Did you enjoy your Golden Week holidays?  Were you one of the millions of people in traffic jams on the highways?  During the holidays I took a one-day trip to Fukushima with my children, and we were lucky there wasn’t any heavy traffic.  On the last day of Golden Week I decided to visit Jikoji.  It is an old temple in the mountains behind Muramatsu.  I also wanted to do some hiking nearby.
　I woke up early in the morning, ate breakfast, and made a lunch for my trip.  Then I got on my bicycle and left for Jikoji.  I stopped at Muramatsu Park to rest and have a rice ball.  Then I rode the last five kilometers to the temple.
　Jikoji is at the head of a narrow valley, beside the Takiya River.  The road to the temple passes between giant Japanese sugi that are hundreds of years old.  It was peaceful there, the only sounds coming from the water, many birds, and the wind in the trees.  It was 8:30 when I arrived at the temple.

　I looked at the temple buildings for about thirty minutes, and then I got ready to start on my hike.  I put my lunch and digital camera in a small backpack, and I filled my water bottle.  Then I walked to the start of the hiking trail.
　The trail was quite steep for the first twenty minutes, and I had to be careful.  The way climbed higher and higher, and from time to time I could enjoy nice views, but I still couldn’t see the top of the mountain.  It was hidden by the trees.
　An hour after starting I could see the top of the mountain just a hundred meters away.  But there was a large area of snow.  I was quite surprised to see so much snow in May.  I stood on the snow, and I did not fall in.  The snow was quite hard.  Because the snow was slippery, I could not walk safely in my running shoes.  I had to quit before reaching the top of 1012 meter-high Mt. Haku.
　Before going down I had lunch and rested, and I took photos of nearby mountains and of the Echigo Plain.  It looked like a great pool of rice fields.  The way down was more difficult than the way up, and my legs and knees began to hurt.  Finally, an hour and a half after starting, I reached the bottom.  It took longer to go down the mountain than to go up!  I didn’t want to ride my bike home because I was very tired.  But I got on and rode slowly home.