Weekend Adventures

One of my friends from CU is here in Japan, and he has been emailing me since he got here. On Saturday evening he showed up in Kyoto, and we decided that we would check out the nightlife of the town. I had heard about a Reggae bar called Rub a’ Dub. I had gotten directions from this Japanese girl who spoke very good English. The only problem was that the directions were a little erroneous. We spent about an hour and a half looking for the place, and asking directions until we met someone who knew of the reggae bar. It was down in a basement with grungy walls. The bar was covered with shanty style corregated metal roofing. The music was great, and they even had jerk chicken on the menu. We left the bar at 11:05, and soon found out that the buses stop running at 10:46. We ended up walking about five miles back to the dorm.
The next morning we went out for a hike that was described in this book called Hiking in Japan. It was listed as easy, so I thought that it would be a good one to start with. We took a buss from Kyoto up to Kiyotaki, a small village just northwest of the city. The town is in a very narrow valley, along a river, and has many traditional style homes and inns. After walking through the town the trail started up the hill, and up, and up. We walked 4.5 kilometers straight up this mountain called Atago-san. At the top was a beautiful Buddhist temple that seemed to have the theme of wild boars, inuishi. The carpentry was exquisite with carvings of animals, and gorgeous timber-framing. The whole temple smelled of cedar wood.The top of the mountain was cold, rainy, and in the clouds. There were virgin cedars all around, and some that were about ten feet in circumference. After visiting the temple we asked the local monk which way the next part of the trail was, and he answered by telling us that it was very dangerous with a narrow trail, many connecting trails, and bears. I had prayed for our trip to be safe, so I took his warning as an omen not to try and go the next 10K down the other side of the mountain. Plus, by that time the rain was coming down in torrents, so headed down the way that we had come. Once down the mountain we took a lovely swim in the river, which had numerous schools of fish, and even a turtle. The hike was hard, but it made me excited for more hiking in Japan.