Today was a holiday, so I decided I'd go over to Yorii and go hiking. Yorii is about an hour away from Omiya by train. This morning I loaded up my new satchel with my Japanese phrase book (just in case), and loaded my Suica card with 5,000 円. The Suica is a card that can be loaded with cash, then used to by train tickets, bus tickets, drinks and snacks from vending machines, borrow books from the library, and apparently several other uses.
I got over to Yorii without problems, and thanks to the brochure that one of my teachers had given me, found my way to the hiking trails as well. In contrast to the decrepit old people I had mentioned earlier, today the hills (and the trains leading to any cities with hiking grounds) were crowded with more robust grandmas and grandpas.
The hiking trails themselves are not incredibly well marked, so I ended up having to backtrack a few times once up in the wooded hills. I made it to one peak and rested there while taking in the view, then decided to head to the next peak, which was some 3km away.
On my way there, I ran into a group of hikers resting on the trail, and after going past them, seemed to lose the trail. I stopped for a bit and allowed the group to over take me, then I followed them for a bit. Doing this, we all ended up pretty far off trail and at the bottom of a steep valley. After we made it back to our original trail, I decided I'd had enough and went back the way I came (back to Yorii). In Yorii itself, there are several Buddhist temples (one of the "hiking" trails is a route that visits all of them: since they are in the city, and there no hills to contend with, this is not really hiking...), and I stopped at the first two of those before heading back to the train station. At the second, there were these two frightening statues that appeared to be guardians on either side of the entrance to the compound.
I took a ton of pictures, which should be up on my facebook albums in the next day or two, but for right now, I just finished walking around 12 km, mostly through rugged terrain, and my knees are hating me right now. So I'm going to watch some anime, drink my yoghurt drink (飲むヨーグルト, "nomu yooguruto," litterally drink-yoghurt), then go to bed.
Cheers
