Takedao: a day in the mountains

Last week i stumbled across this small onsen village on the internet while looking for places to go and see the autumn leaves. It's about 30mins from home but feels a million miles away from osaka. The train station is actually in a tunnel under the mountains and when i arrived around 7:30am i thought i must have been in the wrong place because i was the only person to get off the train. Reports on the internet said the mountains in the area were at their peak for autumn viewing so i was expecting some more people.

Takedao station. The blur is a rapid express train heading
to shin sanda i think.

The autumn leaves were beautiful and it was nice to take some photos that weren't disected by powerlines for a change. The area is famous for the walking trail where you have to walk along an old train line that follows the river. Along the line there are 8 old train tunnels that you have to walk through. The first few were pretty short so there was enough light but after that most of them are at least a couple of hundred metres and on bends so you can't see the other end and it's totally dark inside. Luckily i spotted on a website you need to bring a torch. I noticed a sign leading to the trail that you need to be careful of bag snatchers in the tunnel. Not comforting when your by yourself carrying around $3000 worth of camera gear.

This is one of the tunnels you have to walk through. This one seemed about 300m and because it was on a bend in the river once you went in about 40m you couldn't see either end of the tunnel.

Here's one of the hidey holes in the middle of tunnel where the bag snatchers apparentley hide out.

I wasn't sure if the fence and piled up railway sleepers meant to stop here but i got some nice photos from the other side of this old bridge so i guess it's all good. I was here bymyself so actually used my remote to take some shots of myself. I'm suprised how well the remote works over a fair distance for $30.



This is a view from the other side of the bridge. The colours didn't really come up as well as i hoped in this photo but it was still a beautiful scene. It was amazing that you can find these places 30mins outside the 2nd biggest city in japan.




here's my attempt at a classic japanese momoji (maple) picture. Pretty bad attempt now that i look closely at the composition but the colours are nice.



This is the other endo of the train trail. the remains of the bridge got taken out in a big flood about 10 years ago so you can't access any of the tunnels past here.



This was one of the first photos i took when i got off the train. It was actually really nice that there was no one else there. i love the reflections in this one. The water was so still and clear that you can see the colours in the reflection.