Buns o Steel part 1-A. Rocco-san mountain

hello there.
so me and shiv have taken to a new fun hobby here in japan. yes you guessed it. climbing mountains. Well it was bound to happen. Japan basically is one big volcanic rock pointing out of the pacific..

So last week, me and shiv got up really ealry (on our day off), got our packs on, packed some salad, prunes, Ghana chocolate and kimchi and headed off to climb Rocco-san. The japanese often like to attach the word san (friend) to people, places and things that are fun and nice...hence Mt Rocco.

so we took the train to kobe, then another train (back towards Osaka) that took us to the foot of Rocco Mt. The main station sort of looked like a turn of the century german train station/disney land station. I liked it . we asked for directions, and the conductor lady said it would be an hour hike up to the top. Our plan was to hike up to the 1st platform, then from there take the gondola to the peak. But alas, they were fixing the gondola so we couldn't use it.

Our hike up was really fun... at first. then it got mad crazy steep. it was hilarious, we were at such an incline we had to stop every 5 or so steps to take a breather. The great thing about hiking a beast like rocco mt, is that older super fit japanese folks walk up rocco Mt like it was a sunday stroll.

Altogether it was a blast, i pretended that i was leading a big troop of expeditioners and shiv was one of the travelers and we did army-like sing songs through the bush. At one point the trail got really tiny and shiv had to take the lead and plow through the trees (such a man). Many times through out the expidition i though a wild boar would jum out and attack me, or that we would get lost and run out of food, or maybe a polar bear would attack us. I even thought i saw balck smoke at one point. Man.. i can't wait till LOst comes back on.

But we made it to the check point and all was great, there was a nice hot vending machine coffee waiting for us at the top.
Some interesting things we have notices about hiking japanese *mountains*
1) there are often vending machines full of most anything that can fit in a vending machine at the top of your climb
2) there are power lines and lots of electricity towers on the mountans, so you have to hike around them
3) The climb often starts out nicely, then gets steep, and steeper.

The climb was awesome. it was such a treat to breathe fresh non-downtown-osaka air. And as always the company was very enjoyable.
the pics are of our climb up rocco, the station, and the vending machine!