筑波山 (Tsukubasan)

We went on a mini-roadtrip today, trying to just relax a little. From Tomisato we headed up through Narita (where every single person in Japan was trying to get home from the airport at the end of the winter holidays) to Tsukuba, in the middle of Ibaraki Prefecture, to the north. It was a pretty two-hour drive through some mostly rural country, but about two thirds of the way there, at the city of Ushiku, we saw this peaking over a ridge:


The Ushiku Daibutsu. It's 100m from feet to head, and was completed in 1993. 

I had no idea there was a 330 foot-high bronze Buddha (actually a Kannon, Buddha in the female form) an hour north of my home. Turns out it was completed 13 years ago, for reasons still unclear to us. While impressive, it's just not quite as awe-inspiring as the Kamakura Daibutsu. Something about having been completed over 800 years ago makes the latter just seem greater, even at 1/10th the size.

Anyway, after a short detour to gawk at the giant Kannon we continued on to Tsukuba. We spotted a Wendy's, of all places (they're rare here in Japan), in the city of Tsukuba, so we stopped there for lunch. I think it was the first time I'd had a burger since being home in the summer. After lunch we continued on, and after driving about 1/3 of the way up the mountain (this is Japan, after all), we parked and walked through the Tskubasan Shrine.


Main building of the Tsukubasan shrine. Some form of shrine has existed here for over 1200 years. 

After passing through the shrine complex we took a cablecar (it scared Sam, but she still judged it a better option than going up in the gondola) to the saddle between the two summits, at 800 meters. From there, we hiked a further 70m up to Nantaisan, the western peak.


A shrine at the peak of Nantaisan (Tsukubasan has two peaks), 870m up. 

On a clear day you can see all the way to the Pacific on the east, and to Fuji in the south. We were up kind of late, so it was kind of hazy and the light from the sun obscured everything to the west and south of us (Tokyo, Fuji, the interesting stuff). But we did have good views to the east.


Looking south-east at Lake Kasumigaura on the horizon, and the city of Tsuchiura.