Here’s the next installment of “The Remains of 2008″. From what I can tell I still have 7 more slideshows from last year to upload. Today finds us looking back on our aborted attempt to investigate the earthquake-damaged Mt. Kurikoma region. Like I mentioned before, we were on the top of Mt. Kurikoma just one week before the 6.9M quake rocked Tohoku. We waited 3 months before venturing back out there. Unfortunately the Miyagi side of Kurikoma, the area most heavily hit, was still closed. Consulting Tony’s trusty hiking guide we decided to hike up a (hopefully) less dangerous mountain, Odogamori-san.

Skirting around Kurikoma we saw evidence of the earthquake everywhere.  Besides the blocked off roads, we saw many hills where sheets of land had just slid away.  Roads were cracked and twisted, with single lane traffic in many sections.  It’s all automated though; I guess it works on the Honour System or something.

Along the way we encountered absolutely nobody.  Not a single car.  Granted we were in rural Miyagi, but it was still pretty eerie to drive through this devastated area and not see anyone out and about.

Following Google Maps on my iPhone we broke off the pavement and started along a single lane gravel access road into the mountains.  As much as I rave about the GPS on my cell phone, the only bad point is that once you’re out of cellular range you lose the map.  Your path will still be plotted, and the little icon will still follow the path, but you’ll just be moving along a blank page.  But I digress.

Over a sketchy bridge and through a sketchy tunnel, we finally arrived at the parking lot, which was a little space beside the rocky road for a couple of cars to park.  We surveyed the map, chose our route, and filled out the logbook just in case the three of us were attacked by bears or zombies or whatever.  Like my dad always said, “Safety first, wear a condom.”  I’m just kidding, he never said “Safety first”.

About halfway up the very unmaintained trail becomes pretty steep, so there are a series of ropes to help you negotiate the sticky parts.  Nothing really dangerous though.

The view from the top.

Kyoko, Tony, and I ate our lunches at the top and enjoyed the cool breeze that rushed up and over the mountain.  We still haven’t made it back to Kurikoma, but rest assured it’s on the list for this summer.

This trip also marked the demise of my beloved Sony DSC-P73 digital camera. I used it for 5 years; it was frikking bulletproof I swear. It had been rained on and dropped more times than I can remember, but it kept on shooting great photos. No BS, I must’ve shot over 25,000 photos with this baby. It had virtually full manual control. This was probably a pretty standard feature back in it’s time, but these days full manual on a point and shoot is getting increasingly rare. For this reason only I didn’t replace my camera with another Sony, opting for the great Casio EX-V8 instead. My Sony was a really reliable camera and I was sad to see it go.