Yamagata, Day 2

The day after arriving in Yamagata, my coworkers spent the morning doing a little exploring but then headed right back to Tokyo. My friend Char and I were the only ones who stayed behind, so after transferring our luggage to our new hotel, the two of us had all day to do whatever we wanted. We ended up going to a place called Yamadera (meaning "mountain temples").

Yamadera is a tiny town a little to the east of the main Yamagata train station, which is home to one of the most popular tourist attractions of the region. It's basically a small mountain which holds a lot of religious significance for Buddhists and you climb your way to the top up a long series of staircases. Each step towards the top (there are 1,015 stairs) is said to bring you closer to enlightenment. In my opinion, "enlightenment" must just be a euphemism for "sore muscles."

The temple at the top is not the only thing worth seeing; the whole trek to the top is about 45 minutes and takes you past more than a dozen other smaller temples as well as many religious monuments carved into the rock of the mountain. Overall, it's a pretty incredible sight!

• Left: At the base of the mountain, there are several shops mostly catering to tourists, but nonetheless offering a great variety of local produce and specialty items. We just picked up a couple apples at this place, but I thought the colors of the other fruits/vegetables were incredible.
• Right: This was taken about 2/3 of the way up the mountain...we had to stop and rest our legs.

• Left: Much closer to the top there is a view point that lets you see down the side of the mountain you have just climbed...
• Right: ...and from the other side of the balcony, you can see the entire city of Yamadera.

• Left: Victory! I had sore legs for 2-3 days afterwards, but it felt very good to reach the top.
• Right: After leaving Yamadera, Char and I continued eastwards another 45 minutes by train to reach Sendai, which is one of the larger of the cities in the northern area of Japan. We stopped there only to eat dinner (delicious Indian food!) and then turned around and went back to our hotel in Kaminoyama-onsen. We slept *very* well that night...

(See this site for other images of Yamadera.)