1 post tagged “waterfalls”
It's hiking season again, and although it's been way too long since I last wrote, knowing that I'm spending that time working exploring my surroundings should be of comfort.
No?
Fine. Let me start again by saying that I'm going to attempt to write up some of these fine adventures, including the random small ones without pictures, very soon and that one of said tellings will be a demonstrated view of our home, since I've yet to showcase that since we moved out of American on-base housing.
After the weather began to warm, but before the nasty necessity of rainy season, Hub and I shuffled through the pages of directions and maps I accumulated last year to select a destination for a day trip. While I offered up the Nagasaki Prefectural Forest he thought seeing a waterfall might be more interesting and so off we drove.
Unlike most of the instructions that we normally have, the directions to Senryu Falls had vague details like "take a sharp curve to the right" and "go over a bridge" (here in Japan, with mountains and coastline everywhere, we're always making a turn or going over a bridge, so neither would seem to offer up much guidance), but I blinked at one line which advised that we turn "just after the large, white building shaped to resemble a seashell." With a detail like that, I figured we would have no issues finding our turn while imagining a giant oyster-esque or conch-like convention center and wondering where the door to such a marvel might be located.
Our drive took us out of the city and into the countryside, taking the sharp curve and crossing the bridge as promised. The seashell turned out to be one of the more imaginative descriptions I've heard while living here (as in, there was nothing seashell about it to my un-art-trained eye), but the small, one-lane-that's-really-two-way road we turned down just beside the building promised to lead us away from civilization. Our guide said we'd see a bridge that would take us across to the parking lot but that it was one-way only. Around us seemed to be private property, which left Hub and I mildly uneasy, but as the road opened up into a larger area, we spotted a sign. Assured we were heading in the right direction, we found ourselves stopping quickly as we saw what was meant by a "one-way bridge." While our car isn't new or anything to look at, we weren't adventurous enough to chance scraping the sides, threw it in reverse, and parked just to the side of the road, out of the way, to set off on foot.
Just around the turn from the bridge was a smaller parking lot and one of the arched bridges I've come to love and associate with Japan's charm; crossing this led us to two trails, one leading up and into the mountain while the other curved around toward the sound of water. Taking the water path to the left, we climbed steps to a small landing which allowed a view of the bottom of a small set of falls. Stopping to admire, we continued, rejoining what we assumed was the other path at a pair of small wooden temples surrounded by statues of various sizes and a pair of guardian dogs, the air thick with the smell of incense. Stepping between the two buildings quietly so as not to disturb those inside, we continued up the stairs, wondering again if we were disturbing somewhere we should not be.
On our trek, we met a Japanese family with boys whooping as they jumped from step to step. Reassured for the second time that day, we crossed under a weathered torii gate, seemingly placed at random. A few steps further, however, showed us what we had come looking for.
The larger part of Senryu Falls stood 30 feet high easily, with the sounds of the cascade filling our ears. A small pool of water gathered at the bottom, its depth undetermineable but whose water seemed to be freezing by sight alone. Pouring out of that pool, the water continued down the mountain's face, slowing its pace along the way until reaching the point we had stopped at earlier. I watched it for a few minutes until I could not trace its path any longer and then turned to admire the majesty again, happy we had opted for Hub's suggestion over mine.
Climbing down more quickly than we'd come up and choosing the other path led us down older, well-worn, narrow-but-deep stairs in the Japanese fashion. Our mission complete, our feet, and our car, pointed us back toward Sasebo and our home.
On the way, just as a side, I thought I'd share two pictures which made me laugh and which seem so typical of other advertisements and warnings I've seen while visiting this nation (and which will undoubtedly be some of the more random tidbits that I miss when we return): the helpless ant and don't dig me!
