Private tour on Nov. 9th,2022

 Today’s guest was a youth from Australia, who is holidaying in Japan, traveling around from Tokyo to Kyushu.

The weather was perfect with comfortable temperature. We started the tour at 10:15,

a rather late start compared with the usual tour. We had planned to take the cable car but as we didn’t want to waste time waiting for the cable car, we took chair lift to climb up instead. The reason for our hurrying along was that the guest wanted to experience the Shojin Ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cooking) to be served at the Yakuoin guest house from 11:00am, subject to prior sale. Though the number of visitors to Mt.Takao today was not as big as that of the peak time (which could be 1-2 weeks later), we wanted to make it sure that we will never miss the lunch. We arrived at the guest house in time. The lunch consists of rice, miso soup. (both free refills), salad, Udon soup(Japanese flour noodle), pickles, grated Japanese yam, sesame tofu and sweet red bean soup as a desert.

We enjoyed the lunch. It’s a fun and you may try it if you like. An advice for you here is that they accept cash only, no credit cards are acceptable.

Then we started to the summit, where unfortunately we could not see Mt.Fuji due to the fog but could see at the visitor center there the giant flying squirrel (stuffed), a popular mascot of Mt.Takao.

 As we had no reason to hurry any more after lunch, we started descending leisurely via Trail no.4, where we crossed the popular suspension bridge, enjoying the autumnal tints all around. We safely arrived back at Kiyotaki Station by cable car, bathing in the afterglow of the beauty of Mt.Takao.

Though we were in a rush climbing up, we hope our guest enjoyed the tour including the lunch. The tour ended around 2pm.

 

(Written by Nori)