2:00 pm — TSH, day 24

After a good dinner and great bath I was too unwilling to get out of the soft comfortable bed (futon, actually) so I overslept a bit and only started to go around 7am, and adding a long breakfast stop at 7eleven, you can safely say I started to hike for real around 8am. The trail went comfortably with soft altitude changes yet at the beginning of the day there were a few unmaintained sections and I lost my Koenji hat at one of them. I’m sad, I liked the hat and hoped it would survive at least till the end of the trail. Yet, going back for several kilometers to look for it was too much.

Since the way was relatively easy I reached my destination point a bit past noon and thus I decided to move a bit farther today. On the map there is a mountain cabin marked on the side of the mountain, I’ll try to stay there for a night.

View over a meadow of white wildflowers down to a crop field and wooded hills, with faint mountains on the overcast horizon
Narrow asphalt path threading between tall grass and trees, power-line pylons in the distance under an overcast sky
Small wooden Shinto shrine with a tiled roof on a dirt clearing, a tall stone monument standing to its left among the trees

6:00 pm — Wrapping the day

On my way I’ve skipped a /stupid/ part of the trail. The trail is running around the mountain, then goes up to the top and then returns down. This up-and-down through a city park is like 3km one way, while the shortcut distance is 1km at most…

The mountain cabin turned out to be just a resting spot with a roof. Which is still better than nothing yet not as good as I hoped. Anyway I’m waiting for sunset so that local hikers stop walking by and setting a tent under this roof.