Autumn leaves

The calendar says it's Christmas time, and the narcissus have just started blooming, but for the tree world, it is now autumn! And I had every intention of enjoying the beautiful autumn colours Japan is so famous for!

The view from the steps to the house

Today I set out on a well-planned walk into the hills behind Oppama, wich quickly turned into my favorite "got lost, got back onto a known road, got lost again and finally ran into a train station and came home" kind of walk.

I started out on the Buddha hiking trail to Jinmuji, with only a couple sightings of fat grey squirrels. The Buddha is still doing well, but now has a fuzzy hat of pampas grass.

The view from the lookout tower was, as always, beautiful. It was overcast, so Fuji-san was not visible, but on Tokyo Bay side, the couds has parted, allowing an amazingly clear view all the way to Tokyo. The new completed Sky Tree was very obvious, despite it being blue, and that's more than 50km away!

I followed the main path for quite some time,

before being inexorably pulled aside by several smaller, but well-kept paths heading off into the forest! These turned out to lead around the hills and valleys paralelling the main path, before joining it again.

It was on one of these side paths that I found a small little rock outcrop, bathed in sunlight, and overlooking the forest (and a bit of freeway and high tension lines _ this is rather a unavoidable problem in this area), and decided to stop for lunch. Halfway through my sandwich, the shadow of a kite came over me, and sure enough, he had his eyes on my sandwich!

Now after the rather unfortunate event of having the last of a -cheese!!- sandwich plucked from my hands by one of those horrible birds, I don't like them much. But it is the Christmas season, and one must try to be forgiving! And besides, I had had a wicked idea!

Being on an outcrop, if I could throw a bit of my bread far enough into the air, would the kite not swoop down right close to me to get it? And would that not be a terriby thrilling experience?

The next 15 minutes were the most fun I've had in a long time, throwing bits of bread in the air and having the kites swoop down, catch them, and then gobble them up from between their toes as they gained altitude again. I also attracted a large crow, who took to scuttling around the scrub brush below the outcrop, eating up all the missed bits.

When more and more kites kept coming, I decided to stop, as it's fun with only 2 but with 15 it looks and feels a bit like a Hitchcock remake.

So off I went down the path, and ended up on the hiking course that leads either back to Oppama, or to Taura station.

Now I knew from experience that the path to Taura station is closed at that end. Yet there was no sign on this end, and no sooner had I started down the path that a runner passed me. At the speed he was going, he would either pass me coming back before I was even half wath through if it was a dead end, so off I set off to find where this end of the path went to. Turns out it does go to Taura, but joins the main road quite a way from the station.

One mystery solved, many more yet to investigate, as I saw many a small branching path on today's rambling that will need investigating! I wonder if japanese officials consider "there are lots of little paths behind Oppama that I haven't been on" a valid reason for wanting an extended visa?