Up The Mountain - Alex vs. Maruyama

As I was about to leave the zoo, Tara's voice rang in my ears: "You should hike up the mountain while you're there, it only takes about thirty minutes..." Although I had already cycled forty minutes in inhospitable heat to get to the zoo, my body temperature was back to around normal and I felt pretty good so I thought - ok then!

Maruyama is not a very big mountain, it does only take a little less than half an hour from bottom to top, but it is nevertheless a mountain, and as such is pretty tall. So even though it's a pretty quick hike, in the sweltering heat it turned out not to be the wisest thing I attempted last week. At times on the path I thought "I'm bloody glad I'm not running into anyone because I'm sweating like a bastard and my heart may try to make a run for it, separate from my body..." When I got to the very top though I met some people and one guy looked a hell of a lot worse than me. The little old ladies all looked fine, but then they were all stacked to the gills with hiking gear.

Despite this I'm glad I made the effort because if I hadn't I would've missed out on stuff like this:



And that is some good stuff. At the top the view was really nice, and it seems a lot less of a touristy viewpoint than Moiwa or Asahiyama which are just a little south.


Oh and here's a picture of some dude that I took because he framed himself so nicely amongst the rocks and branches:


Mountains are awesome, and I want to go up some more, but I need the temperature to drop severely before then.

Return to the Zooniverse

Today we took a day trip to Asahiyama Zoo in Asahikawa. Last time I went it was covered in snow (I wrote about it before), but this time it was warm and sunny, so I had a pleasantly different experience. We should probably go over what animals were the coolest, but here's a little snippet. Recognise this fella?


He's a porcupine right? Except after a thorough survey of two (2) Japanese people, they've never seen or heard of one before. And the Japanese name for porcupine is Yama Arashi, meaning either "Mountain Storm" or "Mountain Destroyer" which is awesome however you break it down.