Mt. Takao

This is Mt. Fuji (Fuji-san in Japanese), as seen from Mt. Takao. It's really rare to get a good view of Fuji-san, so this was pretty exciting. The week after we were here, there was a big snowstorm up on Mt. Fuji, so it's probably really pretty now.

This was all Kris's idea. I didn't even know this place existed. Apparently, it's a pretty popular day trip for Tokyoites who want to see some nature. It was surprisingly crowded.

This is at the start of the climb. The beginning of the climb is really steep and they have two options for getting halfway up the mountain, a chair lift or a cable car. I chose the chair lift. Because boys are dumb, Kris and Gen decided to climb.

Here is the pretty mountain range. The leaves were just beginning to turn. The term for autumn leaves in Japanese is koyo.

This was definitely the prettiest tree.

At one of the temples. There are all kinds of temples scattered all over the mountain.

This was on the way up (apparently- I was reclining in my nifty chair lift at this point).

These guys are all over the place at Takao-san. They are the Shinto-Buddhist mountain gods.

Temple with incense smoke.

This one was very pretty, very brightly colored. On the right you can see barrels of sake, offerings to the gods.

This was so cool- look at that moon! This is looking back into Tokyo from about halfway up the mountain. The foreground is actually more suburbs. If you squint, you can start to see the skyscrapers in the back. Takao-san is a little less than an hour from Shinjuku, one of the more western stations in Tokyo.

After the climb back down. There's a little town at the base of the mountain. Good times. Gen and I are going to try to go back this weekend to see more leaves.