On one sunny Saturday morning in September of 2018, T, myself, and our friend Adam woke up at 7am to take a drive out to Toyama, the neighbouring prefecture to Ishikawa. We had been informed that a bunch of fellow English teachers were planning to climb Tateyama (tah-tay-yah-mah), or Mt. Tate, and seeing as we had all come to Japan with the hope of doing some hiking, decided to jump on board. What we didn’t realize was that unfortunately, the people organizing the trip hadn’t quite done enough research before nailing the final plans down. Upon arriving at the base of the mountain, we were informed that the only way to make the hike was to take a cable car partway up the mountain, which would then take you to a bus station, after which it was another 20-minutes to the mountain village, and where the trail heads were located. Time wouldn’t have been an issue if not for the fact that there were a limited amounts of tickets printed each day for the cable car ride – which usually sold out before 8am. We arrived there at about 10:30am. So there we were, 2 hours away from home with nothing to show for in the way of hiking. The rest of the group decided to drive into Toyama city and check out a popular museum of glass that was located there, while T, Adam, and myself, decided we weren’t going to give up on the mountain that easily. We sat in a parking pad for about half an hour, searching for other ways to hike the mountain, but to no avail. Finally, I came across a place called Shōmyō-daki (Show-myoh-dah-key), “taki” meaning “waterfall”, and saw that it was nearby – only about a 5-minute drive and another 10-minute walk. It sounded cool, so we decided to check it out as a last attempt to save the day. Since many other locals apparently had the same idea, we had to wait in a queue to get into the parking lot for about 30 minutes. As some people waited patiently in their cars and others gave up, turning back, I hopped out of the car (T was driving) and took some photos of the cliffs next to us. After finally getting through the line and parking the car, we made our way toward the waterfall and it was so much better than we expected. It was a beautiful sight – the water flowed from between two peaks and cascaded down hundreds of feet into the pool below. Decorating the cliffs was foliage of a deep and rich dark green. After we reached a suitable spot by the falls, I pulled out my gorillapod and snapped to my heart’s content. It was a close save to the day, but I’m so glad we didn’t give up, as this was also one of my favourite sights in Japan!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.