Hiking Hitachi

Today I wandered out to find a trail in the hills behind Hitachi City. This was somewhat more difficult than usual, as my map had only Japanese writing. There was a symbol next to some characters that looked like a park/washrooms at the trailhead, so I headed in that direction (even that wasn't a sure thing, because I couldn't positively tell where on the map I was starting from). After wandering through a shrine, and cutting around a schoolyard, I gave up and decided to just try and get to a high point so I could catch a decent view of the city. As I wandered up a hill, I heard children's voices - and suddenly came to a park. And the characters on the sign matched the trailhead on the map! I stopped at another small shrine (they're everywhere!), then continued on for a couple kilometres until the trail ran into a gate. Maybe I'll climb it later, but since no one really knew where I was, I decided not to go too far.

After that I wandered back down through town to the beach, past some crazy high retaining walls (photos here for those interested in retaining walls - you know who you are), and an expressway built over the water which doesn't really go anywhere (and supposedly wrecked a good surfing beach).

On the way home I passed a little market selling what looked like the freshest, ripest, most perfect strawberries ever. And only 180 yen! I bought them and had them with green tea for a snack.



I took lots of photos during the day - flowers and gardens are everywhere, and passing by houses often means catching a glimpse of someone trimming a hedge, planting a garden or just puttering.

The photos are at my flickr site.