Hieizan

The weekend weather was beautiful, so we took advantage of a couple of days off to do some sightseeing. Saturday, we visited the top of Mt. Hiei, the mountain that dominates the view from our apartment to the northeast.

Getting there was an adventure in mass transit. We walked to our local train (5 minutes), which we took to the bottom of the mountain (10 minutes). We then took an incline (cable) train to about halfway up the mountain (10 white-knuckled minutes). Note that the train compartment is angled so that the seats are always level. The mountainside was most certainly not level.

We then took a "ropeway" (gondala holding about 30 standing people--7 more white-knuckled minutes) the rest of the way up the mountain.

After kissing the ground when we disembarked, we walked around the top of the mountain where there's a museum garden (closed that day) and the requisite ice cream and tea snack bar.

Our intention in visiting the mountain was twofold. Since we're living in such a heavily populated urban area (a far cry from our little Vermont village), we're committed to ensuring that Little J also has many experiences in more natural settings. Also, Enryakuji, a major founding temple of Japanese Buddhism, sprawls across the top of Mt. Hiei, and we were excited to tour some of the subtemples of this historic place. We struck out on the second of our goals. Following a path clearly (we thought) marked for the temple, we hiked a mile or two down from the top. Though this was a beautiful hike, we ended up not at a major temple, but at a telecommuncations array and the top of the incline train. The bad news was that we'll have to go another day to the temple. The good news is that we avoided having to come down the ropeway, and we did get to have a great hike on an ancient road that connects Kyoto's eastern temples, and we got fantastic views not only of the mountains, but of Kyoto and our apartment.