Mt Takao

Not too far west of Tokyo city centre lies this 599m tall mountain. Its famous for its greenery and is a popular hiker's destination.

I reached there in the early afternoon and started my leisure hike up. Along the way, i stopped for a 300 yen Dango to top up my carbo. Yummy

There were many interesting sights along the way, such as this weird-looking root of a tree

and this wooden suspending bridge

Here are some of the more unique floral i found along the way...
















There were a few temples/shrines near the submit of the mountain. One of them had this weird-looking statues stationed at the entrance of the temple.
Finally, after reaching the summit...

The view is great. you can even see tokyo city from afar.

The route down was equally fun. I chose the most "nature" route to decend from the top. In this route, there were no concrete pathment, but only narrow mudpaths, rock steps,

and look!!! At this portion of the trail, there was only a small stream of water.. you are supposed to step on the rocks and walk along(on) the stream!
As it rained the previous day.. the mudpath was errmmm... really really muddy. My shoes were smeared with mud by the end of the day.. but i guess it was worth it.
A small waterfall that i passed by along the way down....

How to clean windows

Check out this cleaner cleaning the windows of an office building...

Quite dangerous, i think...

Asakusa

This temple called "Sen-so Ji" located in Asakusa is perhaps the most famous tourist attraction in Tokyo. You must have seen the picture of this building before somewhere in some guidebook/itinerary/travel shows.

The path leading to the entrance is packed with tourist and stalls selling souvenirs for toruists.

Of course, there are snacks around, such as this cute pagoda-shaped muffin

This is another familiar pic of the big lantern at the entrance of the temple. It is often seen in postcards.

This is what it actually looks like from behind.... there are so many works printed behind. They are names.. but i have no idea whose they were and what relevence they had. haha

The most interesting part of the temple was perhaps this "lottery". Its called "Mi Ku Ji".

Out of the hundred plus sticks in the bottle, u shake it to randomly get a number. I got number "50". Then from the array of drawers, you open the drawer that corresponds to your number and take a sheet of paper that tells your fate.

Here is my sheet:

It is an "average" luck sheet, saying neutral things like, "will get well soon", "employment good", "safe" etc etc... You can magnify the pic above to read the details.

Out of curiosity, I looked through some other drawers. There were only 3 kinds of readings - Good, average and bad. About half of the drawers were AVERAGE readings. and a quarter each for GOOD and BAD readings.

This suay (unlucky) guy below got a BAD fortune, haha.

So he has to tie the fortune paper to this string in order to neurtralize the bad luck.

:)