Another month passes, and with the door on 2015 quickly closing, I seize a final chance to finish the last section of the first third of the Diamond Trail before the start of the new year. Gear packed, bus schedule confirmed, and clear weather forecast. What could go wrong?
I arrive at Tondabayashi station a little past 9am and search for the bus stop that will take me to Hiraishi. According to my on-line research, the bus leaves at 9:15am for the 20-minute uphill journey to the village that I had visited just 6 weeks prior. There are plenty of buses milling about, none of which will shuttle me where I need to go. At 9:13am, panic starts to set in, and I inquire with a bus attendant loitering about.
“Oh, there’s no bus at 9:15am,” replies the uniformed official, clutching strongly to a laminated copy of the bus schedule in his white-gloved hands. “That bus left at 8:50am.” I give a look of bewildered disbelief, my heart sinking even further into my tightened abdomen upon receiving the following additional detail: “The next bus for Hiraishi leaves at 3:20pm.”
Before I can even mutter a forced thank you from my mouth, I am already rushing over to the taxi stand, flagging down a ride with a stern driver who seems more interested in bringing on lung cancer through his unfiltered cigarette than saving a hiker from an agonizing 7km walk. Still, he puts out his butt and ushers me over for the silent ride to where I had left off on Halloween. Once at the bus stop, I switch on the GPS, pull out the trekking pole, and gaze up at the bus schedule affixed to a half-corroded metal pole: “9:15am departure for Tondabayashi station”. Of course! In my haste to find the bus schedule, I had found the bus schedule from Hiraishi to Tondabayashi instead of the other way around. The Kongō bus company really needs to hire a proper web designer who can create a user-friendly web navigation system.
With my wallet quite a bit emptier, I march back up the road and follow the previous GPS track still recorded in my device. Patches of green weeds tinged with the first frosts of the season line both sides of the cracked concrete road as the sun filtered through a thick grove of cedar. Ahead of me, the whooshing sound of a spinning mechanism breaks the still air of the morning, and suddenly the burly form of a mountain biker swishes right past my frightened figure. He lets out a quick “sumimasen” without even slowing his breakneck pace.
I reach the unmarked junction and leave the forest road, carving my way up the ruts in the overused path. After another mountain biker swooshes past, I find the cause of so much erosion. It looks like hikers aren’t the only ones to forge a path through this cedar labrinyth.
Steady is the pace up the easy-to-follow route – the memory from October is still freshly burned in my prefrontal cortex, and I can simply use the electrical pylons as visual signs of progress. Just below the final push to the ridge line, the sound of bear bells descends swiftly towards me. I step aside as two more cyclists zoom past. At least these guys have the courtesy to warn me beforehand. If not for those bells I surely would have been turned into a pancake.
It takes about an hour to reach the ridge line again, where I take a brief rest on that exact same bench where I had thrown in the towel back in the autumn. I feel completely different this time around, with still plenty of energy reserves left in my rejuvenated body. At taking a few deep breaths, I take the first few steps upwards, along that virtual stairway to heaven that had sent me retreating to Hiraishi. There are easily over 100 steps rising incessantly towards the summit of Mt. Iwahashi. It is there that I pen a new name for this godforsaken trail. It would be known as the Diamond Trail no longer. “Forget diamonds”, I mutter under my labored breathing, “this is the Kaidan trail”.
At the top of the final rise, the incline gives way to a gently rolling summit plateau dotted with leaf-bearing tree cover. At the high point, two sweaty hikers occupy a bench on the far side of the broad opening. They had started at Nijō earlier in the day, and give me invaluable advice about what lies ahead of me. I thank them, marching down some more wooden log stairs along the shaded northern face of the mountain singing Lucy in the Sky with Kaidan.
The next section along the route is an undulating wave of gentle descents followed by slight rises in the gradient. Occasionally the path would pop out into a clearing affording views down to Osaka city, but for the most part the route moves through suffocating cedar plantations. I make good time as I push onwards towards Mt. Nijō.
Just before reaching Takenouchi pass, the route merges with a concrete forest road, following it for about half a kilometer before dumping me out on route 166. A hand-drawn sign on the guardrail ushers me towards the left, where apparently the Kaidan trail continues onwards to Nijō. I manage to walk along route 166 for preciously 50 meters before being kidnapped and held hostage for well over an hour. Well, that’s not exactly what happened, as the hostage taking is entirely voluntary. You see, I fall victim to what I can only describe at the work of a purely evil genius, the kind that would create something so tempting and so inviting that only those with the strongest willpower can resist: a non-smoking organic cafe. I open the door of the Irodori Mint Cafe and am shown to a seat near the window by the courteous server. Being Christmas season, they have a special lunch that includes roast pork, quiche, and hearty minestrone, which sets me back 1300 yen but does include a drink and dessert. I peel off my warmer layers, basking in the heated comforts of the dining room while resting the muscles. The food really hits the spot, and the hot coffee puts the kick back into my step.
Once back out on the pavement, I continue cruising downhill, reaching a broad parking lot and signpost for the Diamond Trail. I turn right here, following the stone path as it leads straight up towards the ridge line that I had left at the top of the pass. Things start to look vaguely familiar, and at the top of the hill I am once again back in familiar territory. I have once again reached Iwaya grotto, a place I had visited on Day 1 of my section hike. There is still work to be done, however, because I realize that the actual trail continues along the ridge towards Katsuragi instead of dropping towards Iwaya. By turning left at Route 166, I have accidentally skipped a small section of the real trail. Buzzing on caffeine and playing the role of purist, I turn away from Nijō and marcd along the route towards Katsuragi. It takes about 20 minutes to reconnect with route 166, where I realize my mistake. On the one hand, I did have the best mountain lunch in existence by erroneously making that left-hand turn. Future Diamond Trailers (if that is indeed what we can call hikers doing the Diamond Trail) should make note of this and consider stopping by the cafe for a bit to eat en route to their destination.
From route 166, I retrace my steps up the steep trail back to Iwaya, where I once again summit the female peak of Mt. Nijō. By now the temperature has risen to nearly 15 degrees, which is way too warm for my fleece-lined thermal pants. I strip down to my boxer shorts, laying my trousers inside-out in the sun in order to allow the sweat to evaporate. There is a giant sundial directly on the summit, and in the clear weather and strong sunshine, the time keeper is precise. It is 2:10pm when I arrive on the top, and this time around, the vistas do not disappoint.
Laid out before me are the Ōmine mountains, shining brightly in the crystalline air with nary a glint from the light coating of snow clinging tightly to the upper reaches of Kansai’s highest mountain range. To the left of the lofty peaks, the smaller but just as impressive chain of the Daiko mountains stretch out across the azure horizon. These mountains too lay eerily free of the wintry white that usually sits thick in the wet December air. It is an unusually mild winter by Japanese standards, likely attributed to the strong El Nino dominating the waters of the Equatorial Pacific region.
My gaze at the mesmerizing vistas is broken by a rowdy group of a dozen climbers who have just arrived on the summit. Remembering that I am still half-naked, I scramble to conceal myself and have just finished zipping up my fly when they invade the high point, lying just one meter behind my granite bench. They take turns snapping summit proofs of each other, until they start setting up a timer for a group shot. I offer to take their photo instead, which they gladly accept. As everyone gathers, one of the senior members of the group pulls out a small banner that had a rather intricate and stylized logo embroidered onto the fabric. It looks like an insignia that King Arthur might wear, were he alive today.
“What is that?” I inquired, clearly puzzled and intrigued by such an intricate logo for such a small group of climbers. “JAC”, comes the reply, “Japan Alpine Club”. My jaw drops, for here are members of Japan’s legendary Sangaku Kai, a mountaineering organization that has connections to Walter Weston himself. We talk for several minutes, with more than a few members impressed with my mountaineering resume. It’s not everyday that Japanese hikers can chat with a foreigner who has not only climbed the Nihon Hyakumeizan, but also the Kansai Hyakumeizan as well. “You should join our club”, remarks the leader. I brush off the praise, not sure if the invitation is genuine or just a show of respect from someone who probably has a more impressive resume than yours truly. After all, this particular group is section hiking all of the prefectural borders from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean. They have statred in Fukui Prefecture and have followed the Fukui/Shiga border before turning southward and eventually linking up with the Osaka/Nara border which they will follow all the way down to Wakayama.
After bidding farewell to the JAC, I drop off the summit to the north and turn left. My original plan is to descend into Nara, but a phone conversation with Ted during lunch has convinced me that the Rokutanji ruins on the Osaka side are well worth checking out. I have never descended down this side of Nijō before, and now seems as good a time as any. The path drops abruptly though a series of boulder fields before arriving at the temple ruins, which are dominated by a large stone pagoda dating from the 8th century. A grotto once housing Buddhist relics sits nearby, a metal gate firmly affixed to keep vandals from carving their initials into the sacred cave. From here, the path continues descending to the parking lot I had seen earlier in the day, so after a brief detour to a lookout point, I drop back down to route 166, which I consider following all the way back to the station.
However, my map indicates a more interesting trail that continues a little further along the ridge, so back into the forest I duck, climbing a series of switchbacks before once again traversing the spine of the mountain. After a series of ups and downs, the trail once again loses altitude and ends at a paved road that runs directly under an expressway. I follow this road until it tosses me out on a larger paved road that apparently leads to the Takenouchi Kaido museum. Of course I end up taking a wrong turn, not realizing my mistake until I am a further 3km down the road, which passedsright by a racetrack for remote-controlled cars. Somehow, I manage to reach Kaminotaishi station just before dusk. All in all I have probably traversed well over 15km, but the first section of the Diamond Trail is in the books. The next section between Katsuragi and Kongō is now on the radar screen. Now, if I can only seize a chance to escape from nappy changing duties……
The Tozan Tales 
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