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.

Weird Day at the Pool

It was an uncomfortable 40 degrees on Sunday so we went to the pool with a few friends to cool off. Or had intended to cool off.

The pool was only 1 meter deep so it was a little less lame than being in a wading pool. It wouldn't have been too bad if it were cold, but since Nagoya has been so hot for 5 weeks the water was lukewarm. It was like sitting in a luke warm bath. It would have been an entirely worthless experience had we not been with friends with whom we could complain about the warm water.

After soaking in the giant bathtub we got out to lay on the side of the pool to read/tan/talk. About ten minutes later a bell rang and everyone got out of the pool. Some men got up to stretch so we figured that the bell ended the child swim and started the adult swim. But this guy was just prepping for the stretching routine that everyone was about to do.

Some weird music started playing and then everyone stood up and started stretching in sync. From the 4 year olds up to the 80 year olds everyone knew what actions to do and when. It was eerie how coordinated everyone was. The 5 of us sat in awe, no doubt making fools of ourselves by starting at everyone - but we couldn't look away.

This is the stretch routine they were doing if you want to check it out. Having seen the whole thing in person I didn't watch the entire video since nothing compares to watching it live.

"My name is Dragon!"

Sometimes Japanese people take English names to use at the schools we work at because it's easier for the Native teachers to pronounce them than to pronounce Japanese names. I think this is ridiculous - your name is your name and you shouldn't change it because some people who come to your country to work have a hard time pronouncing it. But this is a choice a grown person makes so I've never said anything to anyone other than Aimee.

This past weekend I worked at a kids summer party at one of my schools. Basically my job was to play games with each of the groups of 20 or so kids who rotated around the different game centres in the building. The last group of the day was the largest and also the most disturbing. My conversation with the first kid who came in illustrates this:

Mike: "Hello! What's your name?"
Kid: "My name is Dragon!"

At first I thought this was cute. The kid wanted to be a dragon so he called himself Dragon. I asked the next kid:

Mike: "What's your name?"
Kid: "My name is Bear."

Ok, maybe this kid likes bears? At this point most of the kids had come into the room and I started looking at their "My name is ____" name tags and was thoroughly disturbed. Here are some of the highlights:

• A group of 5 or 6 boys came in and they were all named after colours. I had a Blue, Green, Red, Yellow and Orange.
• Dispersed throughout the group were common animals. I had a Dog, Cat, Mouse, Snake and Bear.
• The worst was the group of girls named Chocolate, Cinnamon and Candy. They had no idea that if they lived in North America they would be destined to become strippers.

Wanting your kids to learn another language is a good thing. Languages are useful and anyone who can speak more than one language has a huge leg-up in life - especially if that language is English. However, it is ridiculous to go so far as to give your children English names thinking that this helps the process. It is especially ridiculous when those names aren't even names! If the group were any larger they would have had to start giving the kids numbers as names.

Maybe I'm making a light situation into something it's not but wouldn't renaming your child make them feel like their real name isn't good enough or is worthless in another country? When I was learning Japanese at university my Japanese friends gave me a Japanese name (it's Masato and it means "elegant and graceful person," which I am). They would call me Masato when they helped me with my Japanese or when I helped them with their English but I never thought about changing my name. My name is part of my identity.

I don't think that changing part of a child's identity is a good thing. If I were one of those children I immediately would have questioned why I needed to have an English name just to go to an English party. Children are already easily confused as it is. Why would a parent willingly add to that confusion?

The Japanese Shaved My Earlobes

I had my first straight-razor shave this week and it was quite an experience. I went to my usual barber and got my usual haircut. The last time I was there he asked if I wanted a shave but I declined citing a lack of cash (even though Japan is a cash-based society I carry little cash). I told him I would try one next time though because I had not had a straight-razor shave before.

So, it's 6 weeks later and I'm laying back in my chair with my beard lathered. And my... forehead lathered? This is kind of odd, I thought to myself. I didn't think the fine blonde hairs on my forehead warranted much attention but the barber was the one with the razor so I kept my mouth shut. I also thought that if I tried to speak my forehead would krinkle and I would have part of it sliced into. He must have also thought I was developing hairy ears since, after leaving my forehead smooth and unscathed, he immediately shaved my earlobes and the outside of my ears.

Throughout the whole experience I never once thought about asking for an explanation or asking him to stop. Remember, I'm the guy who let Japanese men feel him up so getting a shave is a walk in the park. I thought the forehead shaving was a little odd but having my earlobes and outer ear shaved actually felt kind of cool. You know that feeling you get when someone kisses your ears? The "this is cool but it wouldn't be cool if they stuck their tongue in my ear" feeling? Having your ears shaved is kind of similar. It's cool unless the barber slips and lops a chunk of your ear off.

While I was impressed with the thoroughness of the shave, it was less smooth than I thought it would be. I think the barber thought so too - when he finished he stood up, wiped his brow and said "Muzukashii," which means difficult. I guess he wasn't used to shaving thick North American beards.

No shirt, no shoes... get arrested?

In one of my kids classes a couple of weeks ago my kids asked me what I wore in Canada (they only ever see me in suit pants, a collared shirt and a tie). I told them that in the summer I wear shorts and a t-shirt, but if it's hot I just wear shorts. They lost their minds. They told me that kind of thing would get you thrown in jail here. I assumed they thought I meant I go to restaurants and stores without a shirt and just laughed their comments off as a lost in translation kind of thing.

A few days later Aimee and I were stretching after one of our runs in the park I took my shirt off to cool down and went about my stretching. This caused some curious and outright scandalized stares from passers- and runners-by. Thinking there may actually be something to this topless nonsense my kids were talking about, and not wanting to further scandalize anyone, I put my sweaty shirt back on.

The next day I asked one of my near-fluent adult students what the big deal was with taking my shirt off. He smiled and told me that if a policeman had seen me he would have come over and told me to put my shirt back on. I thought he was kidding but he assured me that it was illegal for men to walk around without a shirt on. I was stunned.

Let me tell you about some of the things I've seen in Japan that are far more scandalous than me running with my shirt off:

• a homeless man at the train station masturbating while staring at one of my American friends (I didn't actually see this but it came up one night while a bunch of us were out. I found this absolutely hilarious and chastised her relentlessly for not taking a photo of the guy. Brief aside: the situation reminded me of that episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the homeless guy masturbating in the alley stares at Dee.)
  
• more skirts-that-are-short-enough-to-be-panties than you'd see at a Victoria's Secret runway show
• Japanese men looking at magazine porn while riding the subway
• Japanese men looking at manga porn while riding the subway
• Japanese men looking at internet porn on their phones while riding the subway
• Japanese men looking at porn videos on their iPods while riding the subway
  

I run three times a week in 35+ degree weather with a humidity level that is as close to 100% as is possible before it starts to rain. I don't want to masturbate at the train station. I don't want to wear a really short skirt. I don't want to look at any kind of porn on the subway. I want to run with my shirt off!