Climbing Mount Kongo.

Sunday 7th October. Day 73. Warm to hot and a bit Misty. Mountain Weather Perfect.

Today was Mount Kongo Day.
We didn't get up till 10-00 a.m.
11-00 to noon we ate breakfast and lunch.
At 1-20 p.m., we set off in the car to drive to Mt. Kongo.
The journey usually take one hour, but today it took longer because several times we met elements of the Rice Harvest Festival which was still raging through the streets. The procession routes were all marked with red and white lanterns and some posts were wrapped in red and white fabric, barber pole style. The members of the procession were all chanting a rhythmic call to drum-beats. The call sounded like "Rice car, rice car." However, Masako said, they were really calling, "Wa shoi, wa shoi." (Lift, lift). Sometimes they shouted, "Tou-rya, tou-rya." (Heavy, heavy - as one speaks of a bag over the shoulder). Other times they shouted, "Sou-rya, sou-rya." (Pull, pull).
The chant was performed as question and answer. One group called, "Sou-rya." with a rising intonation, the second group answered, "Sou-rya." with a falling intonation. Four men were on the festival wagon; many were pushing, or pulling, or controlling the ropes.

Well, ultimately, we reached a carpark on the side of Mt. Kongo.
When he turned fifty, Akihiro climbed Mt Kongo fifty times. But that was a few years ago. Today we walked for a few minutes to a "rope-way" which provided an easy ride to near the summit. We all bought tickets for the rope-way from a ticket machine. My ticket cost a lot less than the others', which rather puzzled me, and Colin said,
"kooreesha waribiki desu." This amused everyone. I found out the expression means, "Senior citizen concession." Still, it was a plausible explanation for the cheapness of my ticket, although how the machine knew my concession status was a puzzling question which didn't get answered until later.
We had good views from the rope-way, dismounted, and walked the rest of the way to the top of the mountain along a path among trees with an under-storey of ferns, rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas, and possibly monkshood (anyway it was a poisonous-looking hooded purple flower on a tall stalk).
At the top of Mount Kongo, we found good views and a building housing a display of the history of this spot on the earth's surface, from the age of dinosaurs to the present day. It was interesting; and here we were in a wilderness (sort of) but it was on the edge of Greater Osaka where there must be an equivalent number of people to more than half the population of Australia.

Back at the top of the rope-way, the ticket mystery was solved when I found I could not board the ropeway with everyone else. An enquiry revealed that my ticket was "katamichi" (one way), whereas everyone else's (which had cost nearly twice as much) were "oufuku". So in the end I had to buy another single ticket and so paid more than everyone else.

In the car once more, Akihiro drove us down, down, down the mountain, passing through frequent villages. Rice had been cut and the straw was hung up to dry. Scarecrows stood guard.

We stopped to shop at "Takashima-ya", a famous department store which had branches world-wide but headquarters in Osaka. There were many floors with expensive clothes and other luxury items, and in the depths, a typical food basement - a glutton's heaven with an unbelievable variety of beautifully presented foods. There were cakes, sweets, meats, fresh fishes, vegetables, fruits, ready-cooked meals, et cetera, and so on. Sooo different to Queenscliff.
This was a wonderful opportunity to buy the customary presents for our future hosts in Kyushu (but we had already, in London), and for those left holding the fort (back in Oz), but at that point of time we didn't know about the presents custom as it is interpreted in Japan. Also we were terrified that if we so much as glanced at an item on display, Akihiro and Masako would buy the item and make a presentation to us: they had already been extremely generous, and we didn't want to be responsible for any more dissipation of the Nakanishi fortune. And in addition, we knew our own day of financial reckoning was approaching at a gallop: though just how speedy a gallop we didn't then quite appreciate.

At dinner-time we were taken out for a treat: dinner at the Rihga Royal Hotel in the centre of Sakai.
There was a choice of twelve dining rooms, each offering different cuisines. All the dining rooms were very busy it was Sunday, after all. We went to an Italian cuisine dining room. Italian food (generally with uniquely Japanese touches) is very popular in Japan and very well done.
Our meal had five courses as well as bread and coffee. Here is what came to our table:
An appetiser of various small nibbles(?) - prawn, eggplant, raw fish, and cooked fish;
An entree of more palate-teaser sized offerings including fish;
Pasta with a porcini mushroom sauce;
Steak Italian Style, with tomato sauce served over a bed of cooked potato, and five big carefully trimmed pieces of mushroom.
A cream cheese icecream on a base of cake accompanied by raspberries, blueberries, and red currants.
Service, presentation, taste: everything was perfect, and Queenscliff does have some very good restaurants by way of comparison. The next instalment, is Farewell to Sakai.