An Unintended Hike

Chen just moved into her new apartment recently in the Kita-Shirakawa area (slightly NE of me, near Ginkakuji) so she invited me over to watch "La Maison du Himiko," a Japanese movie starring Joe Odagiri (:::sigh:::, the HAIR!).

She showed me on the mapbook that I have where she lives - obviously, no one goes by addresses here. I started to head on up towards her place, but I must have missed the bridge (she lives on the other side of a small river), and ended up on the side of a highway in the hills, with no cell phone reception, twisty roads, a fear of death, and halfway to Lake Biwa.

Even though I was scared out of my wits (cars going at 50kph at you, anyone?), the scenery was quite nice and very peaceful. It reminded me of Florina again, my dad's hometown in northern Greece which has mountains and roads like the one I was on. When I called Chen - before I lost cell phone reception - and told her that I was on a road with alot of twists, cars and a bamboo grove, she was like, "Umm...where?"

I passed a small temple on my way and when I looked on the map, it had the temple as a marker - wooooo, I was CLEARLY off the map. I was about 30 minutes on foot away from Chen's place; it got so hilly at one point during my upward trek I just got off my bike and began to walk. I was in a flimsy little shirt because it got hot for me in spite of the fact that it was 55 degrees and then it started to rain.

Lovely.

I decided to turn around and head back to the main road, where I met Chen. Going downhill on my bike took only 10 minutes or even less - but I was going so fast and it was so steep and twisty at some points that I had to hold my bike brakes to slow me down.

Chen did point out to me that the road was the way to Lake Biwa if you wanted to do it by bike, but it is a bit dangerous, and I don't have a proper mountain bike nor the stamina to do the trip.