武甲山・Bukousan

April 27th

Bukousan is the iconic pointy mountain that you can recognise from miles away thanks to its distinctive shape. It’s slowly being cut away to make cement, but the other side is still an intact mountain so the trail runs round that side of the mountain. It’s the highest peak we’ve climbed so far at 1304m at the top and boy did my legs feel it. The trail we followed started off at the station and it’s a long, dull, noisy and dusty walk to start with, up past cement factory after cement factory for a good hour. The road isn’t busy but there’s only a pavement part of the way so the rest of the time you’re in danger of being plowed into by passing cars. If you have a car it’s probably better to start at the car park at the top (watch out for hikers!) , but it’s a narrow road to get there.

Once at the Ichinotori carpark (一ノ鳥居駐車場) it turns into a proper hike. It’s a popular spot and the car park was full with a range of hikers; young and old and even four footed. It’s an endless steep climb up but the path is good and there’s little chance of getting lost. A word to the American hikers who were behind us though. I’m sure you were having a lovely time but did you have to be quite so loud? I prefer to hike to sounds of nature rather than the ins and outs of your life in Japan! I’m horrified to think I might have been that loud when I first hit these shores. I hope I wasn’t. Apologies to every other hiker if I was!

We got to the shrine at the top with a sigh of relief. There are no views on the way up, though there are plenty of places to stop and have a rest if you need it. The view from the top is great though and you can see all of Chichibu laid out at your feet. We could even see the shibazakura which is flowering now and must have been heaving with people, though it looked very quiet and peaceful from where we were. Shockingly the toilets were locked shut (why?!) so no chance of relief, but there was a box with free bottles of water in case of emergency, which was very thoughtful.

We found the path on to the next station easily enough and from there onwards it was much quieter. It was steep and slippery at the start and we kept skidding on loose shale, but once past that first steep section it turned into a very nice walk through soft green, wending down towards a river that we could hear far below us. It was cool up in the mountains, the birds were singing and it was lovely and peaceful. There’s one point where the path has collapsed so you’re sent on a detour which involves walking through a river. The path is very overgrown too and not easy to find so keep your eyes peeled. You cross over the stream, walk downstream a little ways, then cross back over to avoid the damaged section of path.

The trains at Urayamaguchi station are only about once an hour so we had a bit of a wait, but with such lovely weather it was nice to sit in the sunshine and recover before the long trip home.