Report on the TENGU Tour held on 16 December 2018

It was another cold day.  During the tour the weather was not good enough for a clearer view of Tokyo Skytree and high rise buildings in the central Tokyo from the Observation Deck of Mount Takao Beer Mount.   

Our guests were two young ladies. One of them is from Sydney in Australia who has lived in the city of Yokohama for 4 years. The other is from Thailand and has a Japanese husband and two children living in the city of Hachioji for 1.5 years.  

On the way, we took a cable car leaving at 10:00 am from Kiyotaki Station and then as usual followed Trail No. 1 which is the front approach to Yakuo-in Temple, the main religious structure of Mt. Takao. 

When we started the tour, we did not see too many visitors at the foot of the mountain.  Looks like the season of autumn leaves is now over. So, Trail No. 1 was not so crowded either.  We spent more time than usual in guiding our guests.   

We were still, however, able to arrive at the main hall of Yakuo-in Temple around 11:30 am.  So, we thought that we should have been able to be  in time to witness the procession of Buddhist monks on the way back from their third performance of Buddhist fire ritual called “Goma Fire Ritual” of today which usually starts at 11:00 am and lasts about 30 minutes.  In fact, we failed to see their procession.  Looks like they terminated their ritual earlier than usual.  We were a little bit disappointed. 

Before we got to the grounds of Yakuo-in Temple, it started drizzling while it stopped before the end of lunch time.   

We took photos together with our guests at the peak of the mountain before having lunch there.  Unfortunately, we were not be able to see Mount Fuji from the peak of the mountain.  

We left the peak of the mountain around 1:00 pm.  On the way back, we took a different route by following Iroha-no-mori Trail seeing a huge old beech tree nicknamed “Beauty” then switching to Trail No. 4 going through a suspension bridge called "Miyama-bashi Bridge", which was the highlight on that route where we took photos with our guests again, and then came back to Trail No. 1. 

At the request of the guests, at Kasumi-dai Observation Deck, we changed the route from Trail No. 1 to Biwa-taki Trail to see the Biwa-taki Water Fall located at the southern foot of Mt. Takao where mountain priests take ascetic training of a standing under a water fall.  Fortunately, we happen to see one guy starting his training there.   

 We came back to the foot of the mountain around 2:30 pm and took photos with our guests again in front of the cable car station, which was the end of the tour.

  Written by Shiro