Mountain Climbing Training

I've said this many times. Host families are literally the best people you can hang out with. They welcome you, a foreigner, into their home without knowing you at all, feed you, take you on fun trips, talk to you despite maybe not knowing the language. There is so much at risk for them and yet they STILL welcome you.

I stayed with them for half a month, which is a lot of posts, so I will maybe squish multiple days into one and talk about what we did together!

First things first, my host mother is crazy about climbing mountains. Like, the whole huge backpack, mountain climbing sticks and all that fun stuff. We climbed a baby mountain to practice for a big mountain later.  I thought it would be a nature walk. Aside from bugs, there are no animals up in the mountains. It's quiet. DEAD QUIET.

This was the look out point. We could have gone further up, but it was raining and I was ready to die. It was fun though. I was drenched in sweat and eaten alive by bugs but my host mother is so sweet and happy that it was so much fun. Japanese mountains are just... nothing like I've seen before. The forests are so different. I don't live near mountains nor had I seen one really until I came to Japan and holy crap.

SEE A PATH? I DON'T EITHER.

 After that we went to an onsen. Literally that was my whole trip. Climb a mountain, do something intense, then go to an onsen. Once getting cleaned up in lovely happy onsen (hot spring) we went to a shrine we went to back in March. No more cherry blossoms, but it is still a lovely walk!

One bell for family, for partner, for friends and for strangers.