August 17, 7:30pm, Tokyo
Japan’s fauna and I just do not seem to get along. A few days ago, after doing some remarkable-for-a-NYer legal fireworks in a nearby park with Daisuke and Weiyu (Host-Dad and Taiwanese host-brother, respectively), we were biking back home when I noticed something hitting me while in motion. I ignored it and kept going, but when we reached an intersection and stopped, I turned my neck and suddenly felt a sharp pain on my neck. I immediately cried out and swatted the offending object on my neck. It should be mentioned here that, should anyone doubt the tenor of my voice, I actually scream like a lumberjack more than a little girl, as can be testified to by anyone who has accompanied me on any indoor roller coaster that I mistake for safe Laser shooting experiences. This happens disturbingly often in Japan, despite my improving level of literacy, from ‘zero’ to ‘until recently raised by wolves’.
Anyway, after swatting at my neck, what I realized to be a spider landed on my shirt. About two centimeters around with longish legs the thickness of a fork prong, black, and intimidating, the spider leapt out as if from a collection of Victorian animal prints. It was somehow dignified, sitting on the surface of my lilac polo t-shirt, but I had no time or energy to ponder its aesthetic merits, as it remained a spider, and my initial prejudices against such creatures held. I fluttered the bottom of my shirt, and off the spider went, falling onto the asphalt. We left it there, crawling, and sped back the remaining hundred meters home, where I went on Wikipedia and found out that I should have bagged the rascal lest it be poisonous, so as to extract precious liquid for anti-venom. In this state of rising distress and abject fear, I then learned that Japan had no native poisonous spiders. This did much to ease the tension, but it did little to stop the strange tingly feeling on my neck. This too did pass; after all, as the old surgeon’s expression goes: “All bleeding ends. Eventually.”
Oh, and Cicadas are annoying. A bug that can chirp as loud as a jackhammer has no place making Tokyo yet louder.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Shorty
August 10, 9:10 am, Tokyo
Japan may be called the land of the rising sun, but the sun certainly sets early around here, and I am not a night person. Nevertheless, as the days begin to grow shorter, and dusk comes at 6:45, I have had no choice but to come home more often under the cover of darkness. A couple of days ago, as I was walking from the station to the bike parking building, I heard the tell tale screeches and moans of a slowly starting train. I was going parallel to the tracks, separated only by a mesh fence up to my upper arm and three lines of barbed wire that reached just above my head. The train was to my left, not a hundred feet away, and it towered over the surrounding night. It was lit on the inside, but there were no passengers, giving the impression that the train was groaning of its own accord, under its own weight, not tethered to a power line but given to its own snake-like disposition.
As I biked back home, I looked around at my neighborhood. The night, strange enough, hadn’t changed the place; it was the same sort of medium pace one would expect from an urban sprawl neighborhood during the day, except that the neon, what little there was out here, had turned on, bathing familiar blocks in waves of green and orange. People were still going to the large supermarket in the same volume, as could be seen from the filled bike racks. The only reactions people had made to the night were the pedal powered lights on their bikes; powered up, they would blind oncoming bikers, which I suppose was better than not knowing anyone was coming at all.
Life strides ahead in Tokyo, no doubt, no matter what hour of the day.
Japan may be called the land of the rising sun, but the sun certainly sets early around here, and I am not a night person. Nevertheless, as the days begin to grow shorter, and dusk comes at 6:45, I have had no choice but to come home more often under the cover of darkness. A couple of days ago, as I was walking from the station to the bike parking building, I heard the tell tale screeches and moans of a slowly starting train. I was going parallel to the tracks, separated only by a mesh fence up to my upper arm and three lines of barbed wire that reached just above my head. The train was to my left, not a hundred feet away, and it towered over the surrounding night. It was lit on the inside, but there were no passengers, giving the impression that the train was groaning of its own accord, under its own weight, not tethered to a power line but given to its own snake-like disposition.
As I biked back home, I looked around at my neighborhood. The night, strange enough, hadn’t changed the place; it was the same sort of medium pace one would expect from an urban sprawl neighborhood during the day, except that the neon, what little there was out here, had turned on, bathing familiar blocks in waves of green and orange. People were still going to the large supermarket in the same volume, as could be seen from the filled bike racks. The only reactions people had made to the night were the pedal powered lights on their bikes; powered up, they would blind oncoming bikers, which I suppose was better than not knowing anyone was coming at all.
Life strides ahead in Tokyo, no doubt, no matter what hour of the day.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Fuji Part 2
August 4, 7:59 pm, Tokyo
From Station 7 the path became significantly rockier, transforming the zig-zag walk into a nearly vertical climb. On the way to the mountain, the school issued us each a pair of working gloves and an oxygen canister the size of a Febreze can; the oxygen was for later, but the gloves came in handy there and for the rest of the climb.
There are two ways to climb up the rocks on Fuji: one can either climb monkey style, hands on rocks, or with support from anchored chains on either side delineating the path itself. While I am usually more comfortable with the first approach, two things got in my way: first was that the path was never consistent in its pitch, meaning that climbing by all limbs would look very funny at points, and second, my walking stick.
Aww dear walking stick: cumbersome when walking, downright dangerous when climbing. In order to free both hands for the climb, I strapped the stick to my body via my backpack waist strap. The sensation was something between a three-hour good posture exercise and stepping on curved rake-heads in the back-yard. My ability to bend was restricted, each step brought the forward side menacingly close to my face, and anyone behind me faced the prospect of the stick mistaking itself for a tail and them for a fly.
All this aside, the rock climb proved far easier for me than the steep walks, which doesn’t surprise me in hindsight; the one time I did an indoor rock wall several years ago, I pulled myself up almost entirely on my arms, no footholds needed. Still, I cannot get over that given how puny my arms are. Oh, everything on me is puny. Moving on…
The rock climbs from Station 7 were where the final vegetation began to dissipate and we crossed the clouds, one layer at a time. Clouds, at least the ones I passed through, act more like low fog than the all encompassing whiteness we pass through in airplanes; different lever of height, I suppose. As I climbed, I finally found a couple of friends to stick with up the rest of the mountain; a Spaniard, a German, and a Jew are climbing Mt. Fuji…
When I reached Station 8, hachigome, I broke out the oxygen canister, and breathed deeply: one doesn’t truly appreciate air until one needs to get it from a bottle. To my chagrin, the zig-zags began anew, even steeper than before. While I had easily been able to keep mine own when climbing over rocks, I once again struggled to keep up as I trudged along with my lonely, bell-ringing stick. I was using the oxygen canister more and more frequently, and I again began to doubt my resolve. If anything kept me climbing, it was the sight of snow clutching to a long, gash-like depression in the side of the mountain, a welcome sign of nature’s perseverance in July; that, and the silence. When you stopped moving, and kept silent, the mountain would greet you with its own total silence. No sounds disturbed the bare, red mountain surface, and quiet enveloped the world tighter than clouds ever could.
At the end of Station 8’s domain, at the beginning of what might be called the final ascent, we began to worry if we would make it to the summit within the scheduled time limit: we had to turn back and head down by 1:30 pm, and it was already twenty to twelve. Thankfully we were met by one of the school’s teachers who offered to serve as Shurpa until the top. Still, I wasn’t able to keep up with the pace as we tried to make the summit in an hour and a half. Thankfully, I had a slow friend, Maraike, from Germany, and together we managed to climb one step at a time until we reached a pair of stone lions flanking a white gate. We sat on the stone steps, and as I rested I noticed the white-washed wooden pillar. Its cracks were filled, literally to the breaking point, with one yen coins, each new coin splitting out a space for the next. Ruminations were all well and good, but I was exhausted; my legs ached, my head hurt, I was cold but sweaty all the same, and the mountain kept on going as if never to end. Then Maraike pointed up. I followed her finger, and from above entered my vision, in all its glory, the Japanese flag that marked the summit. We had been sitting hopeless only thirty seconds from the top; never doubt real-life’s ability to produce dramatic irony. It has to come from somewhere, I suppose. We reached the summit at 1:20 pm, six hours after we had begun. Some people had made it in as little as four hours. But I didn’t know that yet, as I gazed for the first time on Japan’s highest shrine in its highest village. All I could do was laugh.
From Station 7 the path became significantly rockier, transforming the zig-zag walk into a nearly vertical climb. On the way to the mountain, the school issued us each a pair of working gloves and an oxygen canister the size of a Febreze can; the oxygen was for later, but the gloves came in handy there and for the rest of the climb.
There are two ways to climb up the rocks on Fuji: one can either climb monkey style, hands on rocks, or with support from anchored chains on either side delineating the path itself. While I am usually more comfortable with the first approach, two things got in my way: first was that the path was never consistent in its pitch, meaning that climbing by all limbs would look very funny at points, and second, my walking stick.
Aww dear walking stick: cumbersome when walking, downright dangerous when climbing. In order to free both hands for the climb, I strapped the stick to my body via my backpack waist strap. The sensation was something between a three-hour good posture exercise and stepping on curved rake-heads in the back-yard. My ability to bend was restricted, each step brought the forward side menacingly close to my face, and anyone behind me faced the prospect of the stick mistaking itself for a tail and them for a fly.
All this aside, the rock climb proved far easier for me than the steep walks, which doesn’t surprise me in hindsight; the one time I did an indoor rock wall several years ago, I pulled myself up almost entirely on my arms, no footholds needed. Still, I cannot get over that given how puny my arms are. Oh, everything on me is puny. Moving on…
The rock climbs from Station 7 were where the final vegetation began to dissipate and we crossed the clouds, one layer at a time. Clouds, at least the ones I passed through, act more like low fog than the all encompassing whiteness we pass through in airplanes; different lever of height, I suppose. As I climbed, I finally found a couple of friends to stick with up the rest of the mountain; a Spaniard, a German, and a Jew are climbing Mt. Fuji…
When I reached Station 8, hachigome, I broke out the oxygen canister, and breathed deeply: one doesn’t truly appreciate air until one needs to get it from a bottle. To my chagrin, the zig-zags began anew, even steeper than before. While I had easily been able to keep mine own when climbing over rocks, I once again struggled to keep up as I trudged along with my lonely, bell-ringing stick. I was using the oxygen canister more and more frequently, and I again began to doubt my resolve. If anything kept me climbing, it was the sight of snow clutching to a long, gash-like depression in the side of the mountain, a welcome sign of nature’s perseverance in July; that, and the silence. When you stopped moving, and kept silent, the mountain would greet you with its own total silence. No sounds disturbed the bare, red mountain surface, and quiet enveloped the world tighter than clouds ever could.
At the end of Station 8’s domain, at the beginning of what might be called the final ascent, we began to worry if we would make it to the summit within the scheduled time limit: we had to turn back and head down by 1:30 pm, and it was already twenty to twelve. Thankfully we were met by one of the school’s teachers who offered to serve as Shurpa until the top. Still, I wasn’t able to keep up with the pace as we tried to make the summit in an hour and a half. Thankfully, I had a slow friend, Maraike, from Germany, and together we managed to climb one step at a time until we reached a pair of stone lions flanking a white gate. We sat on the stone steps, and as I rested I noticed the white-washed wooden pillar. Its cracks were filled, literally to the breaking point, with one yen coins, each new coin splitting out a space for the next. Ruminations were all well and good, but I was exhausted; my legs ached, my head hurt, I was cold but sweaty all the same, and the mountain kept on going as if never to end. Then Maraike pointed up. I followed her finger, and from above entered my vision, in all its glory, the Japanese flag that marked the summit. We had been sitting hopeless only thirty seconds from the top; never doubt real-life’s ability to produce dramatic irony. It has to come from somewhere, I suppose. We reached the summit at 1:20 pm, six hours after we had begun. Some people had made it in as little as four hours. But I didn’t know that yet, as I gazed for the first time on Japan’s highest shrine in its highest village. All I could do was laugh.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Fuji Part 1
August 2, 8:51pm, Tokyo
Well, I’m back from Fuji, and I have the stick stamped with “Mt. Fuji Summit” (Fujisan Choujou 富士山頂上), to prove it.
We left the hotel near the mountain at around 5:30 am on Thursday. We ate breakfast at a restaurant on the fifth station of the mountain; Fuji is divided up into ten stations, and most climbers begin were we did. This is less a matter of tradition than of pragmatism; the fifth station offers a large parking area as well as shopping opportunities, making it the best suited as a starting point for large groups and individual hikers alike. At the store below the restaurant in the same building , I bought several packages of Calorie Mate, a filling powdery block that served quite well to assuage the only bodily sensation I had any willful control over: hunger. Pain was something my pride wouldn’t let me stop. In the store, I also bought a five and a half foot walking stick with bells attached to the wood by a purple string. It’s purpose was ostensibly to help climbers scale the mount, but for me the goal in the stick was the stamps I could get burnt into its surface as I got further up.
At 7:20 am, the entire school moved from station 5, gogome, to station 6, rokugome. The pamphlets we had been given told us that this initial walk would be around 45 minutes. Determined to keep up with the leaders of the group, over a hundred strong, I walked as fast as I could just behind them: we made it in 23 minutes. At this point, my I noticed that I was the only one in a radius of about fifteen people who was sweating profusely. I took this as a sign that this pace may not be the one best suited for me. My legs agreed. The path from station 5 to station six began as a walk on a flat groomed path and ended as a ten degree pitch climb on stones through a forest. After station 6, we were on our own, and the paces began to differ drastically. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to keep up with those I had pledged to follow up the mountain. As a result, seeing as how the distance between us was quickly widening, I decided to follow the rule placed in large bold letters in the pamphlet: Don’t push yourself.
From station 6, the trail became a long zig zag that, while clearly the safest and most efficient climbing surface for that part of the mountain, was murderous on my legs. I had to stop several times along the way to refill my water bottle from the 2-liter monstrosity I had brought along. My walking stick proved unhelpful in terms of walking, but the bells did help in keeping the beat to my pacing; again, no direct assistance, but the perception of a beat helped me keep my mind off the strain my muscles were quickly feeling and the heavy presence of the summer sun in a clear sky. It was here, both because I had fallen behind my friends and the suddenness with which the mountain took its toll on me, that I began to believe I would never make it to the top, and though the intensity of that feeling subsided as time went along, the thought itself lasted until the last minute, when I realized the summit was only a couple of steps away.
After what seemed an eternity, but was likely only just over an hour, I made it to station 7, nanagome. I had always imagined the stations on the mountains as somehow on the side of the trail, with small huts of a room or two lining the path. To my surprise, this and all the other stations up the mountain were long structures positioned as integral parts of the trail itself, facing down the mountainside. Looking down the mountain from the benches at each station became a kind of ritual for me; at first I saw forests meld into a panorama of the greater Earth; at the end, I saw sheer red rock pierce into silent clouds.
More later…
Well, I’m back from Fuji, and I have the stick stamped with “Mt. Fuji Summit” (Fujisan Choujou 富士山頂上), to prove it.
We left the hotel near the mountain at around 5:30 am on Thursday. We ate breakfast at a restaurant on the fifth station of the mountain; Fuji is divided up into ten stations, and most climbers begin were we did. This is less a matter of tradition than of pragmatism; the fifth station offers a large parking area as well as shopping opportunities, making it the best suited as a starting point for large groups and individual hikers alike. At the store below the restaurant in the same building , I bought several packages of Calorie Mate, a filling powdery block that served quite well to assuage the only bodily sensation I had any willful control over: hunger. Pain was something my pride wouldn’t let me stop. In the store, I also bought a five and a half foot walking stick with bells attached to the wood by a purple string. It’s purpose was ostensibly to help climbers scale the mount, but for me the goal in the stick was the stamps I could get burnt into its surface as I got further up.
At 7:20 am, the entire school moved from station 5, gogome, to station 6, rokugome. The pamphlets we had been given told us that this initial walk would be around 45 minutes. Determined to keep up with the leaders of the group, over a hundred strong, I walked as fast as I could just behind them: we made it in 23 minutes. At this point, my I noticed that I was the only one in a radius of about fifteen people who was sweating profusely. I took this as a sign that this pace may not be the one best suited for me. My legs agreed. The path from station 5 to station six began as a walk on a flat groomed path and ended as a ten degree pitch climb on stones through a forest. After station 6, we were on our own, and the paces began to differ drastically. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to keep up with those I had pledged to follow up the mountain. As a result, seeing as how the distance between us was quickly widening, I decided to follow the rule placed in large bold letters in the pamphlet: Don’t push yourself.
From station 6, the trail became a long zig zag that, while clearly the safest and most efficient climbing surface for that part of the mountain, was murderous on my legs. I had to stop several times along the way to refill my water bottle from the 2-liter monstrosity I had brought along. My walking stick proved unhelpful in terms of walking, but the bells did help in keeping the beat to my pacing; again, no direct assistance, but the perception of a beat helped me keep my mind off the strain my muscles were quickly feeling and the heavy presence of the summer sun in a clear sky. It was here, both because I had fallen behind my friends and the suddenness with which the mountain took its toll on me, that I began to believe I would never make it to the top, and though the intensity of that feeling subsided as time went along, the thought itself lasted until the last minute, when I realized the summit was only a couple of steps away.
After what seemed an eternity, but was likely only just over an hour, I made it to station 7, nanagome. I had always imagined the stations on the mountains as somehow on the side of the trail, with small huts of a room or two lining the path. To my surprise, this and all the other stations up the mountain were long structures positioned as integral parts of the trail itself, facing down the mountainside. Looking down the mountain from the benches at each station became a kind of ritual for me; at first I saw forests meld into a panorama of the greater Earth; at the end, I saw sheer red rock pierce into silent clouds.
More later…
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