VLOG 2: Ohara day 1, Hiking Mt. Konpirasan (Kyoto, Japan) 大原、京都

Hiking the mountains, enjoying the beauty of the nature of Japan and staying in an onsen, a hot spring bath house, in a small village just outside of Kyoto.
First of all, I would like to apologize for taking so long with editing and uploading this vlog. It took a lot of work and I hope that the result is worth the wait. I am sorry for making you wait! The second day is also almost ready and it will not take me long to finish it.
This two-day trip to Ohara took place at the end of July 2018. The weather stayed sunny and very hot for the past few weeks. High humidity and also being surrounded by mountains on three sides made temperatures in Kyoto almost unbearable. So, to escape the heat and the crowds of one of the most visited cities of Japan we headed to a small village located on the northern side of Kyoto. Don't get me wrong, the ancient capital of Japan is very beautiful, full of history and definitely should be high on the list of places to visit, but exceptionally popular locations could make other nearby gems go unnoticed. In this vlog I would like to show you a very different side of Kyoto. Hiking or climbing is probably not something that comes first to the mind when thinking about coming here, but the surrounding mountains are actually rich of beautiful green forests filled with well-kept hiking trails. And don’t worry, there are no places here where you couldn't visit some temples on the way. Although Kyoto is not an onsen city, there are a few hot springs in its vicinity, one of which we visited for the first time on this trip.
Ohara is a small village in a valley between two mountain ridges, which also separate it from the central Kyoto, but technically from administrative point of view Ohara is still a part of Kyoto City. The plan was to take a bus and leave a bit earlier, before reaching the final destination, at the place named Todera so that we could hike over Mount Konpirasan to the onsen ryokan, Ohara no Sato, we booked the previous day. During the hike we would visit some shrines, Ebumi Jinja and Kotohira Shingu Shrine, and after arriving to Ohara, depending on the time we have, we would visit some temples in the area, which are very famous for their beauty and historical importance. The hike was not that long, and Mt. Konpirasan is only 573 meter high, so the plan was very realistic unless you try to vlog and film everything as much as I did. We couldn’t make it all on the same day but next morning before going back to Kyoto we visited Jakkoin Temple and Sanzenin Temple, which are the two main temple of the area. To keep the length of the vlog somehow under control, I had to split the second day as a separate entity.
There are quite many Konpirasan named mountains in Japan, the most famous probably being the one located at Shikoku island which is the smallest one of the four main islands of Japan. Because of Japanese characters often have more than just one pronunciation, the name of the mountain we hiked can be also read as Konpirayama. There are also Kompirasan and Kompirayama variants on internet which reflect the fact that “n” before “p” is actually pronounced as “m” in Japanese language.
For the full disclosure and not to cause any misunderstanding I need to mention that I have altered some scenes by adding English transliterations to the location names directly on signs. This was done to improve the possibility of the Japanese non-speaking viewers to immerse themselves into the video. In reality most of the signs on the trail don’t have English equivalents next to the Japanese ones.
Once again, I am sorry for making you wait for so long and thank you very much for watching! I hope you liked the video. Please also consider subscribing because more content is on the way! You can find me also on:
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Gear used:
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Canon EF 16-35 f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Zhiyun Crane 2 gimbal
RØDE Stereo VideoMic X
Hoya ProND8 neutral-density filter
ZOOM H1 Handy Recorder
Mobile phone Samsung Galaxy Note 8
For the most part the video is shot in Full HD with C-Log. Only some clips from the main camera were shot in 4K for the ability to zoom in. Eating scenes were shot on a phone in 4K and without flat profile. For editing I used Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. The graphics were made in Adobe Illustrator. I have purchased a stock footage package of ink drops to use for special effect during introduction speech but everything else was filmed by us two.