Oki Hiking!!!!

Most of you know that hiking is one of my all-time favorite things to do!! No, there are no 10,000ft + mountains here, but we still make the best of it!

Our friend Luke found a Japanese hiking book (no English!), and a few of us decided to set out to see if we could find some trails. The first hike was pretty short but had some great climbing stairs. It was also Melody's first 'hike' ever! Chris was on duty at the hospital all day this day, but hoping he'll be able to come with another time :)

Cool buds

Random pigs & statues in the park! 

 <---So apparently you can grass ski here?!? haha

 The stairs--->

With Kirsten, Temi and Melody

 More great signs. The brown sign (キヤンプ）literally is said as 'kyanpu' which is 'camp'! We figured out that you can hike back into a camping area...may have to check that out in the future :)

 Not so tall, but very fun 'hike' :)

 Ladies attempting the Oki pose for pics.

 Melody disappearing into the trail--->

We found a put-put course! It's on real grass!! haha

Lunch stop!! It took us awhile to find a place to eat, but we found a spot and were REALLY happy with the food! There was no English on the menu...or any pictures...but there were some workers sitting at a nearby table and their food looked oishii (delicious)! So, I asked the waitress in Japanese "Kore wa nan desuka?", which means, 'What is this?'. (I didn't know how to say 'that' yet haha.) So we ordered 'futatsu' of each ('Two' of each) and then these delicious appetizers that we saw advertised on the wall! Cheese balls and fried squid...we ordered a second round of appetizers b/c they were so good!

After lunch, we headed out to hike #2...which turned out to be a little more challenging to a. find, b. sign in and c. hike ;) Good times though! Since there was no English in the hiking book, we literally had to use the curve of the road to match the curve of the road on the maps to find the trailheads...and then we matched the Kanji in the book to the Kanji on roadsigns. Once we got to the trailhead, we had to sign in. It was great fun trying to talk to the local at the trailhead...between my broken Japanese and his broken English, we did great!! We got signed in and on our way on the 2K course...yes, only 2K, but it was enough for the day b/c of the terrain.

The mountain is called Mt. Ishikawa (ishi=stone, kawa=river)...soon you'll see why a mountain trail is labeled with a river!

 The terrain!

 Yes, we used ropes to help us climb! haha

These birds were rediculous noisemakers.  

 Slug story: Coming down the mountain I used trees to help stabilize myself...well, this guy was on the backside of one of the trees and I grabbed onto it! I shrieked haha. So gross! ...so I thought he deserved a place on the blog :)

 Sap??

 イノシシ= boar

注意=caution

Bummed we didn't have any run-ins with the boars. Maybe another time! 

To go in  the bathrooms, you need to take off your shoes and put on these sandals.

So after our 2K adventure day, my friend Chrissy and I decided to go back another day for round 2 to do the 3K loop...which is the whole course! We were in for a big treat :)

Tarzan ropes!! 

And then we found out why it was 'stone river' :)

Another great day of hiking!!