Jungle Adventures

Dawn, Cherese and I decided to have a day out today and take a mini-hike to Hanaokayama. This is a hill near my town; upon which sits a huge white temple. It can be seen all around the city and even though I have visited a few times already, I never get bored of going there.

As we were walking through the back streets of the town, we stumbled across a local rose garden. I had no idea it was there but it was worth the hour detour we ended up taking because of it.

As we walked near the back of the garden we noticed a few paths that led into the bamboo trees. Thinking nothing of it we followed the paths deeper into the trees coming across old buildings, stone lanterns and many weird and wonderful sights.

Soon enough the trees got thicker and Dawn spotted a sign warning of snakes. I knew it would happen, but I still shrieked like a girl when I saw it. A brown, meter long snake slivered across the leaves in front of us. And that wasn’t the end of our adventures. A while later Cherese and both stopped when we heard strange plopping noises. As we stood still Cherese screamed as she felt something fall into her hair. It was only then we realized we were standing under a huge tree and the plopping noise was things falling out of it. Bugs or no bugs we were both ready to get out of the jungle (as we nicknamed it) and head to our original destination.

A little while later we were eating lunch over looking the city. Here is our Kumamoto’s famous castle! (One of the top three in Japan and my apartment is the green one in the bottom left corner)
It was worth the trek, the snakes, the bug bites and heat just to see my favourite tori gates again. A great day!