Chasing Waterfalls

Did you ever watch the film 'The Hang-over'? I'm proud to say I haven't, but my basic knowledge of the plot says I'm in a similar state of mind. What the cough happened yesterday night? My head is hurting. My legs are soar. My throat is dry like the Gobi desert. There's an intense smell of smoke in my clothes and for some reason, Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' is stuck in my head. There's only one conclusion to what I must have done last night: Nomi Hodai. In a bar that has Nomi Hodai (Japanese for ‘All You Can Drink’) you spend 20 euros to drink as much tequila, plum wine, undefinable 80% alcohol throat-burning shots and gin-tonics as you want for two whole hours. It's beautifully disastrous. By way of after-party, you can visit the nearest karaoke-bar to sing your lungs out.

What better way to cure a Nomi Hodai hangover than going for a small hike in one of Osaka prefecture’s nicest towns? Minoo is a very pleasant area at the edge of Osaka, nearby Kyoto and Kobe. The area is enlivened by rice fields, second-hand stores, little streams of water and, not least important, the Mr. Donut store which seems to be the heart of Minoo. There's a little train that takes you there from Osaka’s Umeda station in 30 minutes. The supermarkets play easy jazz and sell huge living crabs.
What really make this a special place are the Minoo falls. Bustling Osaka seems far away once you start the 45-minute hiking track to the soothing waterfalls of Minoo. Sure, there are plenty of other hikers during the day - mostly Japanese people who are decked out as if they were climbing Mount Fuji - but the atmosphere is calm and friendly. The hiking path is paved and easy on the feet, and there are many places to stop and take a rest, reassuring even the most hung-over traveler that hiking boots are really no necessity here. Hikers enjoy the beautiful scenery of temples, red bridges, little shops and of course the surrounding forests – if you’re lucky, you might even see the infamous 'saru' monkeys coming from the woods. Autumn is the best time of year to visit Minoo, as the forest turns into a technicolor dream of red and yellow. Deep-fried autumn leaves are even sold as a novelty snack, although they taste exactly like you’d expect them to.

The combination of fresh air, deep-fried food and light physical activity makes Minoo the perfect place for curing that hang-over. Add some monkeys, and I guarantee you: you'll basically feel like you're on the set of 'The Hang-over'!