Adventure in Arima

Today I took a trip up to Arima with a friend.  Arima is a little touristy onsen town in the mountains near Kobe.  Most people go there for the onsens, but that wasn't the reason we went.  Just for fun, fresh air, a change of scenery and bit of adventure.

Views coming into Arima..

We wandered around and took a look at some of the tourist spots (when and where we could find them...the map wasn't particularly accurate).

A lot of the buildings in Arima have the appearance of being much older and more traditional that those that you see in the city in Kobe.

One of the first stops we made, was at a little pond type thing, where we had been told we could look, but not use...

After that, we wandered up a hill and took a staircase to the Arima Inari Shrine.  It had a view overlooking the town and out to the mountains.

I wanted to ride on the machine on the left!! (It ended up going into the woods though...)

There was a frog statue

How's the view Joe? 

Then, we did some more wandering and ended up at Tsuzumigataki Park, which although small, has a nice waterfall.  There is also a little rest stop where you can get something to drink.

We continued on with our theme of wandering around the town, went back into the main town area, passed by some shops, more temples, and then found our way to Atagoyama Park where it was supposed to have a plum grove. It was quite small, but we did find a few.

Took me by surprise...😒

The next place of interest we found was the Tenjin Spring, where the water apparently has a very high content of iron, and according to the sign we read, one of the highest sodium chloride (salt) contents of hot springs in Japan.

Finally we decided to grab a late lunch and then wandered by the river for a bit before heading back to Kobe.

I made up a silly story that demons came out of the hole where the water is...and...one appeared!!! 😈😳😜

There was a pretty weeping sakura!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in Kobe....

We took a walk along a river and looked at the sakura! (Most of my pictures are from the morning when I was waiting though....

He's a dragon rider!! Our guest star today...

Also....we were able to see a uniquely interesting and amusing although slightly worrying event at the river!!  We noticed there was a boar in the river, and it was running down the river really quickly.  It went under the bridge and continued on to the other side, and as we watched it, it seemed to be looking for a way out, but eventually decided it wouldn't find one and came running back down the way it came, occasionally switching sides, and once in a while it would pause and sniff/think before (literally) jumping back into action and bolting down the river.  Not sure how it got in there, but hopefully it was able to find one of the ramps and make its way back out to dry ground...

If the video doesn't work, click here...

Good night! Special thanks to today's guest star for joining in on this adventure!