Retread 3 - Miyakoda

We had a Thanksgiving-ish holiday on Thursday, too. Except without the turkey or family gatherings. So I was determined to get out of the house even though I had a lingering cold. So I decided to go somewhere close. I thought I would go back to Miyakoda. Shortly after my Fruit Picking adventure I went back to Miyakoda to find the "Hiking Course" on my map. However that first time was a real bust. The map said the starting location was the Miyakoda Train station, which I found after a few attempts. And even found a sign showing the course. So off I went. Except that I couldn't find any sort of trail. After asking a half dozen people the way to the hiking course in my pathetic Japanese, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't exactly a trail. You just walk along the paved road. Well, it started to look rainy that first time, so I just gave up. This time I thought I would be less ambitious and just try and walk from the temple mentioned on the map to the look-out point. Except that I missed the temple, and the turn off for the look-out point as well. But further on was a sign pointing to something or other where the international symbol for bathrooms was included. Well, that sounded promising, so I followed that little road. And a fabulous road it was. Very pretty, smoothly paved and not another soul on it. I eventually found the famous look-out point. Which was less than spectacular, but hell, I found it. I decided to walk farther along the lovely road for a bit to get some excercise. It was grey and overcast, but a pretty nice temp for walking. I came across a Shinto Shrine gate which led to a small path. I couldn't pass that up. It turned out to be a very short path and a teeny tiny shrine. But very endearing. I continued up the road and I turned around after half an hour and walked back. Right before I got to my car I realized that there was a sign that pointed down a path I hadn't seen. Unfortunately I had run out of steam. So I don't know if this path was a short as the last one, or a nice bit of a hike. Maybe I'll go someday and visit the temple. I'll keep you posted of course.