wish you were here (Art Sites)

Last Saturday was a great day for being outside. I spent about 15 minutes fingering through my book of 50 mountains in Kagawa and decided to set out for Doyama (堂山). After persuading my wife that our older son could handle it and promising to shoulder our one-year-old up and down the mountain, she agreed to come along. Doyama is classified as a Satoyama situated pretty much in the middle of the Sanuki plain that reaches up 304 meters. The approach is pretty rough for our three-year-old. The hardest part for him was that his little brother was getting a free ride in the carrier that he used to get to ride around in. But once we got to the first major stop along the top and ate lunch he was ready to go. The first place that seems like the top is marked by a little box sized shrine called Ryuogu (龍王宮) on an clearing with some benches and a very nice view. While eating the box lunch she made, I joked with my wife how the shrine, “Dragon King Palace” sounded like the name of a Chinese restaurant. There’s also a box there with notes and pictures of a group that climb it every morning to watch the sunrise. This is obviously a very popular mountain with the locals.
However there was still about an hour’s walk to the real top of the mountain. I figured this would be easy as it seemed to be just walking across the top of the range. But there were a lot of steep up and down parts of the trail, even a part with a rope for getting up and down. I came across a non-poisonous looking snake on the side of the trail but that was about all the wild animals I saw. Of course the birds were going crazy singing and there were harmless looking spiders that looked like daddy long legs (without the long legs) all over. There was one opening along the trail to the top that gave a really great view of the valley going down the side of the mountain. This is what I came for. I took some pictures but none that capture the scale or feeling so you’ll have to find out for yourself what it’s like. I have no doubt you'll recognize it when you come to it.
We made it to the top but with all the trees there wasn’t much of a view from there. Heading back, we started seeing other climbers. The one-year old took his afternoon nap in while riding down the mountain and I broke down and carried our older son for about ten minutes of steep steps.
Other than the mountain itself, at the bottom there is a shrine called Tsunashiki Tenmangu. I haven’t looked into the history of this one too much but I read on the plaque there that it got its name (which I translate into “Hammock Tenmangu” ) from a story about the creation of a hammock made out of fishing ropes for Sugawara no Michizane when he was passing through here on his way to Kyushu after exile. Also at the bottom, down the road from the shrine, is a Temple called Shoukei-ji (正花寺) that houses an “Important Cultural Asset”, a wooden Bosatsu statue made in the Nara period. The temple looked to be in need of some care and despite the notice of the statue on the plaque, there didn’t seem to be anybody around to show it to you.
All around this was a great mountain and I really enjoyed spending the day on it.
Getting there by train is easy enough you just get off at Okamoto Station on Kotoden’s Kotohira line and follow the mountain trial guides directions from there. If going by car, you go south on route 32 past the Nariai Nishimura Joy and take one of the last right turns before passing the Okamoto Station.