A final post to round out Part 1 and Part 2 about this year's Aoi Matsuri festival (葵祭), at the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park last week, which is a parade of period costumes from a millennium or so ago.

As the parade participants were marshaling before the start, others were going about their business...

This particular rope was such a pain. When i took this picture the parade had already ended and the rope would soon be dismantled, but during and before the parade, the rope separated the crowd from the parade participants, and if the rope had been equally taut everywhere, all the spectators would have been on the same plane and had the same view, but that one particular section of rope had a tremendous amount of slack, and people who happened to be there took advantage of it by pushing well past where they knew they were allowed to go, destroying the view for everyone else behind them. Some even broke out big sun umbrellas, as if to ensure maximum rudeness. I arrived early to secure a spot that granted the nice shots I wanted, but lost them all to these inconsiderate clods.

Anyway, the preschool kids who stopped by to enjoy the park as everyone else was leaving were cute...

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...

Picking up from yesterday's Part 1 of “My Mt. Hiei Climb Challenge 2013”, where that post ended with a short pause at a clearing half way up...

From the clearing, the path up actually goes down sharply for a short while...

The trail goes up and down very steeply as it crosses several small river ravines, and this is where I worried that my knees would become debilitatingly painful. To my great relief it turned out fine, either because of the stretching I did (mentioned in Part 1), and/or because I was wearing a pair of knee compression straps that are said to help ease the kind of pain I had.

(A note to my mom: the knee straps are fairly bulky, which is why the self portrait in Part 1 showed me wearing very baggy jeans.)

I'll have to try the hike again without the straps, to test whether they were of material help.

The trail crosses several tiny streams like this, each entailing five minutes of very steep downhill, a hop across, and five minutes of very steep uphill.

This intersection of trails is where Stéphane stops for an energy snack (at least we did last year), so I did so as well, having one of my rice balls.

The other trail that joins here originates near the Shugakuin Imperial Villa, and is apparently The Trail for kids on school trips to use when hiking this mountain. I surmise this because starting from here I came across many junior-high kids before I got to the top....

There were many groups from many schools strung along the paths, totaling perhaps 500 kids. All 500, it seems, took the opportunity of my obvious foreignness to spit out a poorly-pronounced “Hello” in English. This may sound polite at first blush, but it's done with the same spirit as yelling “Moooo....” out the window as you pass a field with cows.

And just as with the cows, imagine how frozen with shock you'd be if a cow started mooing back, asking how you're doing, where you're from, and such. I got that kind of deer-in-the-headlights look whenever I responded in English. But mostly I just excused myself (in Japanese) as I passed. The kids, understandably, progress pretty slowly.

At one point I came across a photographer that had been asked to document the event for the kids, dressed in street clothes and lugging a large, hard camera case. It looked very uncomfortable...

Finally past the point of much laughing during last year's climb, I reached the tiny abandoned ski run, where groups of school kids were having their bento lunches...

A bit further and I got to つつじヶ丘, the hillside of Azaleas that was past its prime when I went last year, which is why I went a couple of weeks earlier this yet....

And finally I got to the rest/view area that was last year's destination...

I sat down to have another rice ball, and eventually was joined by Hiroshi (he of hat-saving mountain biking from Part 1), who had already been to the top and was pausing on the return trip before hitting the main descent.

I said I'd take his portrait, and when I pointed the camera his way I expecting to start directing him to a nice pose, but instead he suddenly made a tremendous leap...

That was impressive, but I spent the extra few seconds for a quick normal portrait...

He eventually went on his way down the mountain, but I intended to continue my own climb to the top.

Continued here...

This post is a continuation, of sorts, of my first climb of Kyoto's Mt. Hiei, painfully documented a year ago in “Yesterday's Hike: The Agony Where Bravado Yields, In Spectacular Fashion, To Painful Reality”. After that horrible experience, I vowed to get into better shape, and to repeat the hike in a year.

That year had passed, so I repeated the hike last Thursday.

After the first hike, I made a concerted effort to get into shape, and just six week later I showed some of my progress in “Going Max Cliché While Learning About Off-Camera Flash”, and probably hit my peak in muscle-to-fat ratio six months later last autumn where I was essentially devoid of fat at 78kg/172lb, ridiculously lean for my 192cm/6'4" height. (But that lack of fat came with a gaunt face made me look sickly, so these days I'm looking much more healthy at 82kg/181lb).

Now, a year after the first hike and in my mid 40s, I have the best physique that I have ever had.

But in planning to repeat the hike this year, I was really apprehensive for two reasons: The biggest worry was my knees on the downhill parts, and I was also worried about my cardiovascular shape, which hadn't necessairly improved, so I worried about getting pooped out like I did last time.

Anyway, worries aside, I did the hike last Thursday. I started out from my place in eastern Kyoto at 9am sharp.

The top of the mountain is hours away, but if I reach it, this gate should be visible.

I was doing the hike by myself this time, so tried to do a self portrait in a window...

I've got to walk about an hour through the city before I get to the entrance to the hiking path, and at one point passed a small cemetery, which felt like some kind of reflection of my apprehensions. My destination is the peak in the far background showing between the roofs at left...

Closer to the trailhead, I stopped in a supermarket for supplies...

As the sign above says, the trailhead is near the Japan Baptist Hospital.

A few moments later, you see the hospital ahead, and the parking lot to the right. Enter the parking lot to the right...

Half a minute into the trail, you come to the small Oyamzumi Shrine (大山祇神社)...

Having gotten warmed up by the hour's walk, I spent 20 minutes here stretching my legs... quads, psoas major, the iliacus... in hopes of avoiding the downhill-slope knee pain that crippled me last time. The white bag on the path in the photo above has some towels, padding my knee while I stretched.

Kyoto is a valley surrounded by mountains on almost all sides, except for a slice to the south where the plane extends unbroken all the way to Osaka (which we'll see later in this series), and so you can hike the mountaintops in a big circle almost all the way around the city. The paths are dotted with markers like the one above, pointing the way to the next peak and/or trailhead.

I made it a point to check each one I came to to ensure I stayed on the right path. The problem in this case was that both directions lead to where I wanted to go, so I had to guess which one I'd taken last year (because I wanted to repeat the same hike). I chose straight ahead, and it turns out that was correct.

The trees are tall.

In playing with the sun peeking out from behind the trees, I ended up with this artsy version...

Lens flare can be a bit cheesy, but I like it sometimes (such as in this sunset shot). I'm not sure about the shot above, but I'll include it here anyway.

There's lots to see and experience in the mountains. I was listening to Seal on my iPhone while walking in the city toward the trailhead, but I put the music away when I got to the mountain, partially to allow myself to experience the nature, but mostly to allow myself to listen for snakes.

My worry about snakes (born here) was not unfounded, and I came across many at the lower elevations in the first half hour...

Even if I knew at the time that this snake was not poisonous, I would have still given it a wide berth. I don't like snakes. Or bugs, for that matter.

There are, of course, many sounds in the forest as well. Here's one that I heard a lot early on, though I could never find what made it:

I'd think it's a frog, but it has a creakiness to it that calls to mind a pigon. This particular recording (with my iPhone) was at the mouth of a hole that was spewing what looked to be eggs of some sort (likely frog eggs)...

Some of these paths date back thousands of years, so we have to remember that what seems like “middle of nowhere” to us now may well have been “middle of the highway” back then, so it's not surprising to find shrines and such along the way, especially here near Kyoto.

I was somewhat surprised to find a guy on a bicycle come up behind me, further surprised when he ask whether I had dropped my hat earlier on the trail and I realized that I had. He kindly offered to go back and get it for me, telling me to continue my hike and he'd catch up to me. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, he appeared with my hat.

I would have been very bummed to have lost that Sunday Afternoons hat, both for when I would need its sun protection later on this hike, and in general for the future, because I use it a lot in the summers.

I gave him one of my Snickers candybars as thanks, and he headed off ahead of me...

The bike can make for great time in some situations, but in others it becomes a burden that slows you down, so I caught up and passed him on a very steep section with lots of step-like roots...

We repeated the back and forth a few times on the way up. Once after cresting a local hill, I waited off to the side for him to come flying by...

Another time I waited at the edge of the trail to try a more “actiony” shot....

By this time we had exchanged names (his is Hiroshi) and chatted a bit. He does this trip once a week, to stay in shape.

This was the last I saw of him for a couple of hours.

I eventually came to the clearing where Stéphane and I has paused last time...

I took the opportunity to pause this time as well, mostly to stretch the legs before hitting the next section of the trail, because it includes some very steep downhill sections.

In looking at the tracklogs from the two trips, I'm happy to see that I did this section of the trail at the same pace as last time, but unlike last time, felt just great at this point.

But my anxiety was running high, worried about my knees for the downhill sections. I was also starting to get a blister on one foot because I didn't have proper shoes. It's hard enough to get size 13½AA shoes in The States, much less here, so I was wearing some old beat-up (well-broken-in) street shoes that aren't intended for hiking.

Continued here...

This post is a few more shots following on from “Quick Peek from Kyoto’s Aoi Matsuri”, about one of Kyoto's main “period costumes” festivals, the Aoi Matsuri festival (葵祭; at Wikipedia).

Of course, where you have horses on parade, you have...

Continued here...