Today Szymon and Verena let Sean and I tag along on a hiking trip to Hiezan (or Mount Hie, if you like), the second tallest in the series of peaks surrounding Kyoto. I had been vaguely aware that there was such a thing as hiking in Japan; now my aching body knows it specifically. Szymon had declared it an easy hike–and perhaps it is, if one is closer to twenty years old than thirty, and not overweight and out of shape–so Sean and I showed up woefully under-prepared for the revelation that it would take about six hours to complete. By the time we realized that we’d need food and water, we were nowhere near a convenience store, so we had to improvise.
A series of trains took us to the base of the mountain, where a cable car waits to take passengers to the upper slopes every half hour. I pumped a few hundred yen into the vending machines at the station and holstered bottles of water and tea in three of my pants’ four pockets. I’d eaten half a sandwich before leaving the dorm, now I supplemented that with an ice cream cone–also from a vending machine. We rode the cable car up an alarming incline through thick forest until a wide hazy vista of Lake Biwa became visible. Then we followed the crowd down a wide paved path toward the biggest of Hiezan‘s temples, Enryakuji. The temple’s massive bell sounded deep amongst the pine trees, and the faint whine of some ancient music carried to us through the crisp spring air, providing an almost cinematic soundtrack to the scene.
We lingered at the temple just long enough to get directions to the trailhead, and then we were off. The path led us easily enough at first past smaller temples and shrines, but before long we had to earn our progress. The trail is generally wide and well maintained, but the elevation changes constantly. We met several other people on the way, and found that Japanese hikers are just as friendly as hikers anywhere, dropping their urban inhibitions when they don their floppy hats, tuck their pants cuffs into their socks, and pick up their metal hiking poles. (None of these attributes seems to be negotiable.) Every one of them gave us a hearty “konnichiwa” as we passed.
At around the halfway point we came upon an unlikely parking lot, far from anything and empty of cars, with restrooms at one end and vending machines at the other. We all bought ice cream and rested for a while before continuing. We ended up doing the six-hour hike in around four, finishing by descending rapidly along a mountain stream to the town of Ohara, where yet another temple has bred a supremely picturesque array of food and souvenir shops in tidy old wooden buildings lining the narrow road to the base of the mountain, where we caught a bus back into the city.
After our much-needed showers, Sean and I struck out for dinner, settling on an udon shop down Horikawa-dōri. I stuffed myself with curry udon and returned to the dorm with just enough energy to write a bit and sort through some photographs before falling asleep early in preparation for the big day ahead.