Bitter dragons
May 25, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Japan, Inspiration | 10 Comments
At 4a.m. the rain was still pounding like a canon on the roof of Kijitei, the restaurant owned by Yuka’s parents, which nestles in the verdant foothills outside Chichibu. The grey dawn filtered through the paper screens, while the frogs sang in their damp delight outside. I’d planned a fast, light climb up Mt. Ryogami this morning. But the thought of knee-high mud, cold water trickling down my neck, and probably no view at the top had me crawl back under the warm futon instead. There would be other days.
Mt. Ryogami’s black, jagged teeth jut defiantly against the skyline to the west of Chichibu city. These mountains hold gold and other metals; some of the nation’s first-known coinage was found in these parts, and there were commercial mines here until recently. There are hidden villages too, huddled half way up the valleys. One is rumoured to comprise the the direct descendants of the defeated Heike clan, who fled to the hills when the forces of the Minamoto routed them after the battles of the 12th century. The heirlooms of more than one homestead are scraps of faded cloth, said to be the remnants of battle standards and armour over eight hundred years old. The women still filed and blackened their teeth in the manner of the medieval Japanese court until the middle of last century. Life does not change quickly here.
The present name for Mt. Ryogami comprises two characters, “both/two” and “god(s)”, and so it is said to be named for the ancient deities Izanagi and Izanami. But as Fukada points out in his Nihon-Hyakumeizan, there is nothing to suggest a duel or twin nature to the mountain, no double peak or other characteristic. Instead he takes us through the history of its various appellations. Formerly it appears to have been known as Mt. Yokami (eight-day-visible-mountain). Further research suggests that originally the mountain was known as Mt. Ya-okami (eight-headed-dragon mountain), which makes far greater sense. Its serrated edge on a fine day is clearly the spine of some mighty serpent, and on the map one can just trace the eight heads leading from its peak, much as one can trace the five heads of the dragon which lead from Mt. Goryu (five-headed-dragon-mountain) in nearby Nagano.
The rain clears by mid-afternoon, and my mother-in-law continues with my instruction in the tea ceremony. Just as the mountains of Chichibu have shaped and formed the attitudes of this outpost of Tokyo, so the tea ceremony has shaped Japan’s cultural and psychological vocabulary. To be bad or unskilled at something in Japanese is to be “nigate“, literally “bitter-handed”, a word originally describing a tea ceremony neophyte whose concoctions were tanic and undrinkable. We whisk the powdered tea as the late afternoon sun streams through the windows and catches the magnificent ramparts of Mt. Buko, the symbol of Chichibu so cruelly devastated by the excavations of the Onoda Cement Company. Further off Mt. Ryogami is no doubt enjoying a magnificent sunset too. My father-in-law bravely offers to try my first attempt, and brings a cup to his lips.
“Nigate!”
I’m going to stick to climbing mountains.
Closer to heaven
May 19, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration | 16 Comments
Looking around the hut you could tell the ones who had just been to the summit of Yari. They had the burnt-out, shell-shocked look of veterans. Bloodless fingers nervously flicked the ice from the sharp points of their crampons, axes caressed lovingly against their arms. A cigarette crackled and spat in the thin air as its owner sucked it down in one long inhalation.
An hour and a half later I had acquired my own Yari-induced thousand yard stare.
Yari is named after the Japanese for spear. Its pyramidal peak pierces the sky, a lethal black weapon atop the smooth white curves of the glacier which curls away below it. In summer it is a short, if hair-raising, climb from the hut below via two ladders and some fixed chain. In winter all except the top ladder lie below the thick snow and ice which remains plastered to its steep walls. The result is a near seventy-degree climb without protection, and a long fast drop to the glacier ending in a mess of certainly fatal injuries somewhere far below. With this in mind, I dug the axe deep, stabbed into the snow with my free hand to the elbow where I could, and kicked again and again until the crampons hit home to the toe with a reassuringly solid thud.
I flopped onto the summit and lay for a few minutes on my back starring at the sky, lungs bellowing. As the chill hit me I got up, walked slowly to the small shrine which sits at the top and thanked the gods for a safe ascent. The cloud cleared briefly, arraying the Alps before me in every direction. Crouching out of the wind before the shrine, I noticed the coins left by previous climbers as an offering were strangely melted and discoloured. The result, perhaps, of the lightening which strikes this sharp conductor through the summer months?
The climb down took twice the time of the ascent, each step a blind kick into the whiteness below. Reaching the ridge at the foot of the summit, I walked back to the hut on legs turned to jelly. I grabbed a can of cold beer and nursed it, speechless, for a while.
I’d started out from Kamikochi at 8p.m. the day before, walking through the night and the black forest as far as Yoko-o. The full moon shone over my shoulder, lighting the snow capped peaks and throwing my shadow long over the path ahead. The bear bell jangled happily at my hip, and I reveled in the sharpness of my senses, the sound of the river and the scents thrown up in the cold night air. Chesterton’s lament for olfaction lost rang in my head,
The brilliant smell of water,
The brave smell of a stone,
The smell of dew and thunder,
The old bones buried under,
Are things in which they blunder
And err, if left alone.The wind from winter forests,
The scent of scentless flowers,
The breath of brides’ adorning,
The smell of snare and warning,
The smell of Sunday morning,
God gave to us for ours.
At Yoko-o I rolled out the bivy, climbed in and watched the clouds race across the face of the moon until I fell asleep. Waking a short while later at 2:53, I stuck a cold hand outside to light the stove for breakfast, and searched the horizon for a glimmer of light. Nothing yet, but the sun would be up in an hour. I wanted to hit the glacier as soon as possible before the solar radiation turned it to slush.
By six, I was at the hut at Yari-zawa, chatting with its owner in the early morning sun. “There’s a couple of people camping at the bottom of the glacier, and two couples here at the hut. Should be nice and uncrowded for you today.” he said, sipping his coffee. Another hour later and I found the tents huddled against the stone windbreak, sole patches of colour against an otherwise monotone landscape.
From Yari-zawa, the valley curves around and up to the west and then north to Yari itself. As I climbed, the sun peered out from over the summit of Jounen-dake, lighting up the valley; the thermometer said minus four, but it felt like a convection oven. I pasted on the sunscreen and started up through the snow towards the hut below the summit at a little over 10,000 feet.
Reaching the final steep slope which marks the head of the glacier some five hour later the weather turned. Hard pellets of snow, like grains of pudding rice, fell from the liquorice coloured sky and a cold wind blew from the north. Suddenly my sweat-drenched t-shirt, so nice and cool when the sun was out, started to suck the heat out of me. I dug around in my pack, pulled out my jacket and hunkered in the snow for a few minutes as the soft down warmed my body. The clouds cleared momentarily, and taking a quick bearing on the line of bamboo wands stuck in the snow, I started the ascent to the hut again, still a thousand feet above. At eleven thirty I staggered into its warmth, and prepared myself for the route to the summit.
A thin red line on the horizon the next day mocked the forecast for cloud and rain. Pulling on cold boots and crampons, I grabbed my camera and ran onto the hard ice outside, filling my eyes with the beauty of a clear dawn across the mountains. I wondered to myself if I would ever tire of this sight, of the flickering purples, blues and reds which marked the start of a new day. I can’t ever imagine not wanting to see this. I watched the sun break above the horizon, saw it kiss the peak of Yari and continue to rise into the cloudless sky above. Back in the hut I made a liter of hot chocolate and drank it down as I looked out over the white roof of Japan, and I thought myself the luckiest man alive.
Giant leaps through the sun-softened snow took me back down the glacier, fast and fun. By eight I was back at the Yari-zawa hut. In a few hours I would be at Kamikochi among the day trippers, where people no longer met your eye or said good morning as they passed. I dropped my pack, stripped off my t-shirt and washed in the cold river. The water leapt and fizzed as if it were happy to at last be free of the glacier and on its way to the sea again. What if the water of my body felt the same way? Would it too rejoice when I closed my eyes for the last time? It was a thought at once both terrifying and strangely comforting, and it accompanied me down the trail to the shrine at Hotaka.
The midday bus took me back to Shin-shimashima and by evening was back in Tokyo. My wife opened the door, giggled at the sunburnt vision in front of her. “You smell like you had a good time.” she said.
I certainly did.
Fishing for mountains
May 6, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration | 20 Comments
I saw my soul at nine minutes past six in the morning, as I climbed the ridge between the summits of Nokogiri and Kaikomagatake. It floated like a phantom in the clouds billowing up the north face. It was clearly mine; I waved at it and it waved back. Its elongated arms and legs matched my movements. Like a shadow but surrounded by two, and at times three, perfectly circular rainbows.
It walked with me as I made my slow way through the snow and up the ridge. At close to 10,000 feet the air was getting thin but this was no hallucination. I could see that it too seemed to be carrying a large pack, and I was happy to think that it must love the same things that I do. We walked together for maybe fifteen minutes before I climbed into the clouds that obscured Kaikomagatake’s peak, and that vision of my soul disappeared with the sun.
Sadly what I saw wasn’t really my soul but a phenomenon known as the Specter of Brocken, a rare interplay of the sun and clouds that occurs at mainly at altitude. It is named for the highest peak in the Harz mountains in Germany, where the Specter is said to be a monster of immense proportions which wears a headdress of oak leaves and carries an uprooted pine. It appears suddenly and seems to possess enormous, treetrunk-like limbs. The motion of the climber and the movement of the clouds upon which it is projected seem to give it life, a presence which is at once malign and malicious. It never fails to surprise, causing more than a few climbers to fall to their deaths with shock. I’d seen it once before on Kashima-yari last year, but this time felt different, more proximate, as if I truly was in the company of something sentient. I’m lucky to have seen it at all; Jim Wickwire, one of the first men to climb K2, said he saw it just once in forty years of climbing.
The Specter itself is obviously the result of the climber’s shadow being projected onto nearby clouds. The giant size is a misperception, the same one which makes the moon look larger when it is near the horizon. I’m not sure what causes the rainbows. Maybe some kind of back scattering of the sunlight. I suspect Captain Interesting knows, or has a book that holds the answer.
I was back for another attempt on Kaikomagatake in the Minami Alps. Like last time I started out from the foot of the Todaigawa valley, following the trail along five or six miles and up a few thousand feet through the boulders and debris. The winter snows were melting, turning the Todai river into a boiling, grinding flood of grey water. Rough log bridges that had spanned the current two weeks ago now ended half way across; with pack unclipped and slung over one shoulder, I jumped the gaps. Unlike last time I had a different line planned for my ascent of Kaikoma, one which would take me away from the trade route from Kitazawa, which was deserted two weeks ago but would now be crowded with Golden Week climbers. The map showed a route which branched off the valley and up Nokogiridake (the “Saw Peak”) and along to Kaikoma. Fukuda Kyuya’s description of Kaikoma is filled with superlatives, “the most beautiful of the Alps”, “the hardest climb” and I felt this would be a fitting route since technology has rendered the mountain otherwise overly accessible. I also needed solitude, desolation and a challenge; this promised all three.
Per the map, the climb up Nokogiri should be five hours. However the winter snow still lay thick and rotten on its upper slopes, turning it into a “tottering pile of shit”, to borrow a phrase from Jon Tinker. In turns it went from sawa-nobori (gorge climbing) to bouldering to hacking through steep, dense rhodedendron forest to chest deep snow, knife edge ridges and the constant staccato accompaniment of rockfall. Seven hours later I topped out at 8800 feet and from the summit beheld the long crest to Kaikoma. The north-east side of it was still heavily corniced with snow, while the south-west side was a mess of tumbledown rockfall where the snows had melted and granite boulders career down the mountainside.
The original plan was to make the summit of Kaikoma by nightfall, roll out the bivy and catch both sunset and sunrise. Creeping slowly along the ridge, however, it became evident that I would scarcely make the hut some two hours below Kaikoma before darkness. Progress was slow. Each fixed rope and chain had to be tugged and checked carefully before clipping in. The mountain erodes too fast for anything to stay permanently attached up here. Six hours of butt-clenching fear later I stumbled on the unmanned hut at Roku-gome, tugged at the door and found that snow had drifted inside and frozen it shut. I dug a pit by the door, unpacked the bivy and crawled inside, imagining myself to be cozy in the hut instead.
I woke before the alarm at 3 a.m. to a mighty crash from the valley. Landslides and rockfall are common at this time of year, as the snows melt and the mountains loosen their grip on their fabric. Then another crash and, as I watched the shooting stars from the small gap in the bivy, I imagined the noise to be the hooves of giant horses galloping down below. Kaikomagatake translates to “Horse Peak of the Kai Region”, and in ancient times it was believed that the horses of the gods were stabled here. Some people say it is because the snow forms the shape of a horse as it melts off the peak, but I wondered whether in fact it was the sound of rockfall that gave birth to the myth. Either way, it was time to get moving. An almost lenticular cloud hung over Senjogatake, bringing a warning of worse weather to come and the barometer was already starting to fall.
A few hours later I came over the north-west ridge of Kaikoma to the summit at 9800 feet, joining a few small groups of climbers who had made their way either up the north-east spur from Kurodo or from Kitazawa to the south-east. After some jokey applause and playful taps on my helmet, their general consensus was that only madmen come via Nokogiri. I found it hard to disagree. From the top you can see back down to the grey scar that is the Todaigawa valley. It felt strange to think that in a few hours I would be down there again, but food and fuel had run low on the longer-than-expected Nokogiri route, so down I would have to go. I turned my back on the summit and started the descent, passing hardy bands of climbers making their way up from their multi-colored tents pitched below at Kitazawa.
On the first day I’d met only one other person, Nagase-san the fisherman, who drove up just as I was preparing to depart. He greeted me good morning, then with a great sigh “Aaah, it’s been thirty years since I last came to the Todaigawa valley. Are you climbing Kaikoma?” I said I was, and he told me how he had come here as a high school student when he belonged to the mountaineering club, and they climbed Kaikoma in the days before the Minami-Alps through-road to Kitazawa was built. He was born and raised in Hyogo prefecture west of Kyoto and spent twenty five years as a hardware engineer in Tokyo before returning to Hyogo five years ago to work for a regional sake brewer. I asked if he still climbed. “No, not since high school. I fish. Every day, before and after work! And I remembered the river here, so I drove through the night to see if there might be something good here. Do you know anywhere good to fish?” There was a spot about an hour and a half away that I had passed before, and I offered to lead him there as it was on my way. We walked and talked about mountains and fishing until we reached the pools where mountain trout flitted back and forth. We said goodbye and I carried on up to Nokogiri and beyond.
Returning to the car late the next day, I found a plastic bag tied to the wing mirror, inside of which was a note and a parcel. The note read:
Chris-san,
(I hope you can read Japanese)
Thank you for leading me up to the fishing spot in Todaigawa. I enjoyed our time together, and listening to you talk about the mountains I was reminded of how much I used to love climbing them too. Tomorrow I am going to Tokyo, and while I am there I will buy some hiking boots. I am going to climb the mountains in Hyogo, and when I use my boots I will remember you.
I hope you like fish and sake.
Nagase
Inside the parcel were two mountain trout, carefully gutted, packed in snow and wrapped in newspaper, and a 250cc bottle of sake from his brewery. The fish were promptly grilled over a small fire and the the sake warmed up in the Jetboil. As I sat in the dark valley watching the flames I thought that in some way these mountains had shown me something of my soul after all.
Snowmen on Kaikoma
April 14, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing | 6 Comments
There it was, perched precariously on the side of the mountain right in front of me; a perfectly formed snowman. Or rather, the body of one. No head to be seen, just its round body, a meter and a half across and forlorn in the snow. I looked around and spied another a little further up, sitting stately as a rotund East Island head and staring out across the snowy valley. Headless snowmen at 8000 feet made no sense.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I crouched without thinking, just in time to witness another giant snowman hurl itself down from on high and explode into a tree below, which shook the snow from its boughs in anger. Then I understood. Clumps of snow and ice were dropping off the rocks in the warm spring sun and rolling, gathering snow, before launching themselves off the cliffs above me. Some settled on the slope below like snowy Moai, while others barreled and exploded on whatever was in their way. I was in their way. It was time to go home.
Getting into Japan’s mountains in the winter is to be a trespasser, a burglar of their cold secrets. The roads are closed off, some more securely than others. I spent half of Friday night looking for an entrance to Mount Kaikomagatake, moving blockades and dodging the rockfall on unkempt, potholed tracks. Rentacar companies don’t like me much anymore. I saw tears in the eyes of one of their girls last time I returned the car, caked as it was in mud and with half a bush stuck in the bumper. And missing a hubcap. I’ve learnt always to take full insurance.
Eventually I hit upon an unblocked track, but as suspected it terminated at Todai, a good seven miles from the foot of Kaikoma. I grab a couple of hours of sleep before rising and starting the long walk up the Todai-gawa valley. At its head the Kaikoma ridge shimmers in the early morning sun, its face still streaked with snow, and looking impossibly far off. I feel very small. The route along the river looks easy on the map, but the distance conceals the 3000 foot rise in elevation along its course. And this just to reach the foot of the mountain, itself another 3000 foot climb.
By midday I was sitting in the sun at the Kitazawa hut, melting snow to drink and studying the ursine footprints in the snow. Didn’t think they’d have woken up so early this year, but clearly they are on the prowl already. I punch on through the snow, post-holing in the springtime slush, until I am standing in the middle of the decapitated snowmens’ garden.
Go down or go up. I choose down. It’s late in the day, and getting hit by one of these cannonballs would not be a good thing on this slope. There’s no-one around for miles and it’s a long drag back to the car. Not the kind of place to have an accident. As I walk back down the valley, Kaikoma’s snowy head watches me until the clouds roll in and close it from view. I’ve figured out some of it’s secrets and it knows I’ll be back soon.
Snow country
February 19, 2008 | Filed Under Hiking, Japan | 12 Comments
“I think the roof is collapsing.”
Kevin’s headlamp shone out from the small opening in his sleeping bag, illuminating the snow cave we’d dug a few hours before, lighting up the ceiling. A ceiling which by this time had dropped to less than six inches away from my face. Pulling on his jacket he slithers out of the shrinking entrance, and I follow. It’s 3a.m. and our lamps sear through the snowstorm outside, freezing the flakes momentarily in their crazed descent. Kevin and Tomoe pull their gear from the cave, pitch the tent and crawl in. I drag my bivy bag outside and smother myself in its warm down, letting the snow cover me and the patter of heavy flakes lull me back to sleep. How deep would it be by morning?
We woke and pushed through waist-deep snow for a few hours the next day before taking stock and deciding to turn around. The storm of the previous night had given way to a cobalt blue sky, but our tracks had been obliterated by another couple of feet of fresh, heavy snow.
“Fifty paces then switch?” Kevin suggested. We took it in turns to lead and break a path through the fresh, before swapping and resting. I managed no more than thirty paces before my thighs gave out in a blaze of lactic fatigue. The snow clung thick to my snowshoes which refused to float on the snowpack. Kevin ploughed ahead on his kanjiki, the traditional snowshoe equivalent of Japan, and pounded the snow into submission.
By nightfall we’d reached the house, and an hour later we were at the local baths, swapping cold waist deep snow for blistering neck deep water. Sakae-mura is a small village, and news of our plans had traveled far and wide.
“So you didn’t climb Naeba?”. No, we’d abandoned that plan.
“Heh, why climb in this weather anyway?”.
That’s the kind of question that can only be answered with a grin and a shrug.
Kevin’s (much better) account of the hike can be found here.
He and Tomoe run One Life Japan, an organization dedicated to tours and programs that provide unique participation in the rural traditions of Japan. What they are doing is both fascinating and important - I’d urge you to take a look.
My koan
January 15, 2008 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing | 2 Comments
“Who is it that carries for you this lifeless corpse of yours?”. Hsueh-Yen’s koan comes to me often in the mountains. I look up at a distant peak and know that by nightfall I will be at its top, but I do not know where the will comes from or how it must happen. Something stirs and pushes me on.
I lay in the tent listening to the light patter of snow on its canvas in the pre-dawn. Much against my will something drags me from the soft, warm down of my sleeping bag and plunges my feet into icy boots. Then it throws me towards Mount Hyakkyo-ga-take, whose head remains swathed in cloud and snow.
I’d walked through the primeval forests of Mount Odaigahara the day before. Mist clung to the trees, smothering all sound except that of the river below. My bear-bell rang forlornly in the gloom, but I was glad of its presence (and my capsicum spray) after finding bear scat on trail.
Beautiful as it was, I was not sorry to turn my back on Odaigahara. The freezing mist had chilled my bones and the gloom my heart. I went in search of the nearest hot spring to put the warmth back in them both before making my way to the foot of Hyakkyo for Sunday’s climb.
The storms of early winter had washed away much of whatever path there had been up the northern spur of the mountain. No cultivated cedars for Hyakko, this is primeval forest and I crash through the thick undergrowth and over fallen trees, trying to keep a compass bearing. Then I come upon a mighty gash in the mountain, a landslide deep and wide which bisects the path for fifty meters both above and below me, and I know that today\’s climb has come to an end. The exposed yellow clay is fresh and garish, and stands in contrast to the deep greens and browns of the forest around it. A small rock bounced lazily down its length before stopping with a clatter in the mess of tree trunks and boulders at its foot.
I head for the hot spring resort of Dorokawa, which lies at the foot of the holy mountain Omine. I soak away my aches and disappointment in the hot water for hours until night falls. I need real food and walk Dorokawa’s deserted streets until find it at a lonely okonomiyaki restaurant. The owner is closing up for the night, but takes pity on me and waves me towards the tatami mats and a small room festooned with banners of the seven lucky gods. His wife takes my order, brings me some hot sake and asks where I am staying. She shivers when I say my tent.
The sake cuts like a knife and spreads through me. The owner shuffles over and, trouser fly down, cooks the okinomiyaki for me on the hot plate in the table. We talk about Omine. He thinks there will be a meter of snow on top, but I am not so sure. He leaves me to eat, and watches the Sunday night history drama on television about the Satsuma rebellion. For a moment I am jealous of him and his wife tonight. Their beds will be warm, and their life uncomplex. Whatever carries their corpses is different from mine. Warm and fed, I stand and make my way out. The owner’s wife wonders aloud if she should lend me a blanket, and I smile and tell her I have a good sleeping bag. The car rolls through the dark night, along the rock-stewn road to the trailhead, into the snow and away from the land of men.
Mount Omine has been a training ground for ascetic buddhist monks since the seventh century when En-no-Gyoja roamed its peaks. Even today women may not stand on its slopes, a fact proclaimed by large signs at the entrance.
The climb to the top follows the Omine-okugakemichi, the 1300 year old pilgrimage route which winds over one hundred miles along the hills of the Kii-peninsula. Snow falls heavily for the first few hours. I count my steps, one to ten, over and over again to keep going. At the gate to the temple on the top of the mountain I bow, and as I do so the sun breaks through the clouds and within minutes the mountains lay their snowy splendor before me. Jumping and shouting with delight I bound down the mountain, crampons cutting smooth and deep into the bright snow.
I still don’t know who it is that carries this lifeless corpse of mine. But I do know that the mountains call to it, and it to them. And for that I am glad.
Plans, plans…
January 8, 2008 | Filed Under Hiking, Japan | 5 Comments
Dark clouds cruised the high places, dropping the first snows of winter, clearing briefly to reveal snow capped peaks and keeping us to the foothills of Kyoto and Nara over the year end.
We traced the millenia-old footsteps of En-no-Gyoja, Kukai and Saigyo through Yoshino near Nara. The armour of Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune still sits at Yoshimi shrine alongside the weapons of his retainer, the warrior-monk Benkei. It’s been there for almost a thousand years.
The long weekend is approaching. So here’s the plan. Jump on the shinkansen on Friday evening. Hire a 4WD at Osaka, and drive up to Odaigahara. Spent Saturday hiking through the snow in Odaigahara’s primeval forests, then head west to Mount Omine. Climb up on Sunday, back down on Monday. Gonna need some snowshoes..
Sushi & Samurai
October 21, 2007 | Filed Under Japan | Leave a Comment
The accents of Japan are shaped by its geography. The trade routes with China and Formosa formed the accents of Okinawa and the Ryukyus. In the north the harsh snows of winter produced the characteristic lock-jawed, glotteral sounds of Tohoku and Sendai; you learn to keep your mouth closed when the winds rip from the Siberian mainland. The impenetrability of the accent increases with the depth of the snowfall.
Straw overboots for use in the snow, Zuigenji temple
In Matsushima it takes three attempts before I realize the itamae-san, the sushi chef, is asking me where I am from. His hands deftly pare slabs of fish, dash them with wasabi and squeeze them atop warm blocks of vinegared rice. The autumn sky is clear and a cool breeze blows over the pine-topped islands of the bay after which Matsushima is named. Tourists roam the area in mean gangs to see the autumn colours, and business is good at the sushi bar.
Business was also good for the samurai clans in the middle ages as the country tottered and split, rival governments springing up like the so many bamboo shoots. Taxes and tributes flowed not to the Emperor but to clan coffers, financing the rebuilding of family castles and shrines, as well as wars aimed at burning the castles and shrines of rivals. The temple complex of Zuigenji was restored, and in return shed its affiliation with esoteric Tendai Buddhism and adopted the harsh, military discipline of Rinzai Zen.
“I’m 78 this year, but I’m as strong as a bull!”
The itamae-san tries his luck with the two young girls at the end of the counter. They all laugh, and he opens his mouth wide. Gold gleams from lower jaw, while his top set consists of just one tooth each side.
“Yaa, menkoi!”*
—————————————————–
*Menkoi - cute, north-Japan dialect. Kawaii in standard Tokyo dialect.
Lost bearings
October 19, 2007 | Filed Under Hyakumeizan, Hiking, Japan, Climbing, Inspiration | 2 Comments
The children of the Aso caldera plain are bronzed, and they run lightly over
the sun heated flagstones of the village shrine and through the icy waters
which run down from the mountains. The people of the plain have been here for generations. They farm rice and rear beautiful long-haired red-gold cattle, which lean over walls and admire their reflection in the car windows as we drive past. It’s August, and the farmers have gathered to celebrate their harvest with a sumo contest beside the gates of the shrine in the lea of the mountain.
Mount Aso sits in one of the world’s largest calderas, the still-active remains of a volcano which hurled lava over much of Kyushu a hundred millenia ago. The walls of the caldera stand two hundred meters high and form a perfect circle 20km across. They enclose the Aso plain, billiard table flat, the leftover result of a lake which formed in the crater and has now since long vanished. Only the lush green paddy fields betray the richness of the thick black sedimentary soil it left behind. Everything feels lilliputian measured against the caldera walls.
The Isle of Axholme, where I grew up, was a similar sized island which stood above the marshes of north Lincolnshire in England before Cornelias Vermuyden drained the land in the 17th century. Aso is very familiar. The walls of the cal protected it, much as the marshes did for Axholme, and the people have the same untouchable confidence that only isolation breeds. Ideas from the outisde are viewed with skepticism, change only happens when it suits them, which is to say rarely. They are anchored in a way that city dwellers are not.
We’re here to climb some mountains, two and maybe three over the long weekend.
We say out prayers at the shrine and drive past the giant white stupa which marks Aso before starting the climb. It takes no more than an hour to reach the top and as we do the clouds briefly clear. Revealed is the full sweep of the caldera walls and the patchwork of farms within them, while the summit of Mt Kuju (tomorrow’s destination) peers over them in the north.
The core of Aso still spews gas and pumice from an enormous crater. Further along the ridge we find ourselves peering into its very bowels as the verdant vegetation suddenly gives was to a wasteland of hematite reds and sulfuric yellow streams. The black-red mouth of the volcano stands stark against the backdrop of the green hills all around, throwing a column of smoke into the troposphere as a constant warning to the towns below.
We climb down and I feel uneasy. There’s something not quite right about active volcanoes. It’s as if I am trespassing on the birth of something private. I’m glad to be going down.
The sun dips behind the caldera as we drive north to Kuju and I lose my bearings. This never happens. I blame the igneous rocks of the area which throws my internal compass, or maybe the strange horizon effect of the cal. Either way, we drove in circles, making Kuju after nightfall and camping at the southern trailhead where the easy-going campsite manager cocks his head on one side and looks at us quizzically.
He hands us a map of the area, optimistically hand drawn with short, straight roads and navigational pointers such as “field with many cows” and “Mr Suzuki often paints here”. We pitch the tent and head for the local hot baths where we joins the locals as they scrub the harvest chaff from their bodies. We talk of crops and cattle, green grass and rainfall. This feels like home.
The south route up Mt Kuju is a vertical 1000m climb. Yuka smiles all the way the next day and studiously refuses any help, working out all the foot and handholds herself. She is still burning with energy at the top and insists on doing all five of the mini-summits at the top finishing with Naka-dake, the highest point in Kyushu. The area reminds me deeply of the Peak District, it has the same rolling nature and familiar granite formations. Like the plain of Aso below, I feel very at home here.
“Nepal. You should go to Nepal and climb a bit round there.”
A walker in his sixties with angular, orange wraparound sunglasses advised us.
“Take lots of pencils. The children love them. And Diamox for the altitude. Pencils and Diamox.”
We climbed down through the black mud on the west of the mountain, sliding and slipping, reaching the saddle between the peaks by mid afternoon. I found myself wanting to see these mountains in the snow. My red tent nestled in the whiteness.
The thunder which echoed from the peaks put pay to Monday’s plan to climb Mt. Sobo, so we spend the day in the Takachiho gorge.
Amaterasu, the sun goddess, is said to have shut herself away here after her brother Susanoo went rampaged across the land. Without her light, the world started to die, and so the other gods devised a way to lure her back from her hiding place, and finally tempted her out. The cave where she hid is still visible from Takachiho shrine, but it is said that no human has ever set foot there. To make sure she could never hide again, the door to the cave was hurled northwards and landed in Togakushi (literally door-hiding-place) in Nagano and forms the beautiful mountains around Takatsuma.
The land around Aso and Takachiho is neither manmade nor is it natural. It was carved by the gods as they fought and loved, and I don’t want to get on the plane back to Tokyo.
Dumbing down the territory
October 17, 2007 | Filed Under Hiking, Japan, Gear, Climbing | 5 Comments
A while ago I said I would write about Shobunsha’s poor decisions with the most recent map series. While I’m enormously grateful for their comprehensive offering, they really have taken some wrong turns recently, and now it is spleen venting time…
———————————-
They say that you should never mistake the map for the territory, but the Ordinance Survey maps of the UK upon which I was brought up come close to blurring that distinction. They are topographical art. Not only is the entire UK covered, but you can even order custom maps centered wherever you chose. I spent hours when I was younger simply pouring over each ridge and contour.
The staple in Japan is the Shobunsha Yama to Kogen series, 50 or so maps which cover the Hyakumeizan (100 famous mountains) and surrounding areas. While looking through my father-in-laws old maps from the same series I was struck by how much they have deteriorated in quality over recent years.
Laying the same maps side by side, the first thing that strikes you is how much clearer the old series were. Strong contour lines on a pale coloured background with clear delineation every 100m. The newer series are a disaster. The background colour of the maps is way too strong - in good light the contours are hard to discern, in bad light impossible. The artificial shadowing on the south and western slopes is pretty but unnecessary and only serves to increase the difficulty of reading the contours.
Worse still, and quite unforgivable, is the almost complete lack of numerical height information. On the old series, contour heights were given in meters at their intersection with the edge of the map. It was then easy to cross reference these and their associated background colour to any other point. The newer series however have little discernible contour number numbering.
Once again, just so the implications sink in: the newer series have no easily discernible contour numbering. Want to know what height you are at, but can’t recall whether the pale green background starts at 1000m or 1200m? Either hunt around for a nearby peak (which may have an altitude number) and count from there, or hunt around the map for a completely random area where the contours have been numbered. Not in the key, not up the side of the highest mountain on the map, but at some random point in microscopic print that blends into the background.
You might just be able to make some contour numbers out on the photo above, a little below and to the right of the 1555m peak marker in the middle of the map. That’s seriously as good as it gets. And on that map they are only marked in four places on the entire 2500 square centimeter surface.
I cannot begin to fathom the thought process behind this decision. It would be one thing if there never was a system for labeling the contour lines, but examination of the older series shows there was - and then somebody decided to take it away. Imagine if you will being half way up a mountain in a roaring gale, no visibility to trig your location, and trying to cross reference your altimeter to the map. I’m here to tell you it is impossible.
In the unlikely event that someone from Shobunsha ever reads this missive, won’t you please, please reconsider your decisions? Don’t make me send Edward Tufte over there…
