What? Ninohe Again?

Beautiful Ninohe!

What is this feeling, so sudden and new?

My calves are throbbing but beastly to boot! 

Just got back from another weekend in Ninohe, this time for some hiking! Yes, friends, you heard it right here: I’m apparently an athlete now. I jog, I hike, I will supposedly be snowboarding (though a friend tells me Geto Resort’s future hangs in the balance!)…who am I? I don’t know, but she’s got some awesome calf muscles and a not-so-gluteous maximus. 

Hiking came in two servings: the appetizer hike and the entrée hike-lite. So it was four of us for this delicious adventure including myself, Patrick, Scott and Yoko, a fellow teacher of Scott's. We first walked through town, crossed the street and began our steep hike up the side of one of the hills that closely surrounds Ninohe. Thankfully, there were walking sticks provided for the near vertical climb. Not so thankfully, that morning there was a general announcement over the town’s loudspeaker system warning people that bears had been sighted outside of town. Spring has officially arrived and with it come the bears. The hungry bears. Yoko sprung this on us just as we began our hike up the hill: nice, Yoko, thanks for that. Afterwards, every snapped twig, every tumbling pebble was Bear….BEAR! Then all of a sudden

Note the lack of bears...

thrash thrash rustle 

Yoko and I jumped about twenty feet in the air and grabbed each other. If that bear was hungry, it was going to get a two scared shitless girls for the price of one deal.

Turns out it was just a wild goat but one of the craziest goats I have ever seen! At first I thought it was a boar: it was brown, pretty stocky and there wasn’t much of a neck to speak of. But Yoko figured it out and told us, no, that is indeed a Japanese goat. Unfortunately, they’re as fast as they are weird-looking, so I don’t have a picture to show you. For my fellow Studio Ghibli fans, imagine the Forest Spirit from “Princess Mononoke” only less shika and more serow. We continued up the hill and reached a lookout point…which also happened to be the end of the line. We looked around for more of the trail but realized quickly that that was it: game over. Enjoy the view while you’re here. And we did. But now our appetites were whet and we needed a real challenge. Looking out over Ninohe, Yoko pointed across to the opposite mountain range, Oritsume, I believe. Apparently, she said, it’s very good for hiking and you can go all the way to the top.

Game. Frickin’. ON!

Asparagus. In someone's yard. Yep.

We walked back to Yoko’s apartment and climbed into her car. The adventure continues! Or so we thought. We drove for a little while, but then we missed the turn to the trail head. Driving a little farther, we found another sign for the trail. Or so we thought. We drove.

And we drove.

And we drove. Switchback after switchback, looking for signs for parking so we could start our climb, but we soon realized that we wouldn’t be stopping. We were what will forever be known as “car hiking.” A couple more hairpins and another monster-goat sighting later during which Patrick punched me in the head attempting to reach for his camera phone, we were at the visitor center parking lot.

Phew. What an exhausting hike!

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful view. We looked down on Ninohe, gods of car hiking. From the parking lot, we could see Mt. Iwate in the misty distance! 

So right now you’re thinking, that’s it? Well, at first, that’s what we thought too. There wasn’t much at the top of the hill, but there was a visitor’s center, a restaurant, an inn connected to the two…and a trail map! There were trails all around the top of the mountain, so we randomly picked on and off we were!

The weather’s been great for the past week, so finally everything is turning a rich and diverse range of greens, and flowers have been blooming like crazy! We were walking around and through flowers the whole way, listening to birds and keeping an ever-wary eye for those bears. 

It was a fairly easy hike, but every once in a while there’s be a steep climb up a hill or some stairs but there was always something to see at the top:

Including this great look-out platform! 

What a view! On a clear day, we'd be looking at the ocean!

Scott and Patrick all impressed and shit

When we made it back to the visitor’s center, we were all good and hungry. We stopped in the restaurant for some curry rice, udon and ramen. The great thing about this place? The owner uses all natural ingredients from the mountain side including mushrooms and fiddleheads or zenmai! So many zenmai!!!

Look, Ma! Fiddleheads! I mean...zenmai!

The walls of the restaurant are also covered with newspaper clippings about the mountainside. It’s also a nature preserve so among the stories about bats and pheasants were incredible pictures of glowing fungi! Through some translating and Googling, we figured out that there is a bacteria in this specific fungus that seems into the trees and will actually make the branches glow on the inside if exposed to light for a short amount of time! Most spectacular, though, are the fireflies. Actually, they’re so famous that Ninohe’s manhole covers are designed with a firefly on them! Finally, after talking to the owner, Yoko discovered that for just over 400 yen each, we could rent a room at the inn and stay overnight! One weekend this summer: a group of us all, sleeping in one room after a day of hiking, a BBQ dinner outside with other guests and an evening of watching the famous fireflies covering the mountain? It’s a plan all but etched in stone! 

 

We’d had a long day, so naturally the dessert course? Nap. 

Today was absolutely gorgeous: warm, lovely breeze, blue sky. Prime park weather! By the way, there are some incredibly beautiful birds in Japan…but I have yet to figure out species. Today was all about the hawks, the ducks, these gorgeous little black and white birds and even a pheasant! Little buggers are fast, though, so no pictures. Sorry. 

The park itself was nice, and there were steps down the bank so you can sit by the cold river and watch the birds and enjoy the sun. 

It was a truly nice end to the weekend, and I’m looking forward to getting back to いい this week: tomorrow I’m actually doing my 50 minute self-intro for four classes…

I know! Still! But I think tomorrow is the absolute last day I prance around talking about my favorite season or sports and how the American Beauty is the national flower of America. Though it never fails: no matter the grade, students love when I pull out a bouquet of paper flowers or a blue crab plushie. It’s an easy “lesson,” so I’m not complaining. 

But really, now. We’re two months in. But with four schools and the rotating schedule I have, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, them’s the breaks and other such clichés. Though I must say, it is a delicious, decadent, buttery cookie considering I’m completely wiped out and don’t have it in me to prepare a proper lesson! Weekends are serious business in Japan: after a week of hard work, it’s time to play even harder. I feel like I accomplished that and can’t wait to get back to work, refreshed, alive and rabid for the next adventure!

Like something out of a Miyazaki film

And then of course, this thing, which looks like something out of my nightmares...

Seems legit...