Suzurandai Hike

Miki sits just north of the western end of Mt. Rokko, which is actually a range of mountains on the north side of Kobe. I have gone hiking on various parts of the Rokko range, my most favorite being the trails near Ashiyagawa Station, close to the Frank Lloyd Wright house there.

The best way to start a hike: Mr. Donuts.

Suzurandai Station is a 25 minute train ride from Miki, and I found out about some trails that go from there all the way to downtown Kobe. The trail that we chose lasted four hours and brought us over two different Rokko peaks. The amount of steps we hiked up and down was incredible. Becky and I are both in much better shape than when we arrived in Japan almost three months ago, but we struggled to get up the longest stretch of steps. We were embarrassed to see all the old people making the same journey, some seemingly struggling less than us. Hiking is largely considered an old person’s past time in Japan, and I would say at least 70% of our fellow hikers were retirees.

Toward the end of the hike, we met a nice Japanese man who asked us if we wanted to see some old growth forests. We kindly went with him, which was enjoyable, but which took us off of our intended path down the mountain. We ended up going down a trail that was not well traveled or maintained. The spiderwebs everywhere were annoying, and the amount of dead leaves and branches covering the steep trail was a little dangerous, but we finally made it down.

The trail ended in a drab cement park in Kitano, a neighborhood north of Sannomiya, downtown Kobe. Kitano is where many westerners settled when Kobe was opened to the west in the 19th century, so there are a number of historical homes there. Most of them cost about $7 to enter, so I have not known many westerners who have paid admission to tour western mansions in Japan. The neighborhood itself is very nice and is one of Kobe’s most upscale. One of the many historical houses that was destroyed in the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 was later rebuilt and is now home to one of the coolest Starbuck’s we’ve ever been to.