Mt Maya in The Fall

Yesterday my neighbor and I agreed to meet some of our friends at the top of Mt Maya to give them a change of clothes and shoes. (They were doing that horrific wonderful 56k hike I did last year)  The plan was to walk to Sannomiya (about 7 km) and then take a bus to the Mt Maya Ropeway and take that up the mountain.

Everything was going as planned until we hit the ropeway. A worker told us "Wind!  Danger!" and that the ropeway was closed. I started to panic a bit as we had sandwiches, clothes and shoes to switch out at the top. After a horrible game of charades and some help from a guy who spoke great English, we discovered we were going to have to take a tram part way up and then hike it to the top. It took about 35 minutes to hike to the top, and other than the billion steps we had to climb, it was a beautiful hike. The leaves are all changing so we had some great scenery. We even commented some of the leaves on the ground were so perfect it was almost like they were purposely placed there.

While waiting for our friends, we took in the view.  Just another reminder of how beautiful of a country Japan is and how lucky I am to be living here.