This is the third and final post about my climb of Kyoto's Mt. Hiei (比叡山) the other day (Part 1 · Part 2). At the end of Part 2 I'd had a rest at a lovely lookout point near the top. Before heading up the last bit to complete the trip, I ventured into the hillside of azaleas (つつじヶ丘)...

Disappointment with photography normally comes to me when I get home to look at my shots, but in this case I felt disappointed the moment I brought the camera up to my eye. The hillside was engulfing with exceedingly vibrant color spanning a wide range of the spectrum, but it became meh in the viewfinder. Less harsh lighting would have been nice, but otherwise, I'm at a loss to explain it. These results are blah.

So, I bailed on the azaleas and decided to venture further up, quickly coming across this (seemingly old) marker...

I'd never actually seen the old unit-of-distance “ri” (里, at Wikipedia) used in the wild, so I was tickled with myself that I could read it. 2½ ri is about 10km, and that distance winding along the paths will put you pretty much in the center of the Kyoto Imperial Palace (most recently on my blog as the site for the start of the Aoi Matsuri festival, and for its peach blossoms).

The unit-of-distance “ri” has actually gotten a mention on my blog as well, a year ago in a post about an English-language guidebook to Japan published in 1900, which mentions that foreigners were not allowed to approach Kyoto closer than 10 ri (about 25 miles).

10 minutes later I was closer to the top, at an area reachable by car via a scenic tollway, with a “Museum Garden” of some sort, and ample bus parking. Like with the abandoned ski run mentioned earlier in Part 1, the fringes of the area had seen better days...

Many would consider this big parking area to be the top of the mountain because it's the highest you can go by car, and there are no signs pointing to “the very top”, but as you can see in the shot above, there is an area of somewhat higher land beyond, so I wondered that way.

I took a closed access road that at first seemed to go up, then turned to a path at a couple of large rusting refrigerators someone had kindly dumped in the woods ( 🙁 ), and less than five minutes from the bus stop I came to what appeared to be the highest point of land for miles...

It felt like I was in the brush in a small park in the city; it certainly didn't feel like I was at the top of one of the highest mountains overlooking Kyoto. There was no view beyond the thick woods, and there wasn't even the Japanese Geological Survey elevation marker that I would have expected, nor anything else to indicate that this was indeed the summit.

Not being signed or promoted, few folks bothered to venture here past the parking lot, but I did see one other person, just below the summit, eating lunch...

Right near the “summit” is a small area of TV antennas developed 15 years ago...

I thought that if Anthony was with me, he'd immediately seize on the flat area and want to play soccer. It'd be fun until the ball dropped over the edge, after which point it would be well and truly gone.

Japan's population is about half (40%) that of the United States, but it has less than 4% of the land area, and most of that land is uninhabitable mountains. Where there is actually population in Japan, the density is pretty high.

If it were no so very hazy, you could see the bulk of Kyoto City at right, and the Osaka skyline in the distance above it.

Zooming in to Kyoto, you can see where I started my trip...

Kyoto Tower (seen here and here) is in the exact center of the frame. You may have to click through to the larger version, but half way from Kyoto Tower toward the bottom of the frame is the big orange gate of the Heian Shrine, seen in the first photo of the first part of this series, where I started the day's hike 5½ hours earlier.

Looking another direction gives a nice view of the city of Otsu...

Back at the parking lot...

Considering the developing blister on one foot (due to having completely inappropriate shoes), I decided to avail myself of the bus, of which there are several per day....

This was even easier than last time I did this hike, where I returned home via mountain train, normal train, and taxi.

50 minutes later I was dropped off a short stroll from home...

So, overall, it went much better than last year's hike, which resulted in the aptly tittled “The Agony Where Bravado Yields, In Spectacular Fashion, To Painful Reality”.

Generally getting in better shape, and bringing enough water helped a lot. If Stéphane Barbery (who invited me for the initial hike last year) had been along this time, he would have earned the well-deserved right to say “I told you so.”)

As for my knees, I don't know what exactly helped, but here's what I think might have contributed:

• Lots of stretching and strengthening of the muscles that connect to the knees (mentioned in Part 1).

• The kneecap compression straps mentioned in Part 2.

• Having taken a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement daily since January, on the advice of my dad who thought it generally seemed to help his joints. (The “Kirkland Signature” brand, sold at Costco and via Amazon.com is a good value and unlike others that I've tried, has a taste that's not totally revolting.)

Finding some appropriate footwear for my super-thin size 13½ feet is a challenge, but if I can solve that, I wouldn't mind trying to make this hike more often.

Anyone want to join me?

Continued with next year's hike here...