A Mystery Walk

Last week, one of the teachers invited me to hike the mountain behind the school. Well, actually he wasn’t going, so I’d be going with a few other teachers (who didn’t look thrilled to have me join them. More nervous, as in “how we will speak enough English to talk with her for several hours??”) But I gamely agreed, because really, how much chatting do you need to do while hiking?
I was told to go to the junior high school where the science teacher, who was not going hiking, would drive me to the meeting spot. This really confused me, because the mountain is DIRECTLY behind the school (see the photo above, taken a few months ago). I thought, maybe there’s a good trailhead near the elementary school he will drive me to. So I took the bus to the junior high school, and on the way, saw many people doing a neighborhood cleanup (at 8 am on a Sunday! I’m not usually out and about on Sunday mornings, so I wasn’t sure if this was a special event, or if they spend every Sunday morning cleaning. But it turns out that was part of the day’s activities).
At the junior high school, the science teacher drove me about a mile down the road to the elementary school. We parked and wandered into the school yard, where a couple hundred people were milling about. I never did figure out what exactly we were doing – my closest estimation is that the PTA was putting on a neighborhood cleanup and “mystery walk”. Apparently the hike up the mountains was not a casual hike with a few teachers, but the whole neighborhood on a mystery walk. I was assigned to a team with three other teachers (who, again, looked kind of scared to have me on their team). Each teacher and the principal and vice principal made sure I knew that we would be climbing the mountain. Yes, I was prepared to hike the mountain. Then they wanted me to be in the know that there are no toilets on the mountain. I must look like a totally city girl to them!
So we set off, walking back towards the junior high school where I started that morning. But on the way, we stopped at a temple to answer some “quiz” questions for the mystery walk, and one teacher had to move dry beans from one bowl to another with chopsticks (a mystery walk challenge). The teachers searched around the temple looking for signs with answers to their questions. I, not being able to read the signs, stood around and took this photo of Jizo. You can see that there was a fresh offering of food to Jizo – beer, yogurt and a rice ball! I was told this temple/statue of Jizo is to protect the river.
After they found the answers at that temple, then we headed off, the opposite direction of the mountain, across the river to a little shrine. I was just going with the flow at this point, but we were jogging to this shrine to beat the other teams. I was more concerned with saving energy for the hike ahead of us, assuming we ever turned around toward the mountain. Once again, the teachers searched for the answers to their quiz, and then we walked back towards the junior high school. I was instructed to use the bathroom there.
[Quick side note, I’m sure I’ve mentioned the obsession with changing shoes. We went in the school door, I changed into my school shoes for the walk down the corridor, then in the bathroom I changed into the toilet slippers, then changed back into my school shoes to walk back to the entrance and change back into my outdoor shoes. That’s four shoe changes for a two minute bathroom break!]
After the bathroom break, we went to a shrine right behind our school – I didn’t actually know it was there, so that was interesting. Again, more searching for quiz answers while I snapped these photos of the shrine's roof, and then we were off to finally climb the mountain! It was a steep climb to the top of the mountain and I fell back to chat with some 10 year old girls on the way up. On top of the mountain, there was more searching for the clue and a short break to snap these photos of our team and the scenery. That's our school (with the sandy playing field) at the base of the mountain, and the ocean in the distance. Then our leader pointed to the next mountain over with a radio tower on top of it, and said “that mountain, next. OK?”. I began to worry. At this point it was 11:30 am and we had been wandering around for a good two hours. All at a speedy pace, because this mystery walk was actually a race! But I followed along, and luckily, the second part of the trail wasn’t as steep. We did stop off at an ancient tomb on the mountainside, which was interesting but empty. And from one point of the hike, we could see Himeji castle in the distance. You can't really make out it in the photo, but the scenery is still interesting. There were at least two other stops, which I assume were checkpoints. We then descended the mountain and walked back to the elementary school, where we took our shoes off to go into the gym. I was given a lunch ticket (bonus!), and we each got a prize (I’m not sure if we won, or if everyone got a prize) – a Miffy dry erase board. One of the teachers told me no one would use that prize – I’m sure he’s right. And we each got a package of garbage bags (more about garbage in a later blog, but garbage must be placed in special garbage bags, so this is a very practical prize). We ate lunch sitting on the gym floor – it was fairly tasty – rice balls and soup, which I tried to call cabbage soup, but was told no, it was not cabbage soup because the leafy vegetable which closely resembled cabbage was called something else. But I’m still calling it cabbage soup.
So that was my not-so-casual hike and aptly named "Mystery Walk" up the mountains behind our school!