Happy Birthday Shinya!

It was Shinya’s birthday on the weekend. For his birthday, we went to a place called Kasai which is near Himeji City. We went to his grandparents house as they have a traditional Japanese-style home in the countryside with a beautiful Japanese-style garden and many amazing-looking ornaments in their house. I got to eat my favourite biscuit which is made in Hokkaido and contains two biscuit bases with rum and raisen flavoured cream in the centre. I can’t wait to go to Hokkaido in December because I will be eating those biscuits for breakfast, lunch and tea!

After that, Shinya’s uncle took us hiking up this mountain. Shinya’s uncle is so fit because his hobby is hiking up mountains so almost every weekend, he will go hiking. He was our guide for hiking on this particular mountain and he could walk so fast up the hill that it was a bit of a struggle to catch up to him! I hope that one day, I have the opportunity to climb mountains every weekend too. It is so much fun and very rewarding when you actually reach the top. It is also great to be surrounded by nature.

At this time of year, the mountain that we climbed was covered in Autumn maple leaves. It was so beautiful. At some parts, it was pretty steep and I felt my little heart beating really fast, but it was worth all the exercise to get such a beautiful view.

This is me on the way up the mountain just beside the edge of the cliff.


At one stage, we had to cross a bridge.

The bridge was really narrow and wobbly and pretty scary to walk across because it felt like it was going to break any second! Thankfully, we managed to cross it safely! This is a picture of Shinya’s younger cousin, me and Shinya feeling relieved just after we crossed the bridge.

After crossing the bridge, we had to climb a really steep section which had chains in case you needed help pulling yourself up.

It wasn't really so bad though, but it was fun climbing it. This is a picture of Shinya’s cousin and uncle climbing the steep section.

Once we did the hard yards, we got to this pretty section of the mountain that had many red leaves and a beautiful little pond. We sat there and drank a coffee and I got to eat another one of those yummy biscuits from Hokkaido!

This is the silhouette that the momiji made against the sun.


After our hike, we all went to a really beautiful place with a lake and log cabins where you could actually stay for a weekend.

I wish I had enough time here in Japan so that I could go back there and stay for a few days. There are apparently many hiking trails you can go on too which is really nice. We ate lunch there and I had a yummy beef curry and then spent the rest of the time outside taking photos of the scenery.

I was so excited that I was in such a beautiful place that I just had to do a cartwheel!


This is the view that we got while we were eating lunch.