Mt. Oyama (GW Series)

With arms still sore from wall climbing the day before, we got up early to climb Mt. Oyama in Isehara. It takes a little more than an hour to get to the base of the mountain from the nearest station in my place. It took us 2 train transfers and 1 bus ride to get there.

We arrived around 9 AM and we started our hike. The start of the trail doesn't look like it would lead you to a mountain. There are a lot of shops lined up selling souvenirs.

Stairs after stairs we climbed until we reached a wooden temple, an intersection. We had to choose between otoko-zaka and onna-zaka. Otoko-zaka is steeper so we decided to take it on our way up. I guess most of us find going down a slope more difficult.

It was really hard going up. We took rests every now and then. There were also other hikers who took otoko-zaka with us and they rested a lot, too.

We exchanged greetings with other hikers who were already on their way down. We also talked to some of them while taking a break and even asked them to take our photo.

there were four of us, L-R: Keith, Me, Cel, Marvin

After an hour or so, we reached Afura Jinja Shimosa. The stairs looked new and well-maintained. We wondered about the writings on the stairs and we guessed they are names of sponsors.

We continued our hike after some photo taking in the shrine. It took us another 1.5 hours to reach the top. I was surprised to see many people at the top of the mountain. There were even a group of high school and elementary school students. It must have been a school activity that they had to climb the mountain but we also saw other kids around 5 years of age climbing the mountain with their parents. The youngest "hiker" must have been the baby we heard crying on our way down. I suppose the baby is not even 1 year old.

After resting for about an hour, we started hiking down the mountain. We took a different route on our way down.

There were also a lot of stairs in the other route, too. It was hard going down, my knees started to ache. I had to walk down the stairs sideways to shift the weight of my body to avoid my knees bearing a lot of it.

It was a good thing that we took a different route because there were other attractive temples that we missed on our way up; we also saw the cable car passing.

The hike down was faster and we almost didn't take a break, except for some shutter moments. We waited for the bus to Isehara station and it came after 15 minutes. We were all exhausted from the hike but very happy. We decided to have an early dinner before heading back home so we got off at Kawasaki station to have dinner at the Korean restaurant I often visit.