Hiking in Takashima

The Waterfall Hike

16.11.2009

October 4th.

P1030922

The Gulliver village camp outside Takashima city is the starting point of the 8 waterfall hike.
This hike had originally been planned as a JET group hike, but on the chosen weekend many JETs were busy so it was ‘cancelled’ – but as I was more interested in doing the hike than spending time with other JETs, I called Leila and we went anyway.

Gulliver village itself is a strange place, basically a big adventure playground with come holiday cottages and camping facilities as well. We messed around there for a while, but there were a few kids and parents there so we couldn’t really have too much fun on the playground equipment.

The hiking trail leads off into the woods behind the camp and basically follows the river upstream;

the water was pretty high and fast as there had been a lot of rain the last few days. Though today the weather was great and we several lizards out basking in the sun, including the world’s smallest lizard (maybe) that looks very cute sitting on your finger!

The river valley was beautiful and the hike got steeper and trickier as you went on, later there were chains and ladders set into the rock to help you (it reminded me of Slovensky Raj).

(Leila sounds fantastically Australian in her soundbite here!)

As you can see it didn’t seem that difficult to me, but I knew that only a month before a teenage girl had fallen and died here (the day of the Kayaking trip on Lake Biwa) so better to be careful; and I guess she wasn’t the only person to have died here as we saw a memorial plaque as near the top as well.

Once we reached the top of the main fall we had lunch

then we began the descent. As we were basically following the same route back again I took a little more time taking pictures and tried to get a few more artistic shots instead of just snaps of the waterfall. I was quite pleased with some of the results too.