Amanohashidate, according to the interwebs, is supposed to be one of the best views in Japan. A few weeks ago, I spontaneously decided to join a trip with a few other JETs who were headed to this "Bridge to Heaven". They were able to rent a car, which drastically cut down on travel costs, as a train there and back would have been over $200. Going by car is still quite expensive. Not only due to gas prices, but also the tolls. Every highway in Japan is a toll road, and they aren't your standard few dollar tolls as we have in the US. I'm pretty sure we passed through a toll gate that asked for $30 and I'm also pretty sure that no road is worth that. Luckily, there were 6 or 7 of us, so the cost was reduced to something affordable.
Once we got there, we walked through the town and across the land bridge to the cable car that took us to the top of the mountain. This was certainly my favorite part of the whole thing. It wasn't actually a cable car so much as it was a one-person chair lift, and it was so relaxing to travel slowly up the mountain listening to cheesy music piped in over low-quality speakers while watching the flower gardens go by. When we got to the top, we had no choice but to take the obligatory "bend over and look at the scenery upside-down through your legs" pictures. That is really what you're supposed to do, because apparently when you look at the land bridge, it looks like it's floating in the clouds. I'm not really sure it looked like that, but it was fun.
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| Walking across the sand bar. |
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| View from the top of the cable car. |
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| A tour group complete with megaphone that we tried desperately to get away from. |
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| Viewing the scenery. |
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| The proper way to view Amanohashidate. |
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| Three tries to toss a clay disk through that ring... I almost made it! |
After lunch at a restaurant on the mountain with a scenic view, we headed down the mountain (more chair lifts!) and went once more across to the other side. This time, we took a short speed boat ride, and I'm sure the guy driving it was laughing at us as we squealed every time the boat took a sharp turn. We took yet another chair lift up the other side to see the view from there, and walk around a cute little amusement park at the top of the mountain.
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| Lunch on top of a mountain. |
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| Speed boat! |
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| We're on a boat! |
At the end of the day, we walked back through the town, and watched a man making soba for about 20 minutes. Overall, it was such a relaxing day, and I'm really happy I got to visit.
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| My favorite part of the whole day. |
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| Rolling soba! |
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| Cutting soba! |
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If you want to eat some tiny baby crabs whole as a snack,
you've come to the right place. |
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| View from the other side of the mountain. |
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| There seems... |
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| ..to be... |
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| ...a trend. |
Taisenji （太山寺）
This past Monday was a national holiday, so everyone had off work. Some friends and I were supposed to make a trip to Mie prefecture to go on a hike to some waterfalls, but at the last minute we decided that we did not in fact want to leave at 6am and we'd rather sleep in and visit the nearby Taisenji. Taisenji is a temple I didn't know existed until about a week ago, and it's about a 30-minute walk from my apartment (although it may have been 45 minutes, since we got a little lost on the way). It was a really surprising find, since the temple is in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't realize that my busy neighborhood was so close to so many rice fields. It was a beautiful little temple, and my friends and I spent several hours just wandering around, taking pictures, and enjoying the beautiful day. On the way back, we went "conbini hopping", and visited every convenience store and vending machine on the way. We met some friends in a park for a picnic dinner of Costco pizza, and the amazing day was complete.
