Mount Takao

Over the long weekend Ster and the kids had no out of the house responsibilities. Sat, Sun, Mon and Tuesday were family days. I made a long list of things to do together: go to the library, swim at the Natatorium, play tennis, eat at Chili's, get Pizza Hut, go hiking, FHE lessons (2). Sadly, we didn't get to do much of anything on my list...

We spent Saturday preparing for and waiting for a typhoon. Saturday night it hit. Sunday our ward was not doing regular Sunday services. We were having General Conference weekend. Our ward was showing the Sunday morning session at the church then a potluck lunch. And the Sunday afternoon session after that.
My family watched the Sunday morning session days prior so we could show up with food for the potluck and stay for the Sunday afternoon session with our ward.

Sterling baked a whole turkey for the potluck. He is planning to be out of town and away from his family for Thanksgiving. So, he may not get turkey then. That is why he baked a turkey and took it. And I tell you, the whole turkey...was needed! It got eaten up! And Ster did not get his fill of it. So he plans to purchase another turkey some time.

Anyway, Sunday morning before going to the church we went on a walk. We walked to get out of the house because we had been stuck indoors for safety for 24 hours. We walked because we wanted some exercise. And we walked to check out the damage done in our neighborhood. There was a branch off a tree here and there. Some extra leaves on the ground. But not much damage. When we had a typhoon a month or so ago it was much worse than this.

Sadly, a lot of Japan did get hit hard. There had been a typhoon, extreme flooding, an earth quake and even a volcano eruption throughout Japan...all within 24 hours.

Thankfully for us Yokota is in a safe location, far from the ocean. And the buildings are made to withstand the weather.
During the flooding and typhoon we almost had to be evacuated. The flooding threat line came all the up to our street! Here on base we are told to keep an emergency "to go bag" in case of evacuation.

               We wanted to go hiking on Monday but we expected a lot of Japanese roads would not be drivable. We might not have been able to make it to any hiking places and the hikes might be washed out.

So we waited until Tuesday. The cleanup had been done well enough for us to get to Mount Takao. Tuh-cow.

It was about an hour's drive even though the Mountain is only 10 miles from the base.
It was a cloudy day, luckily it did not rain on us!
We paid to park the car and we headed for the mountain. We gave the kids a fun ride by purchasing tickets to ride the lift chairs up the first half of the mountain. That was fun! We planned to hike the whole way down later though.

We hiked into a cloud! That's how high we were. That was cool.
Here is a pic that is distorted...using Ster's hide lens on his camera:

We paid to go see the monkeys and we paid a little extra to feed them!

There were a few different temples on the mountain. This one was the more unique. It's the first I've seen like it in Japan:

 There were beautiful blue butterflies!

 At the top of the mountain we ate our packed lunch. In Japan it is rude to eat and walk at the same time. You have to sit and eat. Sometimes this is inconvenient for me because I am use to handing my kids a snack as we walk to save time.

 I had hoped to see a lot of beautiful fall trees! But this was the only tree on the mountain we saw with colors:

We crossed a big bridge:

 When we started heading back down the mountain we decided to take a more nature trail. The waterfall trail was washed out and unhikable. But there was another dirt trail we could take. And when that trail landed back on paved trail we ran into some friends...Emily Faggard. A family from our ward was there hiking. Emily's parents are here visiting and they all went to Mt. Takao. It was fun to run into them. Mike Faggard and most of the kids were further up the mountain. We just ran into Emily, her parents and a daughter McKenzie (from my primary class).

When we arrived at the trail we wanted to take to get down the mountain we found it too was unsafe to hike. It was the only trail down the mountain. We had no choice but to pay to get down the mountain. It took less time and was less of a workout but it was more fun...taking the lift again.

 Before going down the mountain Sterling bought what looked like Japanese cookies. When we arrived at the car we tried our "cookies" which turned out to be waffles with sugary bean paste inside. The Japanese think that sugary bean paste is dessert. It's not that tasty to Americans. But they sure looked cool:

We ate junk food and watched Peter Pan in the car as we drove home. It only took us about 30 minutes to get home. We find that mornings are always crowded on Japanese streets. Driving in the afternoon gets you much better time!