Day 3 (Part1): Finding our inner peace

Another early morning, and we're greeted with overcast skies. Weather forecast said it would rain quite heavily in the morning, with fine weather in the afternoon. Man! Our plan was to visit Mount Takao in the morning! Climbing up a hill while getting wet didn't sound too enticing.. But we're not shifting it to noon either as that's the only time for us to visit the other places that open only after 11....

Again, we took the Saikyo line train to Shinjuku (which was faster than the Yamanote line) and did a transfer to the Keio line. Shinjuku terminal still looked confusing, but I was starting to get used to it.

We're lucky enough to board the express train direct to Takaosanguchi station. With some skips in stations and without the 2nd transfer, the journey was shortened from an hour plus to a 50 min ride. Way to go!

The bad thing was, the rain started to get a little heavy. The good thing was... We're not the only ones who were silly enough to go there in the rain despite the weather forecast.. Perhaps, it was the power of the kouyou (red leaves) that discarded the dampened spirits away.

This is more yellowish than reddish...

Oh! Something reddish!

At Takao-san, there are a few routes up to the summit. When you're with a time constraint, the only logical thing to do was to find the fastest route up. And the fastest rout to the Takao-san summit was to take a tram (it's named cable car by the locals....) up to mid-hill and continue up to the summit on foot.

I was always given the task of buying tickets... Darn.

In the "Cable car".. It's similar to the one in Hongkong.

Image spoilt by the rain drops. Thanks.

This is Captain XYZ speaking. Welcome aboard the Takao-san cable car!

Look! An oncoming cable car!

The view from the mid-point of the hill was quite breath-taking! And thank goodness the temperatures were a nice (I'm guessing) near 20 degrees celsius. Air con temps. Not too cold to be uncomfortable, and not too warm for hill-climbing~

Snappy, snap!

It did stop raining for a while, but the clouds rolled in and started to drizzle again.

Clouds and rain.

Wow! It's 2.4 km from where we were standing to the Takaosanguchi train station! Anyway, we're pressing on towards Yakuoin and the summit.

Along the way, we passed by this famous Tako-Sugi. It's an ancient cedar tree with roots bulging out like octopus tentacles..

It looked even more tako-like with the "slime" (rain-water)

But of course, whatever it is, please refrain from climbing onto my roots or touch me. Thanks.

Tako that brings in luck... Can I bring this tako home?

Nearing the Yakuoin.. Let me ward off some bad spirits..

Washing away our sins in this sacred area..

Come to think about it, this place felt a bit like a scene out of Inuyasha... Besides, Takao-san is related to a minor god called the Tengu (天狗) which is a dog-like youkai (monster).. No wonder most of its food names were named after this creature... The locals must have also imagined the Tengu to be black...

Tengu Dango made of goma (black sesame seeds) and rice flour.

It's very tasty!

The 10 Buddhist precepts.

And finally, we reached the Yakuoin... Had really no idea what it meant when the rain suddenly poured like crazy.. Crying happy tears for us now that we've reached this place? Or trying to test us on our faith in continuing up to the summit?

Yakuoin (薬王院)

One of the shitennou (四天王)

Another of the shitennou..

I have absolutely no idea what this was... But the red-face statue was HUUUUGE!

Climbing up another flight of stairs to another part of the shrine.. (We had climbed a few flights of stairs before this)

Next part of the shrine...

We had to climb up another few flight of stairs (which had this sign that said "to the summit" in Japanese) and reached this area:

After this was another few flights of stairs up (==''' complete with a "nice waterfall" due to the rain.. poor xzz had her sports shoes all drenched from the inside out!) and some gruelling climb to the summit....