Hiking

Hiking Wed 4/25/2007 6:18 AM

Nanajikan Suzarandai kara Kobe made abanai haikingu shita - OR - The 7 hour dangerous hike from Suzarandai to Kobe.

So the weather in Kobe and of course the surrounding area has become rather warm, sunny, and nice recently, although it does rain occasionally from out of nowhere or sometimes it gets really cold at nights still, but thats another story. Because of the beautiful weather and the timeframe (it being cherry tree season still), my roomate and I decided to go for a hike, well now since I'm getting caught up on my e-mails, 2 weeks ago. We had no firm destination in mind, no plan of what exactly to do, or any idea what trails to take or where to find trails. We just knew one thing, North Kobe is the mountains, you can catch a train to there, and potentially you can walk home--I guess we knew three things. We woke up early, at noon.
Of course before a hike of this incredible planning we had to start with a good breakfast, so we went to a restaurant whose name I don't know, but we refer to it as soup and sanwich. Its got a pretty good soup and sanwich special as you might expect, which also happens to come with a salad. This would be our primary fuel until dinner, so we obviously went somewhere with a lot of food, plus it is convieniently located next to a subway line that would take us into North Kobe. So we caught the train towards Arima Hot Springs (which are controversially and arguably the first hot springs in Japan), but we didn't want to go all the way there as we are planning a hike to there in the future, a hike which is supposed to take 6 to 8 hours, the benefit being you can soak in a hot spring and then catch the train or the bus home. We just looked out the window and when we decided that their was enough wilderness between us and Kobe we got off the train.
We happened to be inSuzarandai, a place I only know by name because there is a NOVA there, we didn't see it, but it was probably close to the station (because NOVA's advertisement in Japan is "close to the station" and almost wherever you go, when you leave the train station, you can find a NOVA, its both sad and funny). Being the master planners that we are, we heading in the general direction of Kobe, specifically our house, and were maybe off by no more than 40 degrees.
Of course on the way we decided that we should get some kind of supplies, so we stopped at the only mom n pop conbini (convienence store, this should be picked up in the US, but of course the V should stay the same). Here we procured four bananas (the only carriable and readily eatable food besides chips), 2 bottles of Asahi, and a giant bottle of Chinese medicine alcohol (this tastes horrible, yet somehow strangely good and it may or may not be good for you). The Asahi was for right away of course, so we popped the tops and continued in the general direction of our house (by the way it's awesome that you can drink almost anywhere in Japan). Finally we made it back towards the train tracks (like I said the general direction of our house, which included meandering) and we neared the woods. Here we just tried to say as close to the woods as we possible could until we finally wandered behind a disgusting smelly apartment building. Here there was a small path leading into the woods. Unfortunately this path ended almost at the exact moment it started, but we could hear a stream and the woods were still thin, so we slid/ran down the hill (let me just point out here that the woods in Japan have very steep hills, especially it seems leading to the water, generally mountains or hills are both plentiful and steep in the countryside). At the bottom was a place that was obviously the Japanese highschool student party spot, but unlike the US it was full of juice bottles (which in Japan includes almost any kind of drink: soda, juice, tea, etc.) and candy wrappers. Not quite like the American highschool party spot, even though you can buy full bottles of whiskey from choice vending machines in your neighborhood in Japan. We decided that this river, which is really more like a creek now that I think about it, probably led to Kobe as most streams, creeks, and rivers lead to the ocean or sea, and Kobe was in between here and the sea, so follow the creek we did. Unfortunately about 100 meters down the creek it passed under the train tracks, and here, as is done with most rivers in Japan, the creek was completely cemented, thus the rocks and edge that we were previously using to stay along the creek were completely annihilated by overbuilding, although maybe the creek was built like this to keep the train line from deteriorating, I don't know. Anyway, we had to select another route and even though this was not far down the creek, the woods were thick here, especially because we were in a bamboo area, so it was untraversable. Fortunately, the previously mentioned highschool partiers or some other person had cut a path through the bamboo, which mysteriously led to the train tracks. After waiting some time and watching trains pass in both directions we jumped across the train tracks and found where the path continued. Here we walked along the wall, once again following the creek for about 100 meters (this is my favorite measurement by the way). Then we were able to jump back down into the creek and walk along the rocks again. After walking about 100 meters we ran into a couple of 10-12 year old Japanese kids, who had the look of extreme shock on their faces, so we said Konnichi wa (good day) , to which they replied immediately in the eager Japanese school kid voice, then they asked Nani shiteru? (what are you doing?) and we said hiking this way and left them in a chorus of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEes. We actually hiked down this creek quite a ways before we ran into an impediment. Hopping across the rocks was going so smoothly, although we did see a strange looking giant bug that we thought might be the dreaded Japanese hornet, which it wasn't, but the mystery of what exactly that bug was is still unsolved.
Though the real impediment was the creek we were following went through a tunnel, fortunately we were able to climb on top of the tunnel and on the other side the creek opened up into a beatiful lake.
If this wasn't the perfect time to eat a banana and drink Chinese Medicine Alcohol, I don't know what is. This is also one of the first times on the hike that we paused to really survey the scenery. We started in thick bamboo and made our way out to more a deciduous forest, which had large clumps of pink and white, which were giant old wild cherry trees, must less spectactular looking than the trimmed cherry trees of Kyoto and elsewhere in Japan that I've seen, but beatiful in contrast and especially because they were wild tangled webs of white and pink dotting the otherwise completely green hillside. The path we followed up until now had been spectled with contrast, on one side was complete and utter wildlife, while periodically we came upon spurts of moderness, of course the railroad tracks followed this creek, so from time to time we could see wires peaking through the trees or buildup in the creek of squares for diverting water that made the bottom of the river look like an MC Escher, blending from rocks to perfect squares to rocks again. Even the rumble of the train passing through the mountain helped mix that modern and primitive feel. From the lake we had no way to cross, so we were forced to walk along the road, but after I don't know about 100 meters we came across an old service trail. What a way to mix the modern and primitive. This was the most basic trail I've ever seen, leading to some elecric box at the top of the mountain. It was marked by a combination of colored ropes tied around trees and arrows painted on rocks and trees. A majority of the trail basically climbed an old stream and waterfall, so some places ropes tied to the trees and anchored to the ground marked the path and made it possible to traverse the steep rock. This trail was awesome. It was not only fun to climb, but it wove through a variety of trees including some Japanese style pine trees, plum trees, cherry trees and others. Some points the colors in my field of vision just from trees was green, pink, yellow, white, and purple. The views were nice during such a vigorous climb, because they gave us many reasons to stop and of course we were able to get a birdseye view of the lake where we rested earlier. Finally we reached the top of the mountain and there was a V in the trail, one leading down towards home and one leading up and away from home, so of course we chose the trail down, but not before admiring Kobe from a distance and noting that we were only one mountain away from the Northern parts of Kobe. It was here that we finished off our Chinese Alcohol Medicine and of course ate the remaining bananas as we assumed we would need the energy. And we were more correct than we could have imagined. By this point, it was not late necessarily, but it was getting late enough that we were starting to worry about the amount of sun we had, so when our path started cuving away from Kobe, we decided, a decision we shortly thought was not quite so wise, to venture off trail. We set course for a giant wild cherry tree, which was a direct line down the mountain and would be a direct line over the next mountain, that is if direct lines were possible in the wooded mountains, which unfortuately they are not. At first it was easygoing, it always is, spaced out trees and steep downhills. Also there were steel cables to prevent rockslides about every 15 to 20 feet (I know not 100 meters this time and not even metric). We were able to use these to stop ourselves and gain some much needed control as we were basically sliding down the mountain.
Unfortunately this fun was shortlived, because once we neared the water, the woods thickened with reeds and a type of plant we, I believe, aptly named trip vines. Now there were seams in the slope that allowed us to traverse across here and with trip vines and masses of reeds we didn't want to slide down anymore, so we basically held ourselves up by stomping down masses of reeds (the ground was not very stable here either). When we finally reached the cherry tree the reeds were wearing thin, by that, I mean we were getting sick of them, because they were thickening. They thickened to the point that we had to crawl maybe half a kilometer. At this point we finally decided that it would be better to head up the hill, because as the previous mountain had taught us there were less reeds above and there was also more space. Now finding a way and making our way up was a little more tricky, but we had managed to crawl quite aways through the reeds, we could manage a little more. When the reeds finally thinned, we found a very easy path up the mountain. There was chainlink fencing and large wires that were bolted to the ground, so we climbed the mountain by climbing up a fence. Now our path thickened once again, but this time with some kind of bush that was really thorny and it was a thorn in our side. Once again we found ourselves practicing a technique that we perfected in the reeds, which is something like swim-hiking.
It involves either walking or crawling while doing the breathstroke with your arms in order to traverse dense jungle when you forget your machete or didn't think you needed to bring it (or in our case didn't have one). Shortly we came across what looks like some sort of Aztec pyramid built into the mountain. It is either some sort of avalanche prevention technique or more likely, since there were large drains in it, a water collector. There was a dam below us after all. This part was a little scary, not because it was dangerous at all, but we were probably trespassing and it is probably not legal to hike off the path. So we ran across this and quickly entered the forest again.
Here we knew we were nearing the end of the hike, so we found another one of those fences and began climbing down this time. This was probably not the smartest thing in hindsight. At this point we were facing the rapidly (it wasn't traveling that fast) sinking sun and this spot was relatively clear thanks to the fence. We happened to climb right past a snake. Luckily my roomate is from the desert, so he has experience dealing with snakes and just told me to keep going.
It had its head reared up, but did nothing. We had no idea at the time if there are any snakes in Japan that are poisonous or not, but we kept our eyes on it, moved slowly and tried to move out of its vision. After a little more hiking we came across a trail, which we followed down, hoping that this would lead out of the jungle and it did. Here we paused to clean all the dirt out of our shoes and smoke our last cigarette. After this we walked along roads the rest of the way home. The sun set just as we reached the path, so we timed our entire hike perfectly. We soon realized that we were in a large park that was perhaps a national park or something like that and the damn is a part of the park that allows visitors as the creek we pretty much followed is Kobe's water supply. While walking through the park we saw a warning sign for the snake that we saw, so we were pretty lucky really. There were bats flying overhead and we didn't see one person, so we were a little worried that the park would be closed and possibly more worried because of the eery setting, but we soon found our way out of the park and realized that we had a beautiful view of Kobe at night and a long walk home. I guess thats about where my story should end, we did of course stop and get some Okonomiaki on the way home to refuel ourselves and walked through the rich nice area of Kobe, but there was no real adventure there. We were quite far west of our house, so our sense of direction was not quite right, although you can't walk straight over a mountain as we learned. For those of you who are worried, I probably won't do any hiking that crazy anymore.
It was just a first hiking of the season.

Dan

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