Mitake and Otake

These photos are from a few weeks ago, the weekend of Golden Week. My photo backlog is building up faster than I can publish things!

Golden week is the big public holiday when almost everyone gets the week off work. So obviosuly, everything is fully booked if you want to go away. We decided to take a day trip to go for a walk in the hills near to Tokyo, from the town of Mitake, taking a ridge walk via Mt. Otake, and climbing down into Oku-tama from the train back.

The suggested route involes a bus ride from the tain station to the bottom of the cable car. However half of Tokyo seemed to be ahead of us in the bus queue. Golden week. It's Golden Week. Fortunately the walk was quite nice and not too long.

All the people who caught the bus then joined the queue for the cable car. It's called a cable car, but it's more like a small train. We just walked up.

At the top of Mt. Mitake there is a small temple. People were queuing to go get a blessing. Some people just looking at the views. Some people just chilling.

Most people just visit the Mitakedake temple. The path along the ridge was pretty quiet.

These statues guard an otherwise unexceptional little peaklet.

Fortunately, we only went down these stairs. I feel sorry for the poor monks who would have had to up and down these every day. (Also the tourist we met coming the other way!)