On the third day, we hiked

Normal weekends here consist of going to the bar and/or going to karaoke, but on Monday (three-day weekend) I mixed things up a bit by going for a hike.

Kentaro, who owns the bar we frequent, and Ben-chan, another regular customer who is a hair-dresser/mountain guide, and I headed for Mt. Asama, Ise's highest point at roughly 1,800 feet above sea level. (There's another, much taller Mt. Asama between Nagano and Gunma prefectures; the kanji characters for the two mountains are different.)

While this is obviously not a towering mountain like Fuji or Hood, it makes for a good hike. Since it had been quite a while since I'd done anything like this, I was quite tired on the way up and I'm a little soar today. It makes me wonder how I would have fared at Mt. Fuiji had those plans not faded (we're hoping to try Fuji next summer ... perhaps I should go for some more regional hikes to get in condition).

But the slight pain aside, it felt good to be out doing something different. We set off just after 10 after Ben's boat of a car weaved through the tiny capillary-like streets of rural Japan neighborhoods.

While the summer humidity was in full force, the temperature was mild thanks to cloud cover, which would later dump heavy rain and leave us soaked but cool for the return trip.

The only wildlife we encountered were bees, which had us occasionally running up sections of the trail. A sign at the trailhead suggests that other possible sightings could have included wild boars, foxes, or a raccoon-like animal called a raccoon-dog, along with a host of other insects.

Instead of such animals, we saw a number of middle-aged to nearly-elderly climbers heading down. They had obviously started early in the morning and wisely avoided the coming rain. The three of us had been at the bar until about 2:30 that morning ... so 10 a.m. was already a stretch.

After about 90 minutes up the trail, the official path ends at a viewpoint. But at this point you reach a paved road connected to other area points of interest accessible by car. So we hiked up the road and later through the woods again for a while, eventually coming to a visitors center and view point at the actual summit of the mountain. Here we ate lunch, took a rest, changed shirts and then set off for the decent.

Overall, it was a nice return to hiking, something I've always included in my list of hobbies when asked here, but something that I hadn't actually done in an entire year. I'd like to find some more trails nearby before winter sets in.

Well, the chimes say it's lunch time, so I'll grab my sandwich and head to the international building for "English Lunch." I may come back to this post and add a photo or two from yesterday's hike.

No other news to report, except this ... typhoon Sinlaku is now a tropical storm. Having left Taiwan, it's turning toward Japan and will skirt the southern edge of the main archipelago in the coming days. Perhaps by late Thursday or Friday Mie's coast will see heavy winds, rain and thunderstorms, but I don't expect anything major.