Hiking

Today was the big hiking day, with a path leaving from the Kanazawa zoo, near Kanazawa-bunko on Tokyo bay side, all the way across the Miura peninsula to Kamakura, where all the temples are, on Sagami bay. After a bit of trouble finding the starting point off I went on a two and a half hour walk on nice trails through very pretty forests.

I have posted the evolution of what the paths looked like along the walk, going from paved paths to well kept up dirt paths, though camellia thickets with quite large end enthusiastic birds in them, on to evergreen forests, tall and thin, and finally to the green bamboo forests, creaking and clonking with the grey squirells running around in the fallen leaves. The undergrowth is very tropical-looking, with many different kinds of ferns and palms and smaller bamboo types. There are lots of plants I don't recognise here.

The animal life was mostly composed of birds, and even that stopped when I ran into a huge group of runners, with proper numbers and electronic badges to time them, and officials at every cross-roads to say which way to go. Very impressive, but kind of minimized the chance of seeing birds or squirrels.

View of Tokyo bay with Oppama station to the right and JAMSTEC behind the small hill, left.

At about the bamboo forest I lost my way, as there was a small café in the middle of nowhere and I went around it on the wrong side to see the signpost. At the next crossroads, none of the signs said Kamakuragu, which is where I wanted to go. Just then an elderly group of japanese hikers came along and I asked them which way to go. They did not know of the way, but they got out their maps, and I got out my map, and everyone went in to a huge discussion, the ones at the front having to explain to the ones at the back why they had stopped, where I wanted to go, and what had so-far been decided. The final conclusion was that the road I wanted was a

shortcut of the one they were going on, and so that I should go with them to my turn-off. It was only a short way beyond the little café, so said goodbye to them, having accepted their map and some sweets, and continued down towards Kamakura. This time the path followed a gurgling little stream, and was more or less in the stream bed. They said this path is not good if it had rained recently, and I totally agree. The red clay is horribly slippery, and you don't need water running over it as well.

I got to Kamakura without any further trouble, right next to a series of temples I had missed last time. And, to my not total surprise the first sakuras. The large number of Japanese wandering around with HUGE cameras was a bit of a giveaway... It is really just the start, as they were only in two temples, and not in the center of town proper. Next week-end will probably be better, but I think kamakura will not be a good place to go, seeing the crowds there were today in the main part of town. I will have to find either a less-crowded (unlikely if the cherries are in bloom), or more open place.