THINGS TO DO IN TSURUOKA #2-Climb Mount Gassan

GAS-san, YAMAGATA

Talking about Yamagata, people might talking about mountains. No wonder, Yama means Mountains and my guess is Yamagata is the city with mountains. Located in northern part of Japan made this place colder that any other places in Japan (except Hokkaido, of course it's the coldest). Historically, Japanese people, especially who lives in Yamagata believe that there are 3 main God in this universe and in Japan they are called ~san, like Gas-san, Haguro-san and Yudono-san. Not sure enough about why those three and why only three, pretty sure google has much more answers cause I'm not gonna talk history :p
Well, the main point of some mountains in Yamagata, in this case those 3 Gods, is you climb the mountain then you will find a shrine there. Probably used to be the place for some ritual to become a God or something. Like Haguro, I found also one religious spot and, of course, shrine in Gassan is cool. Pretty awesome and wonder how people who lived before century could climb this 1900 meters something mount with just bare-food and very cold weather. Anyway, still, that's called struggle.

Anyway, I went to Gassan after Haguro and this is what Gassan looks like in the top which you absolutely could see the rest of other mountains cause it's the tallest among them. 
Reach Gassan is quite easy but you better use your own car otherwise you will spend too much money. It's about 3-4 hours from the city and the access is very good. The car could go inside near the spot, line-car is also there to reach the closest point of climbing and toilet, only one in the line-car station. Here take a look the line-car services. Oh ya, 1000 yen you should pay for this :)
My advice, just go there in summer cause though in fall, Gassan already snowing.

Happy climbing :)

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