocolate and western food at good prices. Very highly recommended to anyone passing by such a place, and apparently it’s a chain, open 24hrs.

And this weekend was probably one of the best weekends I’ve spent in Japan so far J

This Friday just gone I went out kareoking with Caroline’s host family for her 20^th birthday, and even though I’m underage in this country they were kind enough to pay for my drinks anyway, with lots of free food, and later we stayed up eating cake till late and chatting and planning our winter break travels across japan!

On Saturday I mostly slept, and yesterday I spent all day outside. My knees are still moaning over it but it was very much well worth it.

On Sunday 10 of us met at Okamoto station at 10am and hiked to the top of Mt. Rokko, and it was so epic I want to document the journey here.



from top to left to right of the pyramid: alister (canada) david (hawaii) me (uk) lindsey, amy and larry (usa) blythe (taiwan) suyun (china) and caroline (usa) - us before the climb



 It was a hot day, un-expectantly hotter than the preceding days and I probably perspired every toxic substance in my body by the time we reached Arima over 5 hours later. On the way we had lunch at a peak looking over the city with lots of Japanese families,

We also crossed paths with a group of merry drunken middle-aged Japanese men enjoying some Udon up the hills, who tried to guess the groups nationalities, which they truly had no hope of getting right as we were a mix of American, French, Hawaiian, Taiwanese, Canadian, Chinese and myself. They also gave us a bowl of kimchi udon ~ so funny

We got to enjoy in our first stretch of green since we’d come to Japan, because seriously, there are no plains of grass here, and the only one we found was this here golf course!

Suyun had the hardest time out of us lot, i think ~

Caroline was so happy she took of her shoes to feel the grass barefoot and didn’t put them back on again during the hike. She actually walked like this through the mud and twigs and rocks - no joke. 

This girl is crazy fun to be with

We reached a point where an old man was playing a tune from my favourate Japanese movie Memories of Matsuko, and it was there that we picked up a Japanese student called Takuma hiking alone, who promptly became our native speaker guide. We ended up dragging him along with us all day, even to the onsen, and he helped up find our buses home and all without knowing any English. What a guy, to tag along with a bunch of foreigners like that. He had bright blue hiking shoes too, you can see him in some of the photos on here, he’s the only Japanese guy of us lot.

And here's some random shots from the hike:

beware wild inoshishi

wild cats ~

So we trekked to the top at 930m (just 100m less than Mt. Snowdon!), refilled our water bottles and went off to find some food in Arima.

When we arrived at Arima we were greeted by a performing monkey which I didn’t particularily get any joy out of watching, but which was insanely cute all the same:

we got some delicious food on sticks and some of them bought some famous and expensive kobe beef and beer ~

and, starting to feel the cold at this point as it was around 6pm, we found an Onsen for 650yen and I had the most lush bath I’ve ever had. I would easily frequent those things if I had time and money…

Arima is famous for its multiple hot springs, but the one we went into was called 金の湯 (kanji reads Kinnoyu, ‘hot water of gold’), because of the golden water filled with healing nutrients. The water was hot enough the scald and yet women were letting their kids freely bathe in them!

And after such a long hike, feeling achy and grubby and fed and excited to be entering my first Japanese hot spring, scrubbing my body with the provided soap and sinking into that scalding hot bathe is definitely absolutely a major highlight of my stay in Japan so far.

 It was heavenly, completely worth the gruelling hike in that heat.  And I’ve never in my life had a cold shower by choice, but I found myself hopping in and out of that kettle temperature bath and freezing ice shower just to stop myself from getting dizzy. And best of all – that glorious bath is good for you!

 Just look how at peace with the world we are:

I know that hiking isn’t for everyone, but neither was it for some members of our group. We spent the first leg of the climb trying to convince a member to go back because she was moaning and struggling from the get go but she still loved it, because hiking up the hills of japan is the only way to see the mountain beauty, which makes up 73% of the country. And only the best kind of people go hiking, people like the group of merry Japanese men and Takuma, and the people I climbed with.

Even going it alone is worth it. I felt so pure climbing out of the Onsen, not only having walked the crap out of my system but to have cleansed it away too. Bliss.   -_-

This is the very reason I didn’t want to go to just another city like Tokyo.  :D

We went up there at the best time because the leaves we just changing with autumn. We are so lucky to have such easy access to these hills, it would have been tragic to have missed out on a trek like the one we did.

This week we Ryuugakusei are spending the night in Mie Prefecture to visit a Ninja museum, and tomorrow I’m going to collect my re-entry visa for visiting Korea in February.

Life is incredible. Recently a girl I knew from King Eds suddenly passed away, she was my best friend’s close friend, same age as me, pretty and smart and very kind, and it’s really put things into perspective. Not being able to just fly back home to comfort my friend felt horrible, and I knew this before but even more so now - I’m going to make the most of being here, healthy and free to do what I like. My host mum says the best thing to do in winter in japan is go snowboarding in Hokkaido…

I hate cold weather, but y’know, aha, well. We’ll see. ^^

*n/b, i didn't have my camera for this so photos are curtesy of larry and will and their amazign cameras.
*also, english readers should note that the back handed peace sign is not swearing in any other country other than our own - it's not meant to cause any offence at all. it still puts me off to see it though -_-