Sunshine at Yamadera

April 25, 2017

Another day off! Whoo-hoo! Of course really I’m more so celebrating for him since everyday is a day off for me. (hehe!) But being able to spend all his days off together has been a real blessing. So where to this time? I put that map right next to my desk in the hotel room so I look at it pretty often. One spot we hadn’t gone to get stood out for me, Yamadera.

“Yamadera (山寺) is a scenic temple located in the mountains northeast of Yamagata City. The temple grounds extend high up a steep mountainside, from where there are great views down onto the valley. The temple was founded over a thousand years ago in 860 as a temple of the Tendai sect under the official name Risshakuji. Its popular name, Yamadera, literally means "mountain temple" in Japanese.” -found on Japan Guide

A chance to get out in nature and do a little hiking? Yes please! Luckily for us, Sendai Station and Yamadera Station are really easy to travel between. It took us roughly thirty minutes from Sendai Station and just a couple minutes walk from Yamadera Station to the base of the mountain.

Leading up to the base, there were many little shops that seemed only to be open for tourists. The town was rather small and very quiet. The only people you would really see are the shop clerks and people coming to see the temple.

The weather was really beautiful this day so we took our time exploring the area and slowly made our way up to the top. I didn’t count but it said that there are 1,000 steps to get to the top. Some parts of the hike did seem tiring but after it was all finished, it didn’t seem too bad at all. I was really expecting it to be worse!

Along the way up, we saw several temple buildings, stone lanterns and small statues which nicely added to the hike. There were also a good amount of people on the mountain doing the same hike. Luckily, it wasn’t super crowded while we were hiking up but as we went down, we saw a whole school hiking up. Good thing we avoided that crowd!

Hiking up we got the best views at Godaido Hall. This Hall was completely empty and mainly just served as an observation deck for the valley below. Another interesting thing was all inside the hall were business cards and stickers from visitors.

The top of the hike with the temple was not as breathtaking as I hoped, partially because there was construction going on which took away from the atmosphere. But the hike up there was really nice and serene. Even though it wasn’t Autumn, Yamadera’s most popular season, it was still beautiful to enjoy the nature and to get out of the city.

Hiking down was a breeze. We stopped by some lovely sakura trees to snap photos and then saw a really nice pond/greenery before leaving the mountain. We decided to set up our tripod here to get some pictures of the two of us. While Caoliang was setting up the camera, I  noticed the pond was full of frogs! They were so loud and there were so many! Also while waiting, a cute little old lady came out of the house that was in front of the lake and started talking to us in Japanese. I could understand her a little and it was pretty funny because she was mostly talking about the frogs and imitating their noises.

After getting a few photos in front of the lake, we headed down to check out the little town below. We had ran into one of Caoliang’s coworkers on the mountain, Jon, and happened to bump into him again at the base. We sat together the three of us admiring the beauty of our surroundings and had a nice chat.

Once we headed our separate ways, we found a little nice cafe that outlooked onto the river and had a late lunch around 4pm. We each had different soba dishes that were both really yummy.

The trains didn’t run too often back to Sendai so after finishing our soba, we walked down to the river to see how close we could get, snapped a few photos and headed back to the station.

The afternoon on Yamadera was really nice and it was refreshing to enjoy the mountain air. I also really liked that it was easy to get to and not very crowded. That’s one of the things I really love about living in Japan, just a short train ride away and you could be in a very different place that’s completely opposite from the city life. Nature just around the corner!

Thanks for following up! Only two months in Sendai and the time is nearly half over! Soon it will be May!!! Oh how time flies!!




xx
t