Mountaintop Leaf Peeping

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Although I wish I could be back Stateside, celebrating with family and friends and generally overeating on pumpkin bread, frozen fruit salad (it's a family thing, don't ask), and pie, I know I have plenty to be thankful about here in Tokyo.

Tokyo hasn't gotten snow at all, unlike most of Chicago or the East Coast, from what I've been told. In fact, it's not even peak fall leaves season yet, which remains mind-boggling to me on many levels. It's too warm. It's weird. Anyways. One popular fall activity is to head out of the city and into nature for some good ol' leaf peeping, so that's just what Troy and I decided to do this past weekend.

Our destination of choice was Mount Takao, a small 599-meter mountain that's easily accessible from Tokyo and a popular day trip getaway. In fact, Takao is the last stop on my usual train line -- yet I'd never been.

The climb is neither technically difficult nor overly strenuous. In fact, as Troy and I plowed on ahead in our workout clothes and hiking boots, I saw many people in questionable footwear (heels?!) making this climb. It was quite crowded (par for the Tokyo course) with families, couples, and tourists of all nationalities. I'm sure we looked a bit like a line of ants, winding our way in an almost continuous stream up the trail.

But as you got to the summit, despite the clouds in the sky and the crowds on the ground, the leaves were lovely:

Unintentionally, I realized I was matching with the trees.

At the top of Mount Takao is Yakuoin temple. 

It's notable for all its depictions of tengu, a supernatural being from Japanese folklore. Although tengu literally means "celestial dog," there are actually two types, daitengu and kotengu. Daitengu live deep in the mountains and have supernatural powers of flight, fighting, and the wind. Kotengu (one of which is depicted in the statue below) take the forms of birds of prey (crows, hawks etc.) -- and they might eat you. This is, of course, a simplistic description, but needless to say the temple grounds were intriguing. 

Here are some tengu sandals! 

And here we mere mortals are. I now sport snazzy mitten-gloves.

And of course going down is always surprisingly more difficult on the knees than one assumes. Conclusion: I need to get out more.