There was a guy from Spain who was at the same hostel in Tanabe and he was going to go on the same hike( Nakahechi- Kumano Kodo trail) as us. We talked to him about it and decided to leave at 6:45 in the morning. He left at around 6. We packed up and walked over to the bus stop. Almost missed the bus because we were at the wrong bus stop. As usual, mom was like, "there's busses over there, we should go check it out." Me: "no!!!" Mom: "Yes, go ask!" Me: "No!!!!" Mom: "lets go" We walk over there and ask the bus driver through the window if the bus was going to Takijiri shrine and guess what! It was! And it was leaving in 2 minutes! The next bus wouldn't be around till about 7:30.
So I rode in a bus for the first time in my life. It was interesting. I was panicking the whole tie because the price kept going up and up and up. It cost about 15 when we were done.
As far as I can tell, they don't have school busses in Japan. We picked up a whole bunch of kids going to school, and I don't know if they ride for free or not. They were all about 10 years old.
So, we got to the shrine and there was a shop that had food and stuff. Thankfully I bought something, cuz we hadn't eaten breakfast and I would have probably fainted on the trail. You see, I had no clue how hard it would be. I read that it was one of the easier trails! Well, I also read that the first section was all uphill, but that was for only about a half hour. We started hiking and I slowly started dying. I don't even like hiking! Well, it was still one of my favorite parts of the trip. Probably because it was the most adventurous part of our trip and the hike was SO beautiful! So we are walking up hill, and up hill, and up hill, and.... It was way longer than a half hour. We were just really REALLY slow I think. Then mom saw a bright orange crab! I'm like way cool!!!! Then we saw a snake for about three seconds that was red and some other color and then we kept hiking. At first I would run up sections of the hill and then get my breath and then run up another section. That's how young people do it you know, so full of vigor and energy. By the end of the day that wasn't working, we just trudged. Unless it was down hill!! Wanting to get to the town by at least 4;30 we started running down every hill that wasn't so rocky or steep that we might fall and break our necks. That really speeded up things!
There was an older man from Sweden, who had two huge amazing cameras who hiked at the same time we were. We were constantly passing each other. Whenever we met we would exchange stories. He had traveled all over the world doing photography. He said that now he mostly does America, Asia and Europe because South America and Africa are too dangerous. We got to hear interesting stories about that!! Basically, if you want to do professional photography in those countries you have to be young enough and in good enough shape to be constantly defend yourself against people who might attack you. Asia, especially Japan, was perfect for him though.
So, we hiked on. And then We started seeing crabs! Any time we passed a stream we would find crabs crawling around. They were very cute!! So, I started counting. By the end of the day I had seen at least 247 crabs!! It really was great for taking your mind off of the hiking when we were going on a constant up hill slope.
So, at about 4 we reached Chikastu and at 4:30 we reached Chikatsu-yu Ryokan. That was really interesting and very sugoi! We both were given different rooms, but since we wanted to be together, we moved the futons in to one. We got a yukata, towels, and tooth brushes! So, we decided to use the onsen which was in a building on the side of the Ryokan. First we had to figure out when to wear the yukata. After going back and forth with the man who ran the Ryokan and it not making any sense, I finally put my drawing skills to work and drew out what I thought he was saying that we had to do. I got it right. So, put the yukata on over your stinking gross body, walk to the onsen, and when you are done there, you put it back on.
So, I hopped in and was like, this isn't that bad! Mom hopped in and pretty much hopped back out. She hates hot water. Well, who want's to be alone in an onsen. I stayed a few more minutes and got out too.
Some other ladies showed us the right way to put on yukata (these are more like a bath robe) and then we headed back.
Dinner was exciting. We had lots of interesting food. They have a boiling pot of water in front of you and you put al the food in it and let it cook into a soup. The contents include: tofu, cabbage, bamboo, bacon (that never fully cooks, yes they eat partially cooked bacon) and other stuff.
We also had tempurad full fish, you eat the whole thing, sashimi, and many MANY other things. Wanting to be a good guest we tried our best to eat EVERYTHING! And that was a lot!
The wife, made rice balls for us our of the left over rice mixture. We ate those the next day on the hike.
Then, went to bed! Well, I watched some Japanese TV first, which was ridiculous! I liked the camertials.
