After eating breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and
drove 20 minutes to
Yama-dera
Temple.
Yama-dera is a popular mountain temple in
Yamagata Prefecture. The temple is famous for its stunning views,
but it is not an easy task to get to the top. There are 1,015 steps to the top of the
mountain temple, and while it seems like it will take a long time to reach the
top, the scenery will give everyone energy to make the trek.
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| A man praying at the base of Yama-dera |
We paid the entrance fee of 300 yen and started our ascent. It happened to be raining at the time that we
went, but it didn’t deter us from making our way to the top. The pitter-patter of the rain added a
peaceful soundtrack to our trek up the mountain.
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| View from the top |
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| Climbing to the top |
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The leaves have already started changing color
|
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| Yama-dera Temple |
After making our way back down, we decided to get lunch at a
nearby restaurant. Yamagata Prefecture
is famous for soba, so we both had the cold mountain vegetable soba. We also saw that they had ice cream, so we got
ice cream too! I got the cherry ice
cream, and my friend got the La France, or European Pear flavor. Both of the flavors were really good! My friend had only had one bite of hers when
it dropped on the ground. But the clerks
were so nice that they gave her another one for free!
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| Soba Lunch |
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| Cherry-flavored ice cream |
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| La France ice cream, that my friend dropped |
We walked around the streets of Yama-dera for a while and
looked in some of the cute shops on the way. We then made our way to a fruit-picking place
to pick grapes and peaches!
It only cost us 800 yen for an hour of all-you-can-eat
grapes and peaches. It was heaven.
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| Niagra Grapes |
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| Delaware Grapes |
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| Goldfinger Grapes |
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| Peach picking |
Once we had our fill of delicious fruit, we made our way to Fukushima. We took a mountain pass and even saw monkeys
on the road!
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| Mountain monkey |
We arrived at our lodging for the night,
Chalet Urabandai. The owners were very kind, but the lodging
itself was sort of a letdown. The room
we stayed in was small, and the communal bath was not clean.
We asked the owner where we could go get dinner, and we were
surprised to learn that even though it was only 6:00 pm, almost all of the
restaurants in the area were closed. Like,
really?! He did suggest going to
il Regalo, a
nearby Italian restaurant (which was the only restaurant nearby that was open), which was delicious.
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| Steak made from Fukushima beef |
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| Artichoke Pizza |
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il Regalo Italian Restaurant
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