Miyagi-ken:

Zaosan 蔵王山 1841m difficulty~1 scenery~3
Solo climb

Zao is a very popular ski area in the winter. In the other months people come here to drift on the touge (mountain roads) or to see the huge crater called Okama crater (funny name! okama means gay in Japanese) This is
maybe the easiest mountain I've done so far. It only takes 2 or 3 hours to get to the summit and back from the car park. On the day I climbed the wind was furious and cold. I've never felt anything like it before. On several ocasions I lost balance and almost rolled down the hill side. I was very glad a had my new North Face down jacket that I had just bought the day before. Works great! The summit was kinda spooky. I was walking around in this really old shrine and haunted looking hut up
there, no body around for miles. I thought I could hear voices a couple of times, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up pretty quick. But I figured I was just trippin and it must have been the wind howling in around the walls of the shrine.