Kuroyama

My good friend Nikita joined me for this hike and it brought us back to the familiar plum village of Ogose, except this time the plum trees were all green instead of pink.

From there we took a bus towards the trail head for Kuroyama but instead of going straight to the highlight of the day, the Three Waterfalls of Kuroyama, we went around it so that we could actually hike first and end it at the waterfalls.

The hike up was quite smooth and the inclines were very gentle, what made it harder was the humidity and heat and so I found myself sweating and short of breath faster than usual. We scaled around 300 m in an hour or so and we made it to another familiar place for me: Kaburi Pass. I was here just a few weeks ago when I was doing the hike to Mt. Ogami and visiting the hidden mountain temples.

From there, we had lunch at the same udon restaurant that I ate before and I ordered the same tsukimi udon which I would have preferred cold with the hot weather but it was still delicious.

We walked on the road side for a bit before getting back on the trail and ending up on the road again, there was a sign saying keep out due to the landslides but we still went through, thinking to ourselves that if it was really that bad then we'd turn around.

The descent was steep and much more challenging and twice as fun as the rest of the hike, we had to do a lot of maneuvering, parkour, and jumping to get across the rivers. After about an hour of descent, we finally reached the fabled waterfalls of Kuroyama. The first one was the Tengu Waterfall which was a tall waterfall tucked deep into the cliffside cavern, we were quite impressed with Nikita mentioning that the energy here was very palpable.

We thought that maybe that was it as the Tengu Waterfall seemed to have some cascades but not just yet, we went further ahead and saw plenty of make-shift shrines for various Buddhist deities such as Jizo, Kannon and Buddha, and even some other deity that I wasn't familiar with, a long white-bearded man sitting on a tiger.

The next waterfall, the Male, was bigger and even much more impressive than the Tengu one, and the second cascading waterfall was the Female which was directly below the Male waterfall. Both of them created a mesmerizing view, washing my face with the cool waters was very refreshing and there were even some trout swimming against the current.

After a nice hike and a nice reward, we wanted to go home but the bus schedule had other plans and we were forced to walk back all the way to Ogose station instead of just waiting there. It was a 1 hour and a half walk but it was still strangely pleasant and time passed by quickly and we were back in Tokyo before we knew it.Read more