Sunday, October 17, 2010

Hiking - The Great Outdoors

So yesterday I went hiking with a few friends in an unexplored part of Chiba. It was down in Seiwa Mori, about an hour away from my place. The drive was pretty nice. We drove along a road that follows the Pacific coast. We actually saw a lot of people out surfing as well!! I didn't realize that so many people still went surfing at this time of year! But apparently this is one of the best times to go during the year. It's crowded with surfers only, the water is still relatively nice, and the waves are good. I guess that would all add up to a fun time. Maybe I'll try surfing at some point in the fall here!

Well, we arrived at Seiwa Forest where we were going to go hiking with some friends that we had met camping a few weeks back. It took a little over an hour to get to our destination. Not too bad! This forest is in Kimitsu....which is where my buddy and I got stranded one of our first weekends coming back from Tokyo!!!! Haha, so we were back to take on any challenges that the city had to bring us! Well, we began hiking and came upon very cool trails and challenging courses! But, in the end it was worth it. We saw many views such as the one below:

I can say that I think I'm in pretty good shape, but after the first few steps of one of our first trails, I was breathing real heavy and my legs were burning! But that didn't stop me from completely giving up on the day....we had just begun after all! The forest was really beautiful and had lots of good scenery. We encountered some nearly impossible trails as you can see below.....

As you can see, it's pretty much a stone wall with very tiny edges for you to step up on....but we made it through! We walked for nearly 4 hours and were getting pretty tired. Overall, it was a very fun time! Got to go out and explore a little bit, and enjoyed the outdoors. The weather was perfect. No rain! Not too hot! Although I was working up quite a sweat trying to make it up and down all those steep rock steps.


But the most interesting part of the hike was when we came upon a tunnel. It was almost like something from the movies...it was dark and long inside...we could just barely see the end, but that's more reassuring than not being able to see the end at all. It was dark and muddy inside...and it seemed to take forever to get to the end! But we made it. The whole time, we were making "scary" noises and just hoping that we wouldn't get eaten by some crazy creature that lived in there! Haha, apparently at the end there were some bats as well, but I missed those! I have the whole walk on video as well, so hopefully I'll be able to share that at some point as well!

Well, we finally made it full circle all the way back to our initial spot and we were dead tired...at least I was! I think in total we only walked about 4-5 miles, but including all the uphill and downhill, that was plenty for me!!

We made our way back and grabbed some dinner before heading back home. By the time we got home, I was dead tired...I took a bath for the first time since being in Japan! I soaked and it felt awesome! Well, another weekend gone by and can't wait to see what the rest of the month has in store!

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