One of several actual hikes on our itinerary, we trekked up to the Minoh area north of Osaka city to visit the falls.
We started off our epic journey by taking the hard route, which involved going up a steep mountain to an observatory. The view was totally worth it. And we eventually wended our way back down to the main route.
The main route, however, was temporarily closed further up, so we got to take a detour route…back up the mountain, and across it, and down across the river, then back up the mountain and…it was a very good hike.
Along the way we saw several monkeys just hanging around. They were pretty calm about sharing the area with folks. Although we gave them as much space as we could, in some places we had to pass within a about a meter of the animals.
At the top of the mountain are the falls. And a very nice picnic area, complete with a full service takeout bar and restaurant. We had brought our own lunches up sadly. We stayed and enjoyed the ambience for an hour or so while we ate our lunch and drank, then began the journey back down.
This time we took the correct route! It passes a very nice temple, where I snagged a goshuin. Along side the temple is a river, where we spotted a japanese salamander. It was huge! We went down closer to the river to get a better look, but it had already sought cover under the rocks. We stayed to see if we could see more but had no luck.
Afterwards, we passed the insect museum which we had totally no intention of stopping at. Except it looked so neat, and had a butterfly aviary, so we popped in for a visit and I’m glad we did. Lots of insects on display and an incredible butterfly garden all very well laid out for visitors. It’s a short visit, but definitely worth seeing.
A little further on we met a fellow who recommended we check out the nearby observatory point. Intrigued, we started to climb the mountain again. A convenient sign told us there were slightly less than 500 steps to the summit. But the steps were each 40cm tall hewn stone blocks. We decided we’d done enough climbing for the day. The view might have been great – I will never know.