Spiders & Snakes & Garbage, Ome

I've been chipping away at my fear of snakes to ready/steady myself for our months in SE Asia.  We're going to be in jungles and we all know what lives there; I'm just going to have to man up and get in touch with my reptilian brain.  Thus far, the only milestone reached is to not shriek and change the channel when there is a snake on TV (see: Modern Family).  I figure if I can handle watching one on TV, my crippling terror when confronted with a giant dangerous live one in Cambodia will be a non-issue.  Right?

The reason I bring up the snake phobia is because this week, despite having read of slithery encounters along the trail, I put on my big girl pants and we went hiking in Ome, a bedroom community in far-west Tokyo.  As is tradition, we got lost in the woods because we didn't bring the GPS.  Like clockwork, seriously.  We had an awesome picnic lunch.  Then the gravelly 2 mile rolling loop we tried to follow (based on a hand drawn Japanese map) to see some temples and a view of Mt. Fuji turned into 3 hours of leisurely wandering followed by 1 hour of back hacking.

As is the case everywhere in Tokyo, post-picnic there was not a gd trash bin for miles.  Its as if these folks are allergic to disposal.  En route from picnic table to trail we passed playgrounds, parking areas and a ball field, and not one bin to toss our bento remains.  As Sue said after carrying an empty paper cup halfway across the city last week, 'I didn't know my coffee came with a side of albatross.'  We've since started calling it garbatross and unless we prepare ourselves to re-enact the stations of the cross in the woods, next time we'll eat before we get on the train.

It was with annoyance and mirin on my shorts that I began the descent through the woods with the trash caribined to my bag.  The first 1/4 of the trail was wide and well trodden.  But as we got lower, the trail got narrower and darker and veered off into the woods.  At which time the movie-prop sized spiderwebs were no longer scenery along the path, but tolls to be paid every 4 feet.

Ed feels similarly about spiders as I do about snakes (though he isn't a big fat baby about it), so I took the lead.  I selected a large branch/small felled tree from the ground and waved it out front as we hiked down.  The grass got tall and I got nervous, but the garbatross slapping against my leg made enough noise to scare an anaconda.  And thus we descended.
 

We walked through here as the sun was setting, defeated the spiders, and avoided the reptiles. 

And, when we got back into town, still had enough day light to see the spooky/best painted vintage movie posters sprinkled throughout the town.  Our team won this day.