Green Shower Dragon Forest

"龍ノ口クリーンシャワーの森" -
"Entrance  to the Dragon green shower forest"

The upcoming week is called "golden Week" and marks a couple of days off for most Japanese. So is Monday, Tuesday and Friday public holiday, and many Japanese enjoy also Tuesday and Wednesday off. Families are travelling around Japan and for most of the freshmen it will be the first free time since the beginning of their work. Also for me! Unfortunately, Machi had to work a lot this weekend but since her Mum and Moe (her little sister) wanted to go hiking with the families dog I decided to use the wonderful summer weather in Okayama and joined them.Sunshine and 26°C.

We wanted to get up into the Dragon forest of the green shower. Sten and I spotted the sign already on the way to Yuba Onsen, where we went with Thomas to initiate him into the mystery's of Japanese hot springs. I was very happy to get out of our lab into a Japanese forest: I got the feeling that most forests around Okayama are rather natural finished and enjoyed their earthy smell and dense green.

Meru, the dog of family Hidaka.

One thing I couldn't remember when I came back to Germany after my exchange year in Japan were detailed memories of birds or the vegetation of Japan. Therefore, I decided to pay more attention this time and to learn about the animals and plants of Okayama, Chuukoku and Japan. I started already with some Ornithology, such as the Japanese bush warbler, with it's remarkable song. I get to hear it's melody whenever someone sends me an email or sms on my phone (Go head and make me memorise it's song with an email of yours). However, so I tried to pay attention to the lower and higher plants in the forest, the bird sounds and the animals. I didn't expect a wild boar, bear or deer to appear so I tried to spot some lizards and snakes.

Shrine on the a pre-peak of the hill, view south towards Okayama

I was lucky though, since Moe and I spotted a golden-brown, about 59 cm long, snake slithering away into some brick-wood just a couple of meters a way from us. As far as I know there are no venomous snakes in Japan, but a couple of signs on the way down warning hikers to be aware of "vipers", which are normally considered to be venomous, made me less confident about my vague knowledge.
I think you can call it a cultural difference between Japan and Germany, that you can find in natural spots smaller or bigger shrines, often connected to the local goddess (Kami - 神), and hence connected to Shintoism, not Buddhism.　I know that you can find crosses and little chapels along hiking ways in especially catholic areas in Germany (like...let me think... Bavaria, perhaps?), but since Shintoism is not at all related to Christianity it is quite a bit of a difference and the little shrines also look different compared to the chapels ins Bavaria. 

Moe with Meru.

Meru enjoyed the walk up to the about 210 m high peak a lot. She was mostly tied to her line, since she used to freak out when she sees other people coming. It's not that she is going to attack them, but she starts barking and is scared, or excited, we don't really now - a timid little thing. I build up the theory that she sees us as her sheep she needs to protected and just tries to warn strangers not to come any closer to her little babies. We took a short rest at the peak of the hill and enjoyed the view down towards Okayama and into the valley that leads you to Tokushima. We ate self made Onigiri (お握り). Onigiri are made often from left over rice, some stuff inside (like a sour plum, or sesame) and a dried algae "leave" wrapped around it.

View towards west from the peak.

GPS treaking with iphone and google earth back to the car.

Entrance to the Hajiman temple

"Hikers everywhere!"

Thomas showed my how to use my iphone to track myself and record my walked path in GPS coordinates. I tried this for our way down the hill and imported the data into google earth that gave a height and speed profile of our uphill tour. On our way down we stopped on a cross road that would lead us down to the parking lots or to a little shrine on a minor peak, but no direct path down to the hills foot from the shrine was marked on the public map next to the road. However, our own map showed us a path that seems to lead us down to where we started our tour. We gave it a try and walked towards the temple along a small steep path with rough stairs and little stone gates. When we reached the stairs of the Hajiman temple, the goddess of war (that's maybe the reason why the forest is related to a Dragon - I still haven't found out why it is called like that), I realised that the natural granite stones were covered with concrete, a material that gets apparently highly appreciated by Japanese. I couldn't really understand why some one would do something so ugly, but maybe because Granite gets slippery after rain they wanted to increase the friction, or maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder! At the top of the stairs waited two stone figure, both symbolising dogs, the so called Komainu (狛犬) which are there to prevent evil spirits to enter the inner shrine. One stone figure has it's mouth closed while the other one has it's mouth open. This symbolises the beginning and the end, as they form with their mouth the words "A" and "UN" (mouth closed) which is the first and last letter of the Japanese alphabet (あ and ん). However, even in Buddhism and Hinduism is this sound often used in meditation and represents a similar meaning as the alpha and omega in Christianity. Keisuke from our Lab helped me to find out about the meaning of the dogs, so thanks to him!
As I mentioned above did we try to take the not mapped path down back to the car. Since Meru isn't really used to climb stairs we got a bit into trouble when we discovered that the path led us to a stony steep slope. I hope that only the first meters would be like that but we discovered soon that we could risk to walk that way, since one of us had to carry the dog and climb at the same time.

Stairs up to the temple.

So we turned around, walked back to the temple and down to the cross road where we once began our walk up to the temple.

You meet these kind of dogs quite
often at Shintou temples.

This way down was much more comfortable than the other one (you can see our turning point on the google maps picture) and we even risked it to let Meru walked without her line. She was quite happy to jump around and play with us all the way. When we reached the car, all of us were surprisingly exhausted, even though the hill wasn't that high. Meru fell asleep after a short while. I assume we all were just not used to hike any more. It's been a while since Australia that I moved a lot. I'm happy to ride a good and fast bike again, but I'm still not back in form, when I ever have been in "form" before! I definitely want to do something like that twice or three times a week. Work a lot in the week and enjoy the weekends outside. There are still many little things I haven't discovered around and in Okayama. Hopefully I can present some of those things here in the year I'll be around in this city. On Thursday and Friday we are going to a trip to a friends house in Hyogo-ken. Hopefully, I find sometime to write about it next weekend.

All the Best,

Your Ray

Pre-Peak of 龍の森

Entrance to the rocky path - it looks harmless here, but only because it is the entrance. We decided to return - probably fun to get up this way.