Well, I fall further behind. I had been planning to post the answer to the What am I? quiz from the other day (none of the guesses so far are even close), but Fumie has been quite sick, so I wanted to get Anthony out of the house so that she could rest. I'd been wanting to try some nearby hiking trails, and I ended up with enough photos to fill at least five different blog posts.

We started out after lunch with the grueling seven-minute drive up to Shogunzuka. (We hit a few red lights, so it took longer than usual :-))

It often seems to be hazy when I come up here, although it's on my list to try to come up after a typhoon passes through, because the air is quite clear after that as it was once when I came up here last year.

Other posts from up here include this and this.

We had some excitement as we watched a helicopter take off from the helipad near the parking lot (posted about here), and he headed into the trails that lead down the mountain....

I quickly learned that the mountain is covered in ferns of pretty much every type imaginable. Ferns can be quite photogenic, but the lack of light under the mountain treecover can make photography a challenge. I got some okay fern shots during a short hike last summer, but couldn't even replicate them this time.

Anthony, of course, doesn't care; ferns, like anything in the path, is subject to pokiture.

Every once in a while, a clearing let you know just how tall the trees really were...

It's difficult to make a photo that really shows the majesty of tall trees. I've tried plenty of times; this tall bamboo desktop background came out nicely, and so perhaps did one of the photos on this fall-colors post. The one at the end of this post less so. I'll keep plugging at it.

I really shouldn't say “middle of nowhere” because as the crow flys, we're just about exactly one mile from my place (with several major temples in between). That's the beauty of having mountains so close... you can “get away” with very little effort.

We saw a number of tiny little frogs, including this guy, who wasn't much bigger than my thumbnail...

It was all Anthony could do to not poke him. I try to let him be as free as possible, but harassing wildlife (like I did when I was a kid) is over the line.

The set of trails that we took wound down the mountain for half an hour toward a back entrance to a sorta' famous spot. We come around the corner and were greeted with...

Our day continued, and in the end we hiked over 7km. My knees have a hard time of it when we go down (surprisingly, going up is no problem), but we took it slow and it was fun. There are still plenty of trails yet to try, all within a mile or so of home.

Continued here...