Today was my last day before i had to start school. Today i had the choice between walking around to various beautiful shrines in downtown nagasaki and catch a few game stores i found off google while i was at it, or climb the huge mountain outside of the window that had been staring me down all week. It kept taunting me. It was all like, "i'm a mountain. that's right. uh uh, yeah i got it. now, whatcha gonna do?" Today was the last straw, "oh i'll show you what imma gonna do, mountain."

So i made way towards the rocky green beast..

man... five's neighborhood is so pretty.

There it is again, taunting me, as i crossed the nagasaki river. The hills were trecherous and the signs were helpful. As i continued through the local neighborhood, one particular sign stated, "Mt. Inasa this way (4.2km)." Oh good lord.. 4.2 km?! That's like 2 1/2 miles. This wasn't really such a leisurely stroll at this point.. I went into the local convience and bought myself some delicious onigiri to empower myself.

Though, i was making progress. I was getting to the point where i was at about eye level with five's apartment. I soon came across a really nice looking house.

It's seemed pretty authentic, like one of those shrines i've been in before. Except this was actually someone's home, so i didn't really poke around too much. The road up ahead curved up and around the mountain. The curve overlooked a graveyard, which overlooked Nagasaki.

The graveyard's of Nagasaki are rather.. scenic and located on hills. I suppose the japanese originally began burying their dead here, and as time went and as the city expanded, it had to conform to the graves which had already been filled. It reminds me of platteville.

As i got further up the mountain, I came across some damage from the typhoon..

This poor guy's house or garage fell victim to the awesome winds. But i didn't let that stop my journey to trump the mountain. As the journey continued and the air became thinner, the view began to improve.

higher and higher i went. I had reached the end of the neighborhoods. Now, all the stood in my way was a clear-cut winding path to my goal.

There it was.. some sort of building. Civilization atop the natural monolith. I was nearing as Nagasaki was deminishing.

It was rather nature-ful. The road itself had plenty of trees around the edges. My head caught a little bit of a spider's web too. I brushed it off like normal, until i looked at my hand and saw this menacing black spider about half the size of my hand. I tossed that thing on the ground and took off the opposite direction.. I don't care how tough you are, if you see a spider that big on your skin, you would freak out too.

five and i have had a previous discussion on japanese insects and spiders. He said that the Japanese Wood Spider is responsible for the biggest strongest web in the entire world. The biggest web recorded had been 2 meters in length, and as strong as cavlair. Apparently small birds have been known to get caught in the web too. (and) I probably had that fucker on my hand.. I wasn't going to let that stop me..

As i rounded the corner, i came across a separate path off to the left. There was a staircase that led off into the forest. Hmmmm.... Earlier five had mentioned a shortcut that i would find off to my left. Hell, i'm all for shortcuts.. The road was pretty overgrown, and dumped with leaves and branches from the typhoon. It was the old road that used to lead up the mountain before they made the current one..

Hell, i've walked through worse back in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I'll be fine.. That was my general thought until i walked my face directly into a massive spider's web. I fled back down that overgrown trail with my arms flailing and ripped off spider web from my face and hair. "wahh, get it off me." Fuck that route. I'm taking the street.

I swear.. After today, i think Japan has turned me into a bug wuss. here's one of those assholes i found up the hill a little bit:

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Anyways, i had finally made it to the top of the hill, but there was still plenty of walking remaining. I headed down to this little park area to check out this sub-mountain overlook...

Oh good... just what i wanted. More stairs. The overlook presented me with a new view of Nagasaki. I hadn't seen the other side of the mountain. The islands and sea were quite beautiful. So majestic.

The park was pretty spectacular. It had a little playground, a music hall, plenty of open space, and a fricken zoo. The zoo featured both monkeys and weird deer/goats.

I watched the monkey for about 30 minutes. When i was rested and ready to go, I made way to the final couple of staircases and windy mountain roads to my final destination. I was getting close because the trail lead back and forth between the city, then the sea, then back to the city. I had finally made it to the top of the staircases, and looked down at my achievements. Damn, that's the road i was climbing up earlier when that spider decided to scare the shit out of me.

I continued further towards the mountain ridge, and found my final goal

The overlook observatory. The inside was closed due to typhoon damage, so i had one last staircase to ascend. Nagasaki looked quite beautiful from below though. I roughed up the staircase and bassed in the glory of ultimate achievement:

The Mount Inasa Summit (2.4 megs)

Glorious..

The observatory was lined with little historical markers and interesting tidbits. Tokyo is that-a-way. There's some tropic thingy that-a-way. There's a fortress or a prison that-a-way. The next tallest mountain is 39.4 km that-a-way. That's my next goal i thought. I will be awesome and climb the tallest mountain in Japan. Later i realized, that we actually have a field trip to go to that mountain this coming weekend. five told me that it's not only a mountain but a volcano. It erupted about 15 years ago killing a bunch of people, too.

They also had an informational tablet for St. Paul, MN, which is Nagasaki's eldest sister city. St. Paul is 15,000km that-a-way.

I was looking at all the information and pretty pictures and eventually realized that those the landscape pictures were actually somewhat out of date:

There are some glaring differences between the provided photos and reality. I mean, besides five's apartment building not there.
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I stayed up at the summit for quite a while, but all things had to come to and end. I took some last photos before i descended back down the side of the mountain.

I made my way back through the cooridor to the gondolas. There was no way i was going to walk down the mountain.. that's way too much work to do twice. at least, in one day.

At the base of the gondola ride was a sacred type area.

School was just getting out, so there were plenty of little kids walking around and looking at me funny. Some of them gave me the V hand gesture, so that probably thought i was pretty cool ^_^. Some little girls thought they were pretty cool by saying "hello" to me in english. Once one of them starting saying "hello" then they all began to chant in on it. It was pretty cute. ^_^

Anywho, I went back to five's part of town and grabbed some food. I started climbing the mountain his apartment was on, so i could dump all my photos and do something new.

The stray cats on the overgrown house were there to greet me too ^_^. Once i arrived to the apartment, i pretty much just crashed from exhaustion.
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Anyways, this post is getting more poorly written by the second... I have some more photos, but i guess i'll write another post about it tomorrow sometime.

School 'begins' tomorrow around 1pm and it's about 4:30 am now, so i should probably get to bed.