The first sunrise of 2007, on the summit of Mount Tsukuba.
More Mount Tsukuba pictures on Flickr.
It was pretty cold outside — minus 3 degrees celsius according to Yahoo Japan — but we still managed to wake up and leave the house at around 2:00 AM and drive towards Mount Tsukuba (筑波山). The traffic was barely moving when we got to the foot of the mountain and when we reached the torii halfway up, it was already 4:00. We took pictures of the Tsukuba Shrine and the people milling about and then lined up for the cable car up the slope. (Short on time, hiking up was out of the question for us.) When we walked out of the cable car station at the other end, it was only a 5-minute walk to the peak (Nyotai-san, the higher of the two peaks of Tsukuba-san). We managed to get a good place just below the summit before throngs of mobile phone-toting young Japanese came, some of them almost pushing us off the piece of crag we were chilling our butts on.
When the sunrise came, we took pictures (my friend, testing the anti-shake feature of his K10D, took many shots of the sun on the horizon and the surrounding landscape while I took mostly pictures of people taking pictures). On a clear day, Mount Fuji with its majestic snow-capped summit could be seen down south but no such luck today. When it was time to leave, we decided to hike up the other peak (Nantai-san) of Mount Tsukuba to warm up our frosted fingers and toes. On that peak, in front of the shrine, we threw coins, clapped our hands and said a silent wish for the coming year. All in all, not a very bad way to spend the New Year’s Day in Japan; no noise or polluted air, only the mountain and the life-giving sun.
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