Last saturday (july 17th) I went to Nokogiri Yama (the saw-mountain) which is one of the tourist attractions in the Chiba Prefecture. Chiba is the peninsula across the bay from Tokyo and Yokohama (Narita international airport is located in the north of Chiba by the way).

Together with Tobi and Mae Rose I planned to go hiking in Chiba. Actually we wanted to make a 2-day trip and spend one day at Nokogiri Yama and the beach and one day in the inlands. However, makeing it two separate trips appeared to be more convenient and actually cheaper as well, so we decided to split it up. The second daytrip will be after the exams some time.


When I opened my curtains this morning, I could not even see Shibuya due to the extreme humidity. All you can see is within a 5 minute walk. This is what they call rainy season. I added the skyline I normally see from another photo.


The three of us at Shinagawa station after we found out on wich platform our train would come... ( I should get a wide-angle lens sometime)


At the tourist office I got a full planning for train/ferry or bus/train to Nokogiri Yama, we chose train/ferry as it was the cheapest option and did not take longer. From Keikyuu Kurihama station we would have to walk 5 minutes to the ferry terminal and the route would be well indicated. Well... after the first sign "Tokyo-wan ferry ->" there was nothing anymore, so finally we asked an old lady. She told us to take the bus and checked which one we should take, when we asked about walking she said it would take 20min and gave directions. By now we were able to handle this all in Japanese :-) After some 20 minutes we indeed arrived at the ferry terminal.


Mae Rose seems to be very happy that we finally found the start of our hiking course :-) In the back you see what the japanese call a "Hiking map" as written at the lower left corner (ハイキングマップ)


Lots and lots and lots and lots of stairs to climb...


Real forest


The heat and humidity make you wonder from time to time why you started climbing a mountain in this season, but on the other hand it is really enjoyable to see the sights changing, having nice views through the forest, over the village and on the incredibly steep mountains.




Panorama view over Hamakanaya

Close to the top there was a huge stone carved statue of Kanon (goddess of mercy). I read about this on the internet and it would be only 20 or 30 years old or so. Actually we did not really want to pay 500yen to see it, but after some time we found out that you had to pay anyway to go to the top of the hill and descend on the south-side. The whole south side is covered with touristic sights (Daibutsu = big buddha, small buddhas and other statues of gods and goddesses, a smal garden etc.)


Here we had the first real good view of the saw mountain, where you can really see that it resembles a saw-blade. This "saw tooth" is called Jigoku-nozoki (peering into hell).


Getting a bit further to the top, there was a special viewpoint to take nice pictures and of course we went to the tip of the saw-blade.


The view from the top of Nokogiri yama (northward). At the left there is Mae Rose, taking a picture of me


Southward view from the top, including the beach where we would go later.



Some of the statues were less fortunate...


The Daibutsu at Nokogiri yama is said to be the largest in Japan