Tateyama to Kamikochi - Day Four

9 August 2010

Today was the latest we slept in for the whole trip - 5:30. We were pretty slow about breaking camp too and didn't get on the trail till 7:00. But today's hike was pretty easy - an ascent to 2800m that would take 4 hours from camp and then a 3 hour descent into the valley and the next camp - so we weren't in a hurry.

By 9:00 we had our first negative interaction with water. Not the rain that would hound us for 6 hours on the next day. Not slipping into a creek and having wet feet. It was something much more sinister - a leaky water bottle.

Hiking up and down mountains produces a good amount of sweat, especially when the sun is beating down. So Aimee didn't give much thought to the water that was making her shirt cling to her like plastic wrap; nor did she give much thought to it while it slowly spread from her shirt down to her shorts. Only when we stopped for a water break and slung off our packs and she noticed the accumulation of water in the bottom of her pack did she - and I - finally give it some thought.

Aimee: I think my water bottle is leaking!

Mike: Shit.

Sure enough, the threads of Aimee's ancient water bottle had finally become so stripped that the lid wasn't sealing. Almost 1 litre of water had run from the top of her bag down to the bottom. Fortunately, her clothes were in a plastic bag, her sleeping bag was in a waterproof compression sack and the only food she had were granola bars (and her loving boyfriend was carrying the tent, his sleeping bag, most of the food and the stove). Luckily we had picked up a 500ml bottle of water from one of the huts since we knew we had a long and sweaty first half to hike today.

We had no further incidents between the mystery of Aimee's wet shorts and ascending to 2800m to eat lunch. Here we ate the last of our delicious walnut bread (it was sorely missed for the remainder of the trip) and complained about having to hike downhill once again. Downhill sucks. Uphill is hard and sweaty and tires out the muscles but extended downhill sections make me want to hurtle myself off the mountain.

We hung out in the valley below for a while because it was the best spot on the trip up to that point. There was a creek we could get water from, there were no people, there was lots of vegetation, there were no people, we watched the mist roll down into the valley from the peak we ate lunch on, and it was quiet because there were no people. And there was a cool boulder.


It was huge. That black speck on the top right corner of the left piece is someone's small backpack. A man had climbed up the back side and was enjoying some solitude. We wanted to do the same but we didn't want to disturb him. The boulder was split right through to the ground - as if Zeus had cleaved it in two with a lightning bolt. More likely it was split by the glacier that dropped it there but geology (geography? both?) just doesn't make for exciting narrative.

We made camp about 2 hours after leaving Zeus' boulder and ran into Glen again. Despite having been one of the first people to arrive at camp he had managed to secure the worst tent site. Draw a straight line. At the bottom of that line put a circle. The line is the path, the circle is the boulder. Glen pitched his tent to the left of the circle, thinking people would take the right hand side around the rock. But that side was more precarious so everyone opted to take the 1 meter path between his tent's door and the rock.

We talked with Glen about hiking, growing organic foods, the problems with the 9-5 lifestyle and all the other problems in the world. He's a very interesting man. He also told us about the 50 acre plot of land he and his wife have on an island in Australia. They're planning to start a farm and possibly host international students. It sounded like an interesting lifestyle. More importantly, he told us about the typhoon that was building to the west of us.

By the middle of the next day the area we were planning on hiking to (Yarigatake) would start to get torrential rains followed by a typhoon. This would be problematic for us since Yarigatake was the jewel of our trip. But there would be no point in summitting it if we did so during a torrential downpour. The split boulder had shown us the awesome power of Zeus' lightning (or, if your inner child is dead and you have no imagination, the awesome power of glaciers moving a centimeter a year) and we had no desire to see what he could do with a storm (or, what would happen when a low-pressure system met with rising warm air). So we plotted an escape route to the south in case, when we reached the fork that would take us east to Yarigatake or south to safety the following morning, the weather was bad. And then we slept.

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Five
Day Six

Utsumi Beach

Aimee and I went to the beach for the first time yesterday so I thought I'd take a break from the hiking updates to talk about our first beach experience.

Highlights:

• we burned the bottom of our feet
• we swam in the ocean for the first time
• we ate gross hamburgers
• we saw our first bare Japanese breast

Beaches in Canada have nice, warm sand that feels good to walk on. When you finally arrive at the beach, kicking your shoes off to walk in the sand is part of the beach-going experience. Not in Japan. The sand burns here. We kicked off our shoes and walked no more than 10 steps before screaming like little girls and promptly putting our sand-covered feet back in our shoes. It was awful. I thought that digging down into the sand might offer some reprieve from the heat but it's just as hot 6cm down as it is on the surface. It was ridiculous. I guess that's why everyone had rented umbrellas from the man in the parking lot.

After setting up as close to the water as possible we kicked off our shoes again and ran into the water. You know how back home it's little kids who run as fast as they can into the water and then fall over? At this beach that was what everyone did. No one was walking casually into the water. They were running [and shouting "atsui, atsui!" (atsui means hot) if their location happened to be far from the water] as fast as they could. Surprisingly it wasn't from running and popping out of her bikini that we saw our first Japanese girl's breast (and unfortunately for you that last sentence wasn't a transition sentence for the next paragraph).

We made it into the water without burning our feet and got to enjoy our first experience swimming in the ocean. Not just in Japan - anywhere. When we lived in Victoria the ocean was always too cold to swim in. I tried a few times to swim to an island in the summer but there were too many boats going through the channel and I feared I would be run over. However, I only had to fear being swam over by one of the numerous people who were in the water yesterday. It actually wasn't as busy as I thought it would be. There were lots of people but it was no more busy than Sauble Beach during the summer.

Swimming in the ocean was a lot of fun. Even though I knew it wouldn't hurt I was still surprised that salt water didn't sting my eyes when I opened them underwater. It stung Aimee's eyes though because she wears contacts and the water gets trapped behind the lense. The only downside to swimming in the ocean was the film of salt leftover after you dry out. Oh, and being incredibly thirsty when you get out of the water.

After our first swim we got something to eat. We were craving hamburgers and there just happened to be a hamburger shop on the strip. Unfortunately they were Japanese-style hamburgers, which means they were loaded with a ketchup/tomato sauce/salsa topping. It's not good on hamburgers and almost all hamburgers in Japan are made with this sauce on them. The exceptions we've found are a 50s diner near our place and McDonald's. I haven't yet been desperate enough for a hamburger to go to McDonald's.

We washed down our hamburgers with some ice cream and then went back into the water and, yes, saw our first bare Japanese breast.

Swimming ahead of us was a man pushing his girlfriend in a floating chair thingy. She was tanning and giggling, like girls do at the beach. The following quick conversation ensued:

Aimee: Japanese girls have no role here other than to dress prettily and giggle.

Mike: How is that stereotype any different than the stereotype of North American girls at the beach?

So we were swimming behind this guy pushing his girlfriend in her chair thingy. He kept trying to do something to her (poke her, touch her - I'm not sure) and she kept giggling like girls do when they're acting like what you're doing is something they don't want you to do. You know what I'm talking about. You have your arm around your girlfriend and then you casually slide your hand down to her bum and she giggles and slaps your hand away because that's what propriety demands. But she's not upset and you know that because of the giggle. This is what that girl was doing. And this is what she continued to do when he reached up and pulled her bikini down, exposing her breast.

Aimee and I found the whole episode incredibly funny. We are in Japan but the exact same things happen here that happen at home. I've seen this exact scene play out at every beach I've been to. This girl pretended to be angry and put on that pout face that girls have - you know the one - when they're trying to act indignant. But based on her reaction we figured she kind of enjoyed it. That and she didn't kick the shit out of him. Because I've seen this scene play out like that before, too. The guy pulls down a girl's bikini and she goes ballistic - rightfully so: don't take my amusement at this particular situation as condoning the behaviour - and beats him senseless. That is infinitely more amusing to me than seeing an exposed breast.

We enjoyed our first beach experience, but only because of the swimming. It was far too hot to do anything other than swim. We brought towels and books to lay on the beach and read but any part of our bodies that wasn't in the water immediately started to sweat. So the only thing you could comfortably do was swim.

Tateyama to Kamikochi - Day Three

8 August 2010

The morning of the third day was the most beautiful. Not too clouded over, not raining, not cold - beautiful.

We ate breakfast and packed up in an hour and were on the trail by 6:00. The first four hours of the hike were great - a nice breeze and not too much change in elevation. It took an hour to climb to the second highest peak of the day (2616m) and another hour from there to a peak at 2591m. From there we could see the hut we'd be eating lunch at. It was around 2 kilometers away but we had to drop down to 2000m and then back up to 2300m to get there.

It was a little tiring to trudge down 500m and then back up 300m but we did it in about 2 hours and were only a little hungry and sweaty when we arrived at the camp. Lunch was excellent. We brought salami and Gouda cheese to eat with walnut bread - a delicious combination at home and downright kingly while hiking.


The above picture is at the 2591m mark from where we could see the hut we would eat lunch at.

As we were packing up to head back out Al and Holly came up the trail looking pretty wiped out. As I told you in the last post this was the last time we saw them. They were taking the same route to Kamikochi we were but they likely changed their minds and went a different way. If this were a novel I would tell you that after beginning our descent of the 2926m peak at the end of today's hike we heard the agonizing screams of a man and a woman tumbling down the mountain, followed by the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of a helicopter coming to rescue the poor souls/collect the bodies. But it's not. As I said they likely changed their minds and went a different way. They had mentioned they might do that exact thing when we first met them. [Brief aside: it costs 3,000,000￥ ($30,000) to be taken off the trail/mountain/rock you're impaled on by helicopter, so be careful.]

After lunch our day got pretty tiring. The ascent to 2926m was long and tiring. We only had to gain 600m but there was a lot of up-down to gain those 600m. We got cranky at different times for different reasons. Me: Hungry and sweaty. Aimee: Sore and tired. It took us about 2.5 hours to get to the top.


There are 5 symbols on the bottom of that post:

• 二 = 2
  
• 九 = 9
  
• 二 = 2
  
• 六 = 6
  
• m = m

This was the highest point of our day. From here we could see another expensive hut and the campsite beyond it that we would be staying at. We took some time to rest and eat and then started on our way again. Even though the hut and the general area of the campsite looked close, we still had 3-4 kilometers to go.

It ended up taking 2.5 hours to get from the peak to the campsite. At least a kilometer of the walk were switchbacks down the mountain to the hut. The slope on the descent side was pretty steep and covered in scree so it was a pain in the ass to descend. About halfway down we started to get passed by endurance runners. Where they came from and where they were going we had no idea. I was impressed enough that someone would run up just the one peak we had just ascended, but we got passed by some more the following day about 10 kilometers from where we first got passed.

We eventually made it to the hut and shortly after it we entered a dry creek bed to complete our descent to the campsite. If this sounds cool it was. At first. The creek bed was pretty easy to navigate at the top but further down the rocks turned into boulders and it became an arduous descent. What was really frustrating was that the people who had built the wooden bridges and walkways we had crossed at earlier spots during our trip were now sending people through a dry creek bed. Aimee and I both thought that the wooden walkways through grasslands were ridiculous and unnecessary, but if they were going to be built then someone should have had the sense to build them around boulder-strewn creek beds instead of across soft, lush grass.

The dry creek bed finally became a wet creek bed and at this point we had made the camp. And we immediately ran into our next foreigner - Glen.

Glen is a 40 year old Australian teaching English in Korea and was vacationing in Japan for a month. He had been all over the South Japan Alps and had hiked a little in Hokkaido (the large island north of Japan). He was a pretty interesting guy and also quite nice. He pointed us to the best campsite in the area. It was up a short path and overlooked the rest of the large campsite. He had already set up his tent before finding it and he didn't want to move. We were quite happy that he told us about it since the campsite was packed. For some reason camping damn near on top of each other doesn't seem to bother most Japanese. In North America most people seek out campsites as far away from others as possible; in Japan most people try to camp as close together as possible. It's really quite strange but it meant that the best spot in the area was open for us.

Glen also mentioned an area of the creek where we could bathe. He had found a way down to the creek and found a pool formed by a small waterfall that was hidden from the path so bathing without being seen was possible. We were elated at this news since we didn't think we'd be able to bathe until we got to Kamikochi, which was still 3 days from where we were. We thanked him again and, like Al and Holly, would only see him one more time...

I'm kidding. We saw him a few more times on the trip. But in the novel he'd either kill us in our sleep at the secluded campsite he conveniently found or slit our throats while we bathed.

After dinner we bathed, brushed our teeth and went to bed clean for the first time in 3 days. It was fantastic.

Day One
Day Two
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six

Tateyama to Kamikochi - Day Two

7 August 2010

We were in bed by about 8:00 the night before but at around 2:00am I woke up to the sounds of tent flies being flapped in the air and blue and orange flashes of light in every direction. It had been raining so in my haze I thought maybe the multicoloured lights were lightning and the flapping sounds were the flies blowing in the wind. Turns out the flapping sounds were the flies being shaken in the air to remove rain water and the lights were from the numerous stoves being lit to make early, early, early morning tea.

Finally realizing that these people were getting up to watch the sun rise over the mountains, and not being concerned with seeing that ourselves, we went back to sleep. We woke up again at 5:00 and decided to catch up to the early birds. When we drew back the flaps of the tent we saw that nearly half of the tents that were there the night before were gone. The mountain was going to be crawling with people.


The people you see above were a group of high school students we passed on our way to the top of Tateyama. There was a group about two times the size of this one that we got on the trail ahead of by about 5 minutes when we left in the morning. There were also numerous groups of elderly people that numbered from 10 people to 30 people. It was crazy.

We made it to the top in good time since most of the sunrise viewers were back down from the peak. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy when we reached the top so the view wasn't great.


Up to this point 3003m was the highest I had ever climbed. I was pretty pleased to have climbed that high, but it was easy in comparison to the climb to the top of Yarigatake. We only had to ascend 600m to get to the top of Tateyama. In 3 days we would have to ascend 1100m to reach the top of Yarigatake, and at a much steeper pitch.

It only took two hours to ascend and then descend Tateyama and get back on the trail, and we only had 4 hours to go from the base of Tateyama to our next camp, so the second day of our trip was pretty easy. There was a lot of アプダウン though according to the sign we saw shortly past the base of Tateyama. Pronounced a-pu-da-oo-n, it took me a few minutes to figure out that it meant "up-down." The sign was a caution that the next several kilometers of the trail were up-down sections. I would have rather not known that from where we were to camp was a lot of up-down since I hate going down hill. But it only took 4 hours to complete and we got to camp early in the afternoon so we had time to relax and talk to the only other foreigners in the camp.

We saw Al and Holly when we went to fill our water bottles at the camp. We stared at them for a while and they stared at us for a while because it's uncommon enough to see other foreigners in large cities here; it's downright rare to see other foreigners on hiking trails. After setting up our tent we went over to introduce ourselves.

Al and Holly are British lawyers working in Tokyo. Al had been in Japan for 5 months and Holly for one. Apparently she drags him on these kinds of expeditions regularly - they've been hiking in the Himalayas and all over Northern Great Britain. They had been hanging out at camp since 11:15. They had taken a night bus from Tokyo and got into the camp we were sleeping in around 5:00am. They skipped climbing Tateyama because it was a "Crocodile line from the bottom to the top," according to Holly (I don't know what a crocodile line is but I understood what she meant), so they only had the 4ish hour hike to do.

We talked about life as foreigners in Japan, which is a topic that can never really be exhausted. Everyone has stories that are interesting to even the most seasoned foreigner living here. Holly is a vegetarian and she told us about how the Japanese don't consider chicken to be meat. We knew this already from experiences our friend Grace has had but it's still funny to hear about. A lot of the time if you ask a waiter "Does this have meat in it?" they'll say "No, just vegetables and chicken." Apparently Holly has this problem frequently and with varying degrees of derision towards her by the waiters when she tells them she doesn't eat any meat - even chicken.

We haven't been able to figure out why chicken isn't considered meat. It's possible that chicken is classified as a non-meat for Japanese vegetarians the same way fish is classified as a non-meat for some Western vegetarians. Another mystery I'll have to solve before we leave.

We talked for about an hour before heading off to make dinner and relax for the afternoon. This would be the only day of the trip where we'd have much spare time, since the remaining days would be more difficult in terms of terrain that would be covered, distance covered, and time spent hiking. Al and Holly were following the same route we were so we agreed to meet up at the next camp but we only ended up seeing them one more time - at the half-way point the following day.

Day One
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six

Tateyama to Kamikochi - Day One

From 6 to 11 August, Aimee and I hiked from Tateyama in Toyama to Kamikochi near Takayama City. It was a 65km hike which included summitting three 3000m+ peaks. The peak you see in the distance was the highest peak we summitted - Yarigatake. "Yari" is Japanese for spear - the mountain is so named because it looks like a spear is being thrust into the sky.

The peak of Yarigatake is 3180m, but we only made it to the campsite/expensive mountain hut at 3060m. The clouds you see to the left of the peak in the picture were the finger tips of a typhoon. Eventually the white fingers closed into a black fist that hammered the peak and the surrounding area for more than 6 hours. The initial blow came about 20 minutes after we began our descent. But more on that in the day 4 post.

6 August 2010

We caught a train at 7:50am bound for Toyama. Toyama is a city on the west side of Honshu (the main island of Japan) on the Japan Sea. We didn't see much of the city until the 4th day when we were high enough to look back on it. After arriving in Toyama we immediately took a one hour local train to the base of Tateyama. From there we took a 10 minute cable car ride to a bus station and from the bus station a one hour ride to Murodo. Murodo is at ~2400m and is the base camp for about a dozen different North Japan Alps climbing and hiking routes. The place was packed with people.

It's hard to see in the picture but there are close to 100 tents crammed together down there. Some of them looked like they would sleep 20 people. These belonged to base campers - people who stayed at Murodo and did day trips up the various peaks surrounding Murodo. They had every luxury you'd expect to have at home - except for a television. A lot of the base campers were parents with children or high school groups who were probably just there to climb to the summit of Tateyama. Tateyama is popular because it is one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains (Mount Fuji and Mount Haku are the other two).

After setting up our meager (by comparison) tent we set off to explore the sulfur fields. Murodo is situated near an active volcano which releases sulfuric gas into the air. In order to make it very clear where you are and what you're climbing, the volcano is also called Tateyama.

The sulfur fields were cool. They stank. But they were cool nonetheless. There was all kinds of gas being released everywhere. More irritating than the rotten egg smell was the recording that kept playing in Japanese, Chinese and English warning us to stay on the path and not to venture into the sulfur fields. In any other country there would just be a simple sign telling people not to be fucking stupid (at least if I was in charge of making those kinds of signs that's what they'd say) since it's pretty obvious that you shouldn't run through a jet of steam that was heated by a volcano. But in Japan there's a recording that plays all day (7:00am to 7:00pm). However, there's only a sign (and only at the end of the trail, not the beginning!) to explain that should the air raid sirens situated throughout the area go off it's because the poisonous gas has reached a lethal level and you should promptly evacuate the area. But don't run.

It was also interesting how the steam was released. There were tiny puddles on the path that bubbled slightly and there were giant ponds that erupted 1.5 meters into the air. What we found most interesting was that some of the pools were quite hot while others were quite cool. This was because the fissures in the ground were only releasing steam, not water. If the gas was released into a pool of standing water it became quite hot; if it was released into moving water it stayed quite cool.

We returned to camp to have dinner and sleep early since we wanted to get ahead of the hoards of people the following morning. Turns out half the people in camp got up at 2:00am to get to the top of Tateyama to watch the sun rise so it didn't matter that we went to bed early. But more on that in the day 2 post.

Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six

World Cosplay Summit

The picture to the left was taken this past Sunday at the World Cosplay Summit, which was conveniently held 10 minutes from our apartment. The character you are looking at is Porco Rosso, who is from one of Hayao Miyazaki's oddest films: Porco Rosso.

Cosplay is a compound noun formed from "costume" and "roleplay." In Japanese it is pronounced "ko-su-pu-re." People (mostly young) dress up as characters from manga, video games, fantasy novels and movies, anime, and hentai. It is quite an odd event but it's also a lot of fun if you're open minded. The people get really into it and put on quite a good show.

There were a few Final Fantasy characters - mostly Cloud and Sephiroth - and a lot of Zelda characters. Most of the Links I saw were women and they were as attractive as you'd imagine they would be. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture. My friend did get an awesome picture of Ganon though:


He looked even better in full costume. At this point he was walking to the stage where the performances took place. You didn't think people from eight different countries just came to dress up, did you?

Each country put on a ~5 minute skit that was typically a popular scene associated with their characters. We saw four of them but not the one I really wanted to see: Cloud vs. Emerald Weapon. Don't bother clicking the link if you didn't play the game - you won't like it. Their costumes were both excellent, but I only got a shot of Cloud:

The best performance we saw was put on by the Korean team. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of them because we didn't see them before the skits started and we were too far away to get decent pictures of them when they took the stage. One of them was dressed as a giant robot and the other was dressed as a samurai warrior. The samurai would jump off the robot doing these aerial kicks or he would run up him and flip off him like you see martial artists run up walls and flip off them. The choreography was really well done for an amateur exhibition.

This event was probably the most quintessentially modern Japanese thing we've seen so far. We've seen the traditional things you think of when you think of Japan (castles, temples, kimono) but this was something entirely different. Even though it's relatively new (the Summit has only been held since 2003) there was still the same sense of propriety and custom you feel at a traditional Japanese event. You weren't allowed to take pictures at random - you had to ask permission and then thank the person or people for allowing you to take a photograph. This stems from the initial practice of photographers photographing reiya (people who dress up) and then giving them copies of the pictures as gifts. There was also a level of seriousness from the reiya that I didn't expect. They would get in character when they had their photos taken and then they would be all smiles and happy afterward. It was really interesting to watch the transformation.

I can definitely see the appeal of being able to transform yourself into a character from your favourite entertainment medium but I don't think it's for me. I do enjoy dressing up for Hallowe'en but I don't think I'd like to do anything more than enter a best dressed competition.