Peach Picking!

Just about an hour south of us is Nanbu Town, where you can go to local orchards or farms and pick seasonal fruit. We drove down there on Labor Day for some peach picking.

For 500 yen (about $5), you can pick and eat as much as you want while you're there. Then it's 100 yen per peach to take them home.

I left the really high ones for Chris.

This was the farmer who packed up our peaches for us. He told us the apple season started in 10 days... I'll have to go back...

We picked 20 peaches to take home. I figured I would have to make cobblers and pies and freeze some to get rid of them all, but by the time I got ingredients for a pie, the peaches were gone... They were so good, we ate them all within about a week and a half.

Hakkoda Hike

The mountains just west of our house have some great hiking trails, but we seem to have questionable luck in having a successful hike out there.

This was our hike in May. It was so much colder than we were expecting, and we hadn't received all our household goods yet so we didn't have the necessary warm clothes... Since it was so cloudy anyway, we ended up turning around and going back home.

About a month after the above snowshoe/hike, Chris returned with a friend and they too had to turn around before the summit because they ran out of time.

Shortly after that, in June, Chris returned by himself (I was in the States) and found that the weather was excellent and he was able to summit all three of the summits along the trail. But on the way back down he slipped and severely sprained his right ankle. He hopped out of the woods with a makeshift crutch in the dark (what should have taken him one hour took him five). He was on crutches for a week and still, four months later, can feel the after effects of the sprain which has healed very slowly.

The Friday of Labor Day weekend, we went back for another try. It was raining when we got to the trailhead, so we napped in the car with hopes of the weather passing. When the weather let up just a little bit we started hiking... but as you can tell from the picture, we couldn't see a thing. Another less than ideal hike in the Hakkodas...

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, we were back for yet another try. The clouds looked a little questionable, but we went for it anyway.

This is a trail map... there is a green trail marked in the center of the map that looks like a large, misshapen figure eight. We started where the red bubble with white kanji is pointing, and traveled counter clockwise around the outside of the figure eight.

The trail is a little overgrown in places...

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION!!

A lot of the trail winds through marshland, so they have boardwalks to keep you out of the swamp, and to preserve the alpine vegetation.

These hikers are crowded around a natural spring that has been built up and is clean enough to drink from without filtering. Great source of water, but it was only about an hour into the hike, so we didn't really need it.

This is on the way up to Mt. Odake... You can see that the right side of the mountain is covered in dense shrubbery and trees, but the left side is bare in comparison. This is because the left side of the mountain gets much more snow than the right side.

The views going up to Mt. Odake were great all the way until the very top... and it got pretty cloudy. But this was the highest point in our hike, so the rest of the time we were below the clouds.

Just off the peak of Odake, you can see that the clouds were just high enough to provide for some pretty great views.

Facing the next peak, Mt. Idodake. You can see the trail to the top, and then it winds along the crater rim.

Standing on the edge of the crater.

All along the crater rim, the trail was quite wide, and well defined. But this was the trail down the other side... a bit overgrown.

The branches were a little scratchy on my bare arms.

FINALLY! A beautiful hike, with beautiful weather, and beautiful views!

On top of Mt. Akakuradake, the final peak of the hike.

Huck will drink from Chris' camelback, but he prefers mud puddles.

The marshes looked so different from when we were there two days prior.

I'm not sure what this helicopter was doing. But it was fun to watch him fly back and forth over the valley.

This began the long descent to the car. No rain, no bad weather, no sprained ankles... finally a successful hike!

Osorezan

This beautiful scene is Osorezan... known in English as the "Mountain of Dread" or "Gateway to Hell". It's hard to describe the atmosphere. The English brochure that we picked up on site states, "People who live in the region have developed the belief that everyone will go to Osorezan after death... The sulfurous valley in the depth of this mountainous area becomes a land of salvation, where absolute peace and happiness are freely given..."

An article I found online, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fv20061222a1.html paints a far more grim picture. "There's no getting away from the dispiriting atmosphere that hangs over Osorezan. It is Sai no Kawara that gets perhaps the most visitor attention... It is to this grim realm that children who predecease their parents - and are thus unable to repay those parents for having giving birth to them - are condemned. As penance, they are obliged to build up stone cairns, only to have foul demons with an attitude problem come along and smash them apart - and, for good measure, torment the little souls with fond memories of the happiness they knew as living children. Sole protector of the children is the bodhisattva Jizo... driving the demons away."

The statues at the entrance to the area seem to point more towards a "Gateway to Hell" type of place and less like a "land of salvation".

This is, hands down, the creepiest statue I've ever seen.

Osorezan, according to the brochure we picked up, is one of the three holiest sites in all of Japan.

This is the temple just inside the entrance. Past the temple were walking paths that wound through the valley and out to the lake.

It is a beautiful, eerie, and sad place. The valley itself is very quiet, but as you walk along the paths you can hear steaming, hissing, sulfurous caldrons that bubble up from under the earth.

If you look closely, you can see the steam coming up from these vents. You could feel the heat from them as you walked by.

When the wind blows you can hear the whirring of pinwheels - offerings left by parents for their deceased children.

There are rock cairns everywhere, and sometimes tucked in among the rocks are small gifts or statues. I think this must be Jizo, believed to be the protector of the souls of deceased children.

The whole valley smells of sulfur, and there are a couple of small streams of sulfur water that cut through the valley.

Not much grows in the sulfuric environment, but the few trees that did exist had sandals tied in their branches. Mourning family members leave the sandals for Jizo, to protect his feet as he walks among the sharp rocks of Sai no Kawara.

More statues of Jizo, I believe.

Beautiful scene, until you realize that the pool in the front of the picture is a bubbling with sulfuric acid.

No matter how bizarre the beliefs about Osorezan might be, it still tends to be a very moving experience to go there. It's impossible to forget, as you walk around the tiny statues and pinwheels and food offerings, that there are very real people hurting in big ways over their departed loved ones.

Wild Horses of Cape Shiriya

Chris and I took a drive north to the Shimokita Penninsula last weekend.

This map was at a roadside stop along the way. There is a picture of a horse and a light house in the north eastern corner - this is Cape Shiriya, where the wild horses live.

The cape area is beautiful, and there's a large area that has been fenced off for the wild horses that roam around here.

"Wild" might be the wrong description for these animals. This colt was stubbornly napping behind this car. The driver didn't really know what to do because I think he was scared to try to move the horse. When the men got in the car to drive away (I'm sure they were thinking that the hum of their engine would rouse the colt from its nap), I went over and pushed it to its feet. It was like trying to push a big dog off of a really comfy couch.

I just love horses! And these were so gentle!

This little guy was my favorite. I loved his coloring.

After watching the horses for a little while, we continued on around the cape to check out the views.

Beautiful area.

It was such a clear day we could see all the way to Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. The tiny white boat on the horizon is a ferry for transportation between the islands.

After fully exploring the cape, we traveled west to Osorezan. I'll post about that later...:)