Tachibana Yama 橘山

A couple of days ago, Marlon and Kevin hiked with me up a mountain up the road from our dorm.
I`d been wanting to do it for a while, and I was prepared and extecting to climb stright up the hillside through the brush and trees, forging a way as we went. Fortunately, it didn`t come to that.
There was a trail.
We left about 3:30pm ad arrived home very near 8:00.
On the way up, we took a lot of pictures, saw huge spiders (No, bigger... think bigger than that too.) These buggers were easily four inches across. Without the legs. They were black and yellow striped.
We saw mushrooms and gnarly trees, and huge butterflies. the bugs in japan seem like they`re from a hundred million years ago. huge! the spiders, for one. giant black butterflies. flies three times normal size. foot long earthworms (we thought it was a snake!).
In Japan, people must stay very fit from their good diets and excercise (stairs everywhere). We passed about three old Japanese dudes who were on the way down from the summit. They seemed to be doing fine, and us three dudes in the prime of our lives were having a hard time in places. It was crazy.
As we neared the top, more light began to come through, and we could sense that we had almost reached the goal. at the last turn in the path, the way ahead was blindigly bright, and as we emerged from the jungle, the top of the mountain was clear-cut and grassy, with a ring of trees around the back. Ahead, all of Fukuoka lay spread out before us, and through the haze was the sea of Japan. It was amazing. Unfortunately, pictures of the scene didn't really work because of the haze, but we were able to pick out the college, and off to the side our little home of Kenshuso Dorm a couple blocks away.
At the summit was another old Japanese dude and his dog. It`s name was Sakura, and I don`t remember the guy`s name. But we talked with him for a little while and he took pictures of us. They`ll be around somewhere. Look for them from Kevin.
We had a notion to stick around and watch the sun set form the peak, but decided going down the hill in the dark would be a bad idea.
We headed down by a different path, and this one was even more wild.
This was where we saw the king of the earthworms (I named him Jeffrey) as well as walked into some nasty spider webs. Marlon caught one full across the face and when we looked, there was another huge spider sitting up a little higher. Fortunately it wasn't on him - we would have had to draw straws to pick it off. This one was a couple inches long, and had decided to build it`s web full across the path, hoping to catch some really big prey, I guess. Kevin took pictures of Marlon freaking out and the spider itself.
At one point, when we were beginning to wonder if maybe we`d gotten entirely lost, and if everything had given way to jungle (we went through about 5 different kinds of jungle on the mountain), we came across a little shrine set to the side of the path. Japan is funny that way. Even in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain overtaken by jungle, you can find things like this. Japan is fun.
It was on the way back to the path that we found Jeffrey, King of the Earth Worms. I guess I stepped on it, because Marlon saw it waving around like an injured snake in the leaves. I looked too, and thought it was a snake. I was going to try and pick it up with my walking stick when I got a closer look and realized it was a worm. Amazing! It was longer than my hand, which is quite large indeed, and fat and firm. We took pictures.
On the way down more, the mosquitos really started attacking, and we weren't having quite as much fun.
When we finally emerged from the jungle at the base, we found ourselves right at a buddhist shrine/temple thing. There was nobody around, just a couple of cats, but we looked and stayed there for a bit to film some things. From there, there was a real, paved road back home.
The trip took nearly 5 hours. It was about a 3-mile hike (probably closer to 3.5) and had an elevation change of 1000 feet.
It was a lot of fun.