Oze National Park
Sometimes things just work out - especially if you are flexible.
Here on Camp Zama the Morale, Welfare and Recreation office (MWR) offers several tours each month. The tours cover a wide variety of activities/interests (shopping, fishing, hiking, ropes courses, wine tasting, race car driving, fruit picking, etc...) One of the tours in September was a day of hiking in the Oze National Park. I called to sign up as soon as I returned to Japan from the US, but this particular tour sold out very early on. The wait list was long, but I added our names just in case. Then I totally forgot about it - including telling Kimball that I put our names on the wait list.
Just two days before the tour, MWR called Kimball to let him know they had two spots open up and we were next in line if we wanted to go. Poor Kimball was confused, but luckily he didn't say no and after some discussion we decided to rearrange our weekend plans and take the trip. I'm so glad we did!
Oze National Park is a 4 hour drive from Camp Zama. It covers a huge area spanning 4 Japanese prefectures. They don't allow private vehicles to enter the park in order to help preserve the natural beauty of the area. Our MWR bus took us to Hatomachi Pass and then we had to hike down into the park from there.
Oze has mountains, lakes, rivers and forests, but one of its main attractions is the marshlands (over 6K long). This time of year the marsh grasses are turning yellow/golden and its a sight to behold!
In order to preserve the marshlands there are miles and miles of boardwalk that traverse the park. Most of the way its a two track system with people always walking on the right side. If you want to pass someone you can step over to the other track and then jump back to the right side as soon as you pass.
We lucked out and had an absolutely beautiful day. The temps were in the 50s but when you're hiking that's actually great. After a short time we both went to shirt sleeves, although almost every Japanese hiker we saw was wearing at least a jacket - some with coats, stocking hats, and gloves!
Our tour was supposed to cover 16K (10 miles), making a giant loop of the marshland. However, from our past experience with MWR tours we know that we like to hike a lot faster than their allotted time. We had 8 hours in the park so we decided to leave the tour group and go a different route that would take us to a giant waterfall and then back around the marshland. Our route would be 24K (15 miles).
We were making great time on the flat boardwalks but once we left the main marshland loop the trail got a little more challenging and then very challenging - no more boardwalks (climbing over boulders and crossing streams). We saw some gorgeous country, but we couldn't find the giant waterfall (Sanjo no taki - if you look it up it's spectacular). Finally we felt we had run out of time so we turned back*. Stressed about not making it to Hatomachi pass before our bus left, we double timed it. The last 1.5 miles is all uphill as you climb out of the valley. Very sore legs and feet by the end!
*When we got home we checked on Google Earth - oh man! We were sooooo close!!!
This was a small waterfall we passed along the trail to Sanjo no taki. It was so pretty, but not the giant one we were hoping to see.
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