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| We decided to start hiking as a family. Since Noah has become older and we are no longer slaves to the afternoon nap we thought we'd give it a try. We opted for something scenic and easy on our first attempt- a cool mountain that houses a temple complex. This overhang is suppose to allow visitors to "peer into hell" as part of the RurikÅ Observatory on Nokogiri Mountain. Contrary to this odd belief we found it quite heavenly. |
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| It was really lovely, the path on the western side of the mountain is the site of the Nihon-jin temple complex and was lined with all sorts of cute, sometimes creepy, sometimes odd little statues. |
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| Cool tunnels and passageways as well, which made for a great adventure for two very imaginative boys. |
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| Then one path led you to this, a huge seated carving of Yakushi Nyorai, that at 31.05 meters (101.9 ft) tall and is the largest pre-modern, stone-carved Daibutsu (Buddha) in Japan, which was pretty spectacular. |
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| Bribes of encouragement / bursts of energy for the trek back. |
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| First snake spotting. |
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| A totally done Kai - who feel asleep as we waited for the rope way to take us back down to the starting point. |
