Our Something New: A piece of bread for every step

Sometime in September, it just so happened that Keenan and Eric were traveling for work at the same time. This gave Sarah and me a good excuse for another day trip (not that we needed one)! We ventured down the east coast to a place called Kitayamazaki Cliffs. Or, as we like to call it, "the thousand steps place." In Japan, it seems that in order to get to any rock worth getting to, you either have to ascend or descend a crap-load (pardon my French) of steps! And as you know, what goes up must come down and what goes down...must come up? Okay, that phrase doesn't work in this scenario, but long story short: to see cool things, prepare to walk steps. A lot of them.

It took us a few hours (by car) to get to our destination. Before getting to the cliffs (and a park where you can see the cliffs from an observation deck before taking the steps down to beach level), we searched for a light house. We saw signs for it (we think), but were never able to actually spot it. We had a few theories, which included everything from 'we just couldn't find it' to 'it was destroyed in the tsunami.' Either way, mission find cool lighthouse: failed.

But that was no problem because we still had a lot of steps to walk and cool rocks to see! We started at the observation deck before making our way to the stairs.

There were 363 stairs to the second observation platform (I didn't count, there were signs).

Sign basically says, "Watch out! Or the ocean will eat you, too!"

There were an additional 510 to the beach. 873 stairs (plus a few apparently unofficial steps that were not counted) later, we were up pretty close to some monster rocks. They were positively spectacular! The water was a gorgeous color blue and it was incredible to see (and hear) the power of the waves crashing upon the rocks.

Before taking the stairs down, Sarah and I had visions of being able to spend some time meandering the beach (read: a little time to prepare for the trip back up). But once we got down there, we realized that all of the meandering space had been eaten away by the ocean. As a result, we pretty much walked down the steps, took some photos, oohed and ahhed a sufficient amount, then turned around and went back up.

The up was not quite as much fun as the down, but we made it! And when we say, "we walked, like, a thousand steps," we aren't lying...almost.

Moments after this picture was taken, we had reached the top and were sitting on a bench catching our breath. I held Bean up, looked her in the eye, and praised her for all her hard work! It must have been hard for a little baby to walk so many steps! Her response was to spit up...in  my mouth...and that's how she felt about all those steps.

Step #1. No seriously, they are numbered.

Walking, like, a thousand steps made us pretty hungry. So, for dinner, we stopped at an Italian restaurant with an "all you can eat" bread bar. Our meals were delicious, Bean tried her very first bread, and Sarah and I had a piece of bread for every step. We had, like, a thousand pieces of bread.

Exploring "the hatchet"

Flashback to August...

"The hatchet" is a nickname we (Americans in Northern Japan) use for the northernmost part of Honshu island. This may be stating the obvious, but take a look the map and note that the northern peninsula (Shimokita peninsula) is hatchet-shaped....thus, the name! Following our successful camping weekend with Sarah and Keenan, we were all itching to get back on the road so we planned a trip to the hatchet! Well, Sarah planned the trip, and we eagerly hopped on board (you may notice this becomes a trend. In fact, if I ever catch up blogging, you will see that we "hopped on board" all the way to Cambodia and Thailand!).

One of the first "attractions" we saw on this outing was "Whale island." Again, you can probably see from the picture why it is called Whale island...

But why is it called Whale island?

After Whale island, we made our way to Hotoke-ga-ura, which is a (almost) mile-long stretch of naturally carved rock formations on the west coast of the Shimokita peninsula. This place was IN-CRED-I-BLE. I should preface this by saying that I am a rock person. And Eric is a rock person. But, wow! Breathtaking.

We had to walk down what seemed like eleventy billion steps to get to the beach from the road in order to walk around the base of the formations. The hike down (and later back UP) was well worth it! To date, this place remains one of the coolest places we have seen. I also have to give some mad props to Eric for his baby-wearing skills! Who says you can't rock scramble with a Bean in your pouch?

Mom, don't show dad this picture!

He moved it a little, I swear! 

Uni!

The Eagle.

"You're telling me I have to walk up ALL these stairs?" -Bean

We explored Hotoke-ga-ura at beach level and then from a lookout point from the road above. It took Eric a few minutes to catch on that the view from the lookout point was Hotoke-ga-ura. When he saw the view in the first picture, he exclaimed, "oh wow, guys, this view is amazing!" The rest of us had already seen the formations by this point, and encouraged him to take another look from our viewpoint. As you can see, he was not impressed...

Sarah had heard that there is a pretty good chance to spot snow monkeys off the road in the area around Hotoke-ga-ura. Keeping this in mind as we drove away from the formations, we all kept an eye out. All of the sudden, we spotted monkeys! Right in the road. Tons of them! The cherry on top was that it was a squad of momma monkeys draped in babies! There are not words to describe the cuteness we witnessed, so I will just have to prove it in pictures.

For dinner, we hit a burger joint in the city of Mutsu. After dinner, we were treated to an Aria of screams by baby Bean. ALL,THE.WAY.HOME. Screaming aside, it was an awesome day in Northern Japan! And the best news is, Keenan and Sarah still hang out with us, which is a win for us, but I cannot speak for them.