Hiking with Yumi and Manabu

One of my students from my Wednesday adult class called me late Sunday night and asked if I wanted to go hiking with her and her husband Monday morning. Being that Mondays are my days off, I naturally wanted to take her up on this offer. Once again, I must say again that I’m so blessed to be around people that want to show me around, take me out for a meal, or to show me a good time!

Yumi has been asking me for weeks, “When can you go hiking? What days do you have off?” So, this spontaneous plan began to take shape. When talking on the phone with her, late Sunday night, she let me know that they would be picking me up around 9:30am and that we would grab a bite to eat in the little village that was right outside the trailhead.

Monday morning I woke up and rode my bike to the post office to grab some cash for lunch. Yeah, that’s right, I said post office, not bank. I don’t know why, but here in Japan you can keep money at the post office. I chose that over a bank because it’s cheaper to wire money into my American account. Anywho, by 9:30 we were on our way.

It was a cold and blustery fall day, but my gloves and hat helped keep me warm. By this time of year, most of the leaves had fallen off the trees and created a colorful path to walk on. The

destination of this hike was a waterfall. The estimated tim

e of the hikewas about 3 hours. But as we hiked, we could see that our hike was becoming shorter and shorter due to trails being closed. We were tempted to ignore the signs, but alas, we didn’t want to get in trouble. Walking along the higher part of the gully, we could look down and see the trail that ran along a stream. We were a bit disappointed we could not be down there, but as we kept trekking along, we figured out why those trails were closed. Big boulders from the cliffs had fallen down and crushed some of the bridges, and if people walked down there, they might be in harms way of another boulder crashing down on them.

Well, we made it to a waterfall, I don’t know if it was the waterfall. But it was still beautiful. We made our way back to the car and arrived back just 1 hour after we had left it. So the time of our hike was severally cut short. But, now it was time for lunch…

...NOT, cause the one little restaurant in that village was closed, dab-burnit! We were hungry! I don’t know the name of the village, but its like 20 off the main on a dirt road up in the hills. There are only three of four houses, a restaurant and oddly enough, the train stops there. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures to show you but if you have seen the movie the village, it’s a lot like that…only smaller.

We drove back to Yumi’s house where she made some good ol’ steak. So now we were eating our late lunch when her friend, Nobuko aka another student of mine, called Yumi and invited us over for dinner. We agreed, so a half hour later we went over to her house and had some delicious soup.

Once 8:30pm rolled around, the party started to wind down and I thought that it might be time to plan my lesson for the next morning. With our final goodbyes, and “see you on Wednesday,” Yumi dropped me back off at my apartment. It was a great day, and boy was I full.