Have you been wondering what I did during this year’s Golden Week? Going out of your mind imagining all the amazing things I probably got up to? Well the wait is over! It must be good if it’s taken me this long to get something together, eh?
Well, we went to two places – Yokohama and Mt. Nokogiriyama. I have no photos of Yokohama, so you can imagine the amazing time we had. No, that’s not fair, we did have a good time eating our way about and sitting in the park. I don’t think I would rush back though.
I digress, let’s get back to Mt. Nokogiriyama and all it’s splendour. It took quite a while to get to, roughly 2 and a half hours by train. When we got there we were planning on getting to the top via the ropeway and looking about, then coming down for pizza. The plan didn’t work out because when we got to the ropeway, it was closed due to strong winds. We thought, maybe we can walk up but first, let’s get food. So we got a map of the walking route and then went to find pizza.
We trotted to Pizza Gonzo which isn’t hard to find, but for some reason, we couldn’t find it at first (spoiler: this was to foreshadow our ascent up the mountain). We seemed to just be looking on one side of the road, which was the opposite to the one it was on (left, if you’re coming from the station). Now, it wasn’t cheap, but these places never are in Japan – think hipster vibe. This prompted my tighty husband to get the cheapest pizza, the marinara, I went for the second cheapest, the margherita. We split them. Good but those prices! (I’ve forgotten but definitely over ¥2,000 for both.)
After eating our extravagant pizza (and there are other eateries btw, just with me being the pain vegetarian that I am, you know!) we set off on our walk. There are a couple of ways to get up there. You come to a fork in the road, one with steep stairs and one with a path. We went for the stairs at first, but I’m a bit scared of heights and there was nothing to hold on to, so I panicked and like a baby, lashed out. I was shaking when I got to the bottom again, so then we went for the path. This was much better – at first!
That doesn’t look bad and maybe it’s not to people who do this sort of thing regularly but dear me, it was terrifying! It was so narrow in places. Then we reached a big rock wall and another split in the path.
We went left but we should have gone right. We spent the next couple of hours climbing and geting nowhere. We did get to a clearing with a bench and this view which was sort of worth it, but possibly not really.
Then we decided to carry on going higher, when we looked up, we could see the bit that people walk out on, taunting us, we must be close! Alas, no we weren’t. God knows where we would have ended up if we’d have carried on. All we could see around us were trees.
We returned back to the earlier wall and looked at the map – too little too late and there, plain for all to see, we had gone left when we should have gone right. By this time, it was close to 5pm and we just couldn’t be arsed anymore, so started the descent down which seemed nothing like the scary path up. So, I’d love to show you the top, but unfortunately I can’t. You’ll have to have a look here if you’re curious. There’s definitely a life lesson in all of this somewhere. Advice – go on a very still day and get the ropeway. Lesson learned.
Did you manage to get to the top?
Emily