Climb Daimonji Yama with us

What do you get when you ask three kids to climb a mountain? You get payback for the whining you used to do when you were a kid. Here's Alek, halfway up a set of 230 stairs.

Last week we climbed a local mountain on a beautiful day. Kyoto is surrounded by mountains (except the South side). And about 6 of the mountains have kanji characters or pictographs on them. In August, during obon, these are lit with a series of fires. It's something about guiding spirits into heaven. I got to see this in 1997, but we will miss it this time.

Daimonji is visible from Kyoto University. The kanji on it means "big." Here's a view from a distance.

The climb didn't really take that long, and there really wasn't that much whining...

Only you can prevent forest fires!

Little ojizo-san on the way.

We made it! Look who's smiling now:

"I can see our house from here!"' (well, almost.)

Picnic at the top.
Here's what some of the fire spots look like. This line of fires creates the bottom right stroke of the dai.

We did not see any wild boars on our trip.
We did, however, spot some other creatures hidden in the brush. Can you see the breezus supriseus juvenileus specimens in these pictures?

A group of 70 year olds climbing up and down mountains, as a club....just a typical day in Kyoto.

After our descent, we walked over to where I used to live. They have remodeled and renamed the place. My apartment was on the top right.

And we also walked by the Kyoto U main campus and posed in front of the famous tree and tokkei dai (big clock).

That's all.