Monkey Business - 23rd May 2015

After a week of walking I absolutely needed a break. I had a great three days rest in Nagoya, filled with eating junk food, relaxing, making up on conversation I have lacked over the past few weeks, and updating the blog.

So I felt well rested and ready to get back on the road this morning, but as it turned out today was almost completely uneventful. I woke up, checked out, caught the train back to Yoro station, and walked. The only mountain I scaled was aptly named Mt Yoro. What can I say, it was steep, I sweated a lot, and I eventually got down the other side.

Steep going up

The top

And then down the other side

The trail then flattened out for the rest of the day going through farming areas and woods. I didn’t even have any human contact apart from waving to some people in the distance doing fieldwork.

The only notable thing that did happen was me seeing this little red face looking at me through the trees:

If you look closely there is a monkey there

There was a wooded area just outside the village of Hokusei where there were at least five or six of these guys hanging around. They would bolt as soon as they saw me so I couldn’t get very good photos of them, but I could hear them all around me in the trees causing a ruckus due to my presence. I thought they would be more graceful when moving through the trees, but no, they made about as much noise as I would. They were also bigger than I thought, more like the size of a baboon rather than a sticky little critter like I expected.

They ran as soon as they saw me in the distance

So with only the monkeys to distract me today, I made it a bit further than I expected and have set my tent up in a small park outside Nishifujiwara station.

Distance: 30km