Hiking Nantaisan round 2

Had a nice weekend this weekend, Hiked Nantai san for the 2nd time, although from the 4th station about halfway up. Miyagi san, the leader of the FHI hiking club, took us up this construction route, which im pretty sure was illegal, but the gate wasnt locked so we just moved it and drove on through. Legs are a bit sore even from the 4th station, but no where near as sore as the last time hiking from the bottom. Here is a picture of a sign at the base at the shrine that says the hiking route is closed.

It was quite cold at the top.

The point of the hike was to see a bit of the fall colors, but most had already fallen off at this elevation.

We did get a good view of Mt. Fuji though in the distance.

They were doing some kind of construction and were using this lift to get equipment up the mountain, sort of interesting I thought.

Hiking Nantaisan

Misato and I are planning on climbing mount Fuji this summer so we thought we would practice by climbing the highest peak in Tochigi, which turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. It was really steep and took us about 8.5hrs total including a 40min break at the top for lunch.

The next day we were really sore but walked around lake Chuzenjiko a bit, saw the famous Kegon Falls, water falls.

Then we saw a demonstration of a katana sword by an actual katana swordsmith. This is the raw materials to finished product, the big block is the only part of the sword in the end. The rest is a handle to use while shaping the sword.

The process is about 12-15 times of putting the metal in the fire then hitting it with the hammer each which takes like 20min so we only watched a couple of the first few.