Kamikochi

We got to the bus station reasonably early in the day and caught the bus for the two hour ride up to Kamikochi, the famous hiking resort. I have an extreme aversion to cities...okay, that's putting it too strongly, but I dislike feeling like a rat in a maze, which is what I end up feeling like when I'm among the thronging masses. Even a city like Kyoto, which didn't feel outrageously large, has over a million inhabitants. At any rate, Kamikochi, up in the Japanese Alps, was what I had been looking forward to most of the trip. Kamikochi does have a reputation for being ridiculously crowded, but as it's a summer-only resort and it was only a week or two from closing up for the winter, when snow makes the roads impassable ("All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." "Here's Johnny!), my hope was that the crowds would be at a minimum. The bus we were on was full but comfortable, and as we slowly ascended the curving mountain roads the scenery became more and more spectacular.

For the most part, the trip has been unexpectedly warm, with temperatures in the 60s and sometimes 70s. I was pleased when it was in the low 50s in Matsumoto. I was thrilled that as we rose higher and higher, autumn took greater hold. We were probably a week too early for optimum differentiation, but the mountains were well into their turning, the deciduous trees already muted oranges, yellows, and reds. The peaks of many of the mountains were white, not fom snow, but from frost from the clouds passing through them. The closer we got to Kamikochi the colder it got and the more fogged the windows became, to the point we were constantly swiping at them to take in the magnificence all around us.

After we arrived at the Kamikochi Visitors' Center, it was a short walk on a path through the ridiculously tall Japanese pines and the ferns that blanketed the forest floor. At the river, now reduced to a strong stream, the forest opened and we were there. To a man brought up with the Appalachians, the Japanese Alps are particularly unusual, being, unlike Afghanistan, densely wooded but startlingly steep in a way that I've only seen in pictures of Hawaii.

We crossed over the suspension walking bridge and went to our hotel. Yet again it was not time to check in, so we left our bags and, after a fantastic lunch at one of the resort restaurants, went walking on one of the paths which skirted the river as it ran along the valley floor. I made note, as we walked the main path, which route I would take the next day up one of the nearly 3000m (10,000ft) mountains. Though we'd been told it would be raining the next day, as the vanguard of a typhoon hit the island, I was resovled to get a proper hike in. Unfortunately, that first day, when the weather was beautiful, we'd arrived too late for me to get the girls set up and make a proper attempt without the risk of nightfall catching me somewhere on the mountain.

Mom is in the beginnings of a burgeoning romance and has been like my very own love-sick teenager. Instead of being somewhere she could enjoy and appreciate the wonder all around us, she was more than content to stay in the room and email back and forth with her beau. I didn't really envision spending the kind of money I have so she can look at a computer screen hours upon hours a day. She could do that when she's not on my dime; however, I've certainly been caught in the throes of the exciting initial stages, so I couldn't begrudge her something that's making her so happy. I took it as a much needed opportunity to get writing done.

Along with the bottle of 18yo Laphroaig I've been toting around since Kyoto, I sat out at a picnic table an scribbled away on my manuscript. As the shadows lengthened and it grew colder, though my core was pleasantly toasty from the snifter of scotch, my fingers weren't dealing with the low temperature. I looked over my shoulder at the hotel and saw Jana had taken a window seat in the tea/coffee room and was getting writing of her own done. I went inside to join her and we wrote and chatted pleasantly until it was time for bed, when I went to the male dorm and she met up with mom at the female's.

The next day, I woke early to eat. Though the dorm was expensive, it fortunately included dinner and breakfast. This was our first traditional breakfast. A deck of card's worth of salmon, a slice or two of heavenly apple, a handful of giant, seeded grapes, rice, salad with tuna paste on top, misu soup with tofu chunks, and a little something or other that was sweet. Breakfast was almost indistinguishable from dinner the night before and, like dinner therefore, it was a lot of food. Be that as it may, despite the relative quantity of Japanese food, it doesn't feel like it sticks to the ribs. I ate much more than I would for a western breakfast and I felt hungry in what seemed like no time.

Mom had made mention of wanting to go along with me for the beginning portion of my hike. I was tired and in no mood to gout out in the rain at 730am so I took myself back to bed. When I woke up it was still raining and was in the low 40s. Clouds obscured the mountain tops. I didn't think she'd much want to go out in that. Undaunted, I set out. I'd picked my path the day before, thinking the best way to get up the peak I'd selected was to skirt a massive rock slide that dominated the scenery of the mountainside. I'd told mom my plan the day before, but wasn't entirely confident she'd paid any attention. As I was scaling a mountain alone, I took a reflective belt and draped it over my shoulder, the better to assist search parties if I became horrifically lost, or was injured or killed.

I'd seen a path that I thought would take me up to the eastern side of the rock slide. Though I'm not out-of-shape, I'm also not currently in-shape either. Still, I nearly always feel reinvigorated once I'm on a hike in the woods, and, sure enough, I charged up the mountain, the canopy of pines and cedars transforming what had been a light, continuous rain into sporadic dousing drops. Nevertheless, I quickly heated up to the point that I shedded both my alpaca poncho and then the rain jacket. Soon, I was above the rain and within the clouds and while it was certainly cold up there, it was refreshing. The path I'd found turned out to go in a different direction, heading towards a different peak. I finally left it to make it to the peak I'd selected from the start, but, unfortunately, the path had taken me to the opposite side of the rock slide.

The prudent thing to do would have been to go back down the mountain below the rock slide and hike back the other side; the Andre thing I did was to climb several hundred feet up the rock slide until I all I could see was the immediate terrain and the cloud I was in (goodbye, valley floor). Of course, the mountain looked much different while on it, rather than from the valley, so the "obvious" route I'd chosen the day before wasn't nearly so. I pondered making a go for the peak, particularly since I'd made it so far so quickly (1/2-1/3rd of the way up in little over an hour), but I felt I'd already pushed my luck a fair bit scaling the rock slide. Honestly, from an orienteering perspective, what I'd hiked was kiddie-play. I'd followed a path and then stuck to the main terrain feature. In the rain, in the cold (even if I wasn't feeling it at the moment), it seemed foolhardy to risk going into the bush and getting lost. Yes, ultimately, Kamikochi was on the valley floor so all I'd have to do is head "down" to get to safety, but these are jagged mountains. If I did manage to get lost, spending the night alone, in the rain, in near freezing temperatures, was more risk than I was willing to accept, no matter how much such an experience would have filled my quota for Andre-style awesome suffering (so long as I survived relatively intact).

Fret not though, to ensure at least a modicum of stupid, unnecessary danger to satisfy my warped sense of machismo, I descended the rock slide, several times "surfing" it as rocks beneath me gave way for short spurts. Obviously, I died in an horrific avalanche of boulders.

By the time I got back to the ryokan (Japanese Inn), I was ready to partake in the communal bath which mom and Jana had praised the night before. Japanese onsen (hot spring baths) are renowned as the jewel of the Japanese tourism experience. Iconoclast that I am, I can reveal that an onsen is really a supersized naked hot tub with strangers (same sex only) who have no qualms about looking at your genitals. As Jana and mom had already been they informed me I could expect a strong measure of genital staring and warned me not to be visibly taken aback by the Japanese aversion to grooming (or lack thereof, to be precise). Prepared with this knowledge, I boldly set out for the bath, looking forward to sending my recharged ego, bolstered from foolishly courting a quality maiming (if not mangled death), to fantastically unbearable levels from the hushed tittering and unrestrained awe I'd no doubt receive from the Japanese. My budding hubris was duly checked, however, by the unabashed snickering of the pack of 6'5" Danes I found at the onsen. Arrogant bastards...