Until the song Edelweiss blasted over the town's speaker system! The same one we heard echoing the 3:00 after school and 5:00 end of work day chimes across the mountains yesterday. Sheesh!
Well, I guess we were up, and breakfast was at 7, so we got ready.
Breakfast was very traditional with rice, miso, tamagoyaki, a sausage, a bacon slice, salad, tsukemono, mentaiko, and two small grilled fishes. And I went for it. I saw someone nearby eating the whole fish so, when in Rome-er Japan! I enjoyed it. A very dense taste of fish and smoke, a bite of rice mellowed it out and it was pretty tasty!
Today was our first tour with the amazing Y.E.S. Yakushima tour group. They are English speaking and will pick you up and drive you and guide you on tours around Yakushima. They even made reservations at the hotel were staying at for us and even made the hydrofoil Toppy reservations for us! They are the perfect choice for us since we don't have a rental car but still want to see a good amount of this island!
BIG ROCK
Today's tour started at 8:30 and was the Shiratani Unsuikyo tour with Masashi as our tour guide. We also had another person sign up (hooray! The more people the cheaper the tour!) who was David (dah-veed) from Italy who had also lived and worked in America for most of his life of three years :P I'll leave all opinions of David to Jeff. He was very much a chad bro who thought himself intellectual but had OPINIONS on everything. *steps down off soap box*. Masashi was a very funny guy who currently lives in Yakushima working for the tour company as well as a tea farm! He was born in Gunma and gets to visit Hokkaido, where his wife is from, to visit her family.
I saw the sign
And it opened up my eyes
Is saw the sign!
The drive up some of the mountain was twisty-windy and we saw some monkeys (no pictures, sorry) on our way up! A while after we started walking the trail, maybe about 10 minutes in, it got super duper tough and intense. Lemme see if I can find a video of this path...Here we go, THIS is a good one! At 4:33 you'll see how most of the trail was: all steep uphill and slippery rocks and tree roots! Oh lawdy, what did I get us into?! The website made this tour sound easy. 45 minutes to the summit of Taiko Iwa (you can see the breathtaking view in that previously posted video at 22:14) and "relatively easy to access". I am still shocked and impressed that both of us made it up AND DOWN this mountain trail without more than severely grindy/achy knees and ankles and what will probably be the stiffest, sorest leg muscles I have ever had in my life tomorrow!
"This tree is older than Jesus!"
But seriously, this forest was gorgeous. It was the inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki many times, most notably Princess Mononoke. There are so many different types of moss and HUGE sugi cedar trees, one being over 1,000 years old and more waterfalls than you can shake a moss-covered stick at! [Jeff Edit: Here's a short video of one that I took.] Unfortunately, this is not a hike where you can walk and marvel at the scenes around you since you have to concentrate on stepping from rock to rock and try not to twist your ankle or fall down the side of the mountain. Breaks were few and far between and spent huffing and puffing while gazing at the beauty through foggy glasses. (Okay, quick rant here: You know what really grinds my gears? As the person who is out of shape and often at the back of a hiking group, when you stop for that last person to catch up DO NOT CONTINUE HIKING AS SOON AS I FUCKING GET THERE. YOU JUST GOT A QUICK BREATHER WHILE I PUFFED MY WAY TO JOIN YOU! I GET TO TAKE A LITTLE BREAK TOO, DAMMIT!)
I complain too much here for an experience that will stick with me forever, though. Our guide Masashi was terrific, and the feeling of breaking through the tree line to find myself on a large boulder that just ended in mountain scenery was a very powerful feeling indeed. This was a view that I worked hard for. I have no idea how my body managed to survive that hike but dammit, she came through for me and allowed me to experience this incredible view of Yakushima from atop a friggin mountain! Go me!
And Jeff, too, of course! He stuck with me and made sure that when the others pulled ahead he was there to lend a hand and we encouraged each other to continue. He didn't even get the reward of seeing the view as he is scared of heights (this view would have done him in)! This man is a champ and amazing and so wonderful to go along on this hike with me <3 I love him very much for it!
The way down was quicker, but harder on my knees. Some of the steps down were more than half my height and I just kept thinking that one misstep on a slimy, round rock would twist my ankle and ruin the rest of this vacation. With that threat in mind and also the promise of the island's best matcha ice cream when we were finished, we carefully made it back down the mountain the way we came. The entire hike took about 6 hours! Needless to say, I'm a little bit tired! LOL! But it is very rewarding knowing that Jeff and I both were able to take on this trail (that I'm seeing listed as "for experienced hikers and mountain climbers with good athletic ability" on some other websites) and see some amazing sights that can only be seen here in Yakushima!
And the matcha ice cream at Hachimanjyu Tea Garden was a very delicious reward too! :P
Needless to say, I got my stinky, sweaty butt into the shower immediately after getting back to our hotel. Jeff got us Mos Burger for dinner before they could close at 6 on us again, and we enjoyed food from one of the only fast food restaurant chains on this island!
We did a bit of laundry (it was either laundry or setting fire to my sweaty clothes and undergarments. It was a safety hazard to leave those garments out in the open for more than 2 hours!) and I went to the hot spring bath next door since it was the women's turn today. I made sure no one else was in there, taking the advice of the lady at the front desk who said it would be best to wait until no one was in there for me to soak my naked, tattooed body. It wasn't very hot (the temperature duck said it was only 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees F)) so I soaked a bit but returned to the room about 10 minutes later.
Laundry is now dry and it's time for me to hand this blog entry over to Jeff who will hopefully add in things I didn't remember and contribute his valuable and humorous insights!
I would go over how weary I am, and how... interesting it was to hike with someone who made no sense to me. Who's heard of an Italian Libertarian, ffs? These kids today, I swear. He had strong opinions on everything, and I say that as a person with strong opinions about a lot of things. The trouble was, all of his opinions were typical Alpha Male / Libertarian Rich Guy / Strong Conservative Man talking points that all sounded regurgitated from some podcast where a dude who looks like they failed out of an MBA tells you why your life is meaningless. He was nice enough, and we chatted about books a bit, but his opinions on those were a bit... I dunno. Boring and predictable. "The new Lord of the Rings TV show was too Woke.". Remember, kids, if someone says something is Woke as a term of derision, you probably can't trust their opinions on a lot of things. 2/5 stars, would tolerate again, but only due to the discount.
About half of our hike was me looking at the ground. Partially because, as Angie mentioned, it was slippery rocks and roots as far as the eye can see - which is how I ruined my knee in the first place back in Scouts - and partially because every 30m or so, there was another sheer drop off and my vertigo would play merry havoc with my balance. Good times.
The bentos provided on the hike were aggressively fine. I did supplement mine with some Calorie Mate, the closest thing humans have ever invented to Bachelor Chow. It's a wonderful, perfect, very useful foodstuff. 400 calories per box and something like half your daily expected minerals and vitamins. Love 'em. Too bad they're generally rather expensive in the US or I'd eat them every day for breakfast.
Mmm, jelly donut
I definitely have White Woman Visiting Ireland In Her 20s syndrome going on everywhere we visit, though. A lot of invasive thoughts like "Should I move here?!" and "Oh, this would be such a calm and cool and rad place to live.". It's a problem I have everywhere I go, which probably should tell me something about how I feel about Ohio, but it's what it's.
That's all I've got for tonight. Y'all be good.
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