Mt. Kongo

I woke up early and dropped by the convenience store to get some breakfast and lunch for the hike to Kansai's highest peak, Mt. Kongo. The train ride took a couple of hours and I have unfortunately missed the bus going to the mountain so I had to stick around an hour or so for the next one. Soon, I was out into Kansai's wilderness, one of the thing I love about bus rides through Japan's countryside is always seeing the different natural landscapes.

I went down the bus stop hoping it was the right one but I couldn't find the trailhead. I asked a group of boys for directions but they said it was their first time here as well. Eventually an old man pointed us to the right direction and I started the climb. To be frank, Mt. Kongo was pretty much a stair climbing simulator, there were some nice moments here and there but a huge majority of the hike involved a ruthless uphill slope filled with flight after flight of stairs. One of the memorable spots of Mt. Kongo was a gazebo with a huge cherry blossom beside it. As the wind blew, petals would scatter all around. It was a very zen moment. The craziest thing was I actually had a job interview, and I had to do it while climbing the mountain. I didn't want to, but they pretty much said it was now or never so I tried to give it a go. Needless to say, it ended very poorly due to bad connection (of course), not that I cared much for it and I continued on the hike and reached the summit soon enough. I asked the same group of guys to take my photo with the summit sign and had some onigiri with a view of Kansai below. After a while, I took another route going down which was much more fun. I called Janelle and we had a nice video and chat while I was hiking down. The interwebs were much more cooperative on this side of the mountain, I guess. Eventually, the hike downward started to get really challenging and I had to say good bye to Janelle while I continued on down. There were a lot of steep parts but being surrounded by the tall trees and upheaved roots were much better than the stairs going up. The only thing I was unsure of was where I would end up following the path as I didn't want to go down the same way. I finally reached the bottom of the mountain and followed the road going back to the bus stop. Along the way, there were more cherry blossoms. I got to the bus stop and ate the remainder of my sandwich and got on the bus going back to Osaka.

From there, I went to an onsen as is customary for every hike that I do in Japan. When I got back to the area of my hostel, I had some ramen and finally got back to sleep.Read more