Hiking Mt. Rokko!

So as I've mentioned before, Kobe is very much like Seattle as it's next to the water as well as next to a mountain range. So of course, I had to go hiking! We met on campus before setting out. As usual, photo props go to Ashley and whoever stole her camera to take photos :)

We took a 30 minute walk to hike up to the base of the trail (our school is about halfway up the mountain already, so we walked to the trailhead). There is a cable car that will take you to the top, which you later took down, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

There are wild boars on the mountain! Which we didn't get to see lol

The gang!

This is what I probably looked like the entire time, since we didn't have a good trailmap, I was constantly worried I'd lead everyone down the wrong path, so I was always scouting ahead lol

Trail pictures! Some of them look unreal!

2/3 up we broke for lunch/snack time

And we got to the top! It was a bit cloudy, but the view was better in person :)

Us troublemakers

Just Chilling

At this point, we were planning to start heading back, but then we decided to keep going and explore some of the activities that were on top of the mountain (which resulted in about an hour more of walking)

There was a music box museum, which we didn't go into since it cost money lol

It did have a nice garden though :) It really reminded me of Arriety

We got to the second observation point which was much more impressive, it had a tower! :D It was like a small European town, so it felt like we weren't in Japan anymore, besides the fact that most people there were Japanese lol

PHOTO OF THE DAY

And celebratory icecream

And then we took a bus and the cable car down since everyone was exhausted lol

It was a most exciting day and a great kick-off right before Golden Week, but more about that later. Definitely going to go hiking again :D

--Lisa