Minoh Waterfalls Hike

We had stayed at the Minoh Oedo Onsen during the summer, and missed out on the hike up to the waterfalls. The weather is significantly better now for hiking and the season is also perfect for checking out ‘momiji’ (red leaves) of the changing autumn colors. Popular tourist sites are often packed with photo enthusiasts and Minoh Waterfalls is probably packed with people on the weekends. We decided to head out early on a weekday to avoid the crowds.

Minoh Waterfalls

We headed out in the morning and took the Hankyu line from Osaka Station and arrived in less than 30 minutes at the Minoh station. The beginning of the Minoh Falls trail starts right outside the station, and it’s a paved trail that is about 2 km up to the waterfall. The trail has a few places along the way to pick up a snack and rest, but the whole trail is only about an hour and a half round trip and is pretty easy.

There are some temples and shrines on the trail, and possibly more if we had taken some of the side trails.

Looks like monkeys are a motif around these parts, including these guys.

These guys even get a cape!

Momiji Tempura

The trail is also known for their Momiji Tempura which some stores had been frying up since the morning. Looks like this cute couple has been doing this for a while, they were cooking up the tempura all morning. Who wouldn’t buy from these guys?

Frying anything makes it yummy, but we had never eaten a maple leaf before, so we were expecting it to be salty or bitter. In actuality, it was salty/sweet and crunchy, and you only really tasted the batter. M seemed to like them, these were more like salty and sweet chips rather than tempura.

We were done with our hike by lunch time, and there weren’t too many restaurants around the station so we headed back to Umeda and ate near home. The trail is a great escape from the city, and I definitely recommend it during the fall!