Mt. Takatori

It was Nikita and I again today, it was an ambitious day of exploration and our first stop was a "sidequest" up in Zushi. It involved climbing a short and easy mountain, Mt. Takatori. It pretty much took less than 2 hours to finish the whole thing but this mountain was very special as it had a ton of interesting spots to see. Notwithstanding the fact that the trail was actually extremely lush with greenery even though it was so close to the city. It felt like we were transported into a jungle with a birdsongs all around.

We arrived at the first landmark which was a forest Buddhist temple, Jinmuji. It had the famous guardians of Agyo and Ungyo as well as the Boddhisatva Ksitigarbha, or Jizo in Japan's case. Holding a staff on the right hand and a jewel on the left. I prayed for safe and beautiful day ahead and saw a squirrel immediately afterwards. The hike was easy albeit a few slip ups but the summit was right around the corner.

The summit of Mt. Takatori was pretty unique in that it was some sort of quarry, with a lot of strange rock formations resembling ancient ruins. This was all cool and all but the main sight to see was the giant Maitreya Buddha stone carving which required us to go deeper into the mountains. It was super worth the effort coming here first and seeing this amazing work of art.

On the way down, we got lost again and had to backtrack but eventually we made it back to the station and proceeded to Miura.Read more