Towada Lake

In July we made our way once again to the Hachimantai-Towada National Park. On this trip our main objective was to find campgrounds for future trips to Lake Towada. With a depth of 327 meters, the lake is the third deepest in Japan.

We spent a lot of the first day just driving around since it was a little rainy, but it ended up being fairly nice the rest of the day. The small town of Yasumiya borders the lake, and offers several points of interest...including our tomato head friend.
The next day Amy and I (after an hour or so of searching our Japanese map/GPS) decided to climb Mount Towada (Towadayama). Although this mountain was only 3000 ft, it was a very difficult hike due to the amount of foliage you had to hike through.
As you can see in the picture above, sometimes you were completely surrounded by small trees and bushes. I made the mistake of doing the hike without pants on, and my legs ended up looking like I'd been kicking barbed wire. You can see a little snippet on the video.

The hike wasn't too much fun, but the view from the peak was pretty nice. As usual, Amy and I had our freeze dried meal at the peak (along with some Pizza Combos).
And I couldn't leave this picture out. There is a famous bronze sculpture (famous in Japan anyways) on the lake with two naked ladies giving each other high fives. We found this in town, and I made Amy jump behind it.