奥多摩 Oku-tama

After returning to shore on Saturday, I was exceedingly restless due to having been bound to a small ship for a week. So despite sunday's endless rain, the day needed to be spent in the mountains. I solicited hiking buddies from the IAC hiking club, but none were forthcoming, likely due to the rain. So Sunday morning I went by myself to board a train for the two hour ride to Oku-Tama, a national park with tall (over 2000 m), steep mountains and narrow canyons that are heavily forested with Japanese cedars 杉. The Tama river 多摩川 is one of the rivers that run through Tokyo, and this region, its headwaters, is where much of Tokyo's water supply comes from, or so I've been told.

The 6am train was peopled mostly by older folks, retirees, who are the most active and outdoors-enjoying demographic in this country. The other demographic on the train were hoardes of middle-school-age girls on their way to some kind of athletic competition, judging by the matching track suits they were all wearing. Arriving at Oku-Tama, I checked my map and headed for the trailhead to 大岳山. I decided to take shelter from the rain at the trailhead pagoda to eat my breakfast, an egg salad sandwich that I bought at the convenience store by the station. Already under the roof was Kouhei-san, a Japanese guy a few years younger than me who was taking a smoke before starting his own hike. His wife isn't a big fan of hiking, and also due to the rain he was not able to muster his own buddies to join his hike. As our planned routes were similar, we decided to hike together.

We scrambled up mud, stone, and stairways, past a variety of shrines, to the top of 御前山, at an altitude of above 1400 m, along the way enjoying views of thick mist and constant rain. Since I am 雨男 ame-otoko (a Japanese word which means "rainy boy"), the cool moist weather energized me and felt great. The mountain slopes were mostly cedar, but some cypress, maples, and other broad leaf trees were scattered about. The predominance of cedar monoculture, the very close proximity of these mountains to metropolitan Tokyo, and the abundance of small roads winding all over the place, lead me to assume these slopes were (or are) subject to occasional logging.

At the summit, we rested, snacked, and dried our coats for a few minutes iside the 避難小屋 shelter constructed there. The abundance of these shelters on Japanese mountains is a wonderfully civilized aspect of hiking in this country! We hadn't met any other people on our hike thus far, as the rain drove away most casual dayhikers, but at the shelter we met about 20 elderly folks, again the toughest of demographics in this country. These folks grew up in a Japan that was just struggling to get back on its feet in the wake of the Second World War (known as the Pacific War here), and didn't have much in terms of material comforts, so grew up to be a generation of hardy individuals, in stark contrast to today's urban youth (in both Japan and the US), who tend to be either wusses or gangsters (or maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety).

Outside the shelter, Kouhei-san again took a smoke. Unlike American smokers, however, he was very polite about it. He always found a spot where his smoke would not blow my way. Furthermore, he littered the ground with niether his butts nor even his ashes! He carried a thick plastic case for both of these trash items (even his ashes!) and packed it out until he found a trash bin for them. I was astounded at this level of politeness and appropriate behaviour from a smoker, and have never seen such care taken by an American.

A few minutes in the shelter actually made us feel colder, so we decided to get moving again and descend the mountain. On the way down the canyon, we were granted brief breaks in the mist, and could see the steep mountains slopes in front of us. These looked as if they were taken directly from a Chinese landscape painting. The best word for describing the feeling invoked by these views is 神秘的 shinpiteki, mysterious with a religious bent.

After our long descent in the canyon, we returned to Oku-Tama town, and washed up in the local Onsen 温泉 hot spring (gender-separated, of course) . As always, bathing in a hot spring is very relaxing, especially after a long day of muddy exercise in cold weather! Here we met and talked with an older Japanese man who had just returned from 10 years living in San Jose and who missed the mountains of California, especially Yosemite, but who was just again beginning to appreciate the unique beauty of his own native Japan's great mountains. A few minutes in the hot spring made me too hot for comfort, and I fled to the cafeteria outside for some cookies & cream ice cream; ice cream is always perfect after bathing in a hot spring.

After Kouhei-san finished his bathing, we returned to the station, and boarded a train about 6pm for the sleepy 2-hour ride back to metropolitan Tokyo. I made a nice new friend out of the day's adventure, explored a new part of Japan to which I had previously not been, recovered from a week at sea without exercise, and prepared for a week of extremely hard work (since I'm terminating my fellowship at the end of February so as to return to my career in the USA, I have a lot that I need to accomplish at lab in the interim!). The mountains of this country are a very comfortable place for physical recovery and emotional renewal.

R/V なつしま

I spent this past week on the R/V Natsushima (Japanese for Summer Island) as a helper for my professor's research on the Kuroshio, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific. It's a big ship (65 m length) with a professional crew who for the most part did the heavy work, so the researchers like me just downloaded data and set up instruments for the most part. The weather during the week was generally calm, except for one day of moderate (a few meters) waves generated by a ridge of high pressure trailing off from a typhoon way to the south.

Since I'm a vegetarian and this is a Japanese ship, I thought I'd be eating nothing but rice and soy sauce sauce for the week, but the cooks on board were amazing, and made fabulous vegetarian food every meal specially for me and another veggie Brit who took part in the cruise. They even baked fresh bread for us every morning!

A few consistent differences stood out between this Japanese ship and the American research ships I've sailed on. Foremost is the character of the crew. American ships tend to have educated, polite officers but redneck, rough and tumble, ex-convict crewmembers. Contrarily, on this Japanese ship, everyone, both officers and crew, were curteous, helpful, and took pride in their work. This equality in character between officers and crew is pervasive in all of Japan, not just on ships. Society here is not as stratified as it is in the US. Here in Japan, folks tend to take pride in their work regardless of the type of job that they do, and fulltime workers are paid a decent wage regarless of the type of job they do. The huge income disparity that plagues the US is much narrower here. The resulting lack of crime and poverty is a boon to this society, and it's great to see people of all ranks taking pride in their work.

The other big difference between this Japanese ship and its American counterparts is the allowance of alcohol for folks who are off-duty. American ships are entirely dry, while the researchers on the Natsushima drank everytime their shifts were over. Even the officers and crew drank on special occasions. As soon as the ship left port a week and a half ago, the officers held a prayer session on the bridge, where they said a prayer for safety to the Shinto god of the sea or god of safe travels (I could not understand which, or maybe they are the same), to whom a small shrine was built in a cove on the ship's bridge. After the prayer, the attending officers and crew celebrated with small amounts of sake. At the end of the voyage, about the time we returned to port, the officers and crew held an end-of-cruise celebration in the mess hall, where they and the researchers all (except me, the only dry member of the cruise) consumed copious amounts of beer, sake, chuhai, umeshu, and other types of alcohol that I do not know. Regardless of this inebriation, maritime accidents in Japan are rare or nonexistant, and Japan's maritime safety record appears better than the safety record of American ships. Maybe this again is related to the pride and equality present among all levels of officers and crew, and the economic equality that pervades society in general.

First Snow on Ontakesan

Thanks to everyone for the photos!

This past weekend, Keiko and I organized a backpacking trip with friends from the Kansai and Tokyo outdoor clubs. From Kanto, Yves (Swiss, living in Yokohama) and Fuyuko (from Yamanashi) joined us, while Kansai folks included Yukari (from Kyoto), Yuri (from Kobe), and Carmel (Irish, living in Kobe). Richard (German), my friend from San Francisco, also joined us.


We climbed Ontakesan 御岳山, on the border of Nagano and Gifu prefectures. The eight of us met at Kisofukushima station 木曽福島駅, and took taxis to the top of the road on the east side of the mountain at Naka-no-yu 中の湯, altitude about 1800 m. This is knows as the mountain's fifth station 五号目. There we packed up our gear and headed up the steep trail through woods of bamboo grass 熊笹, cypress 檜, and fir モミの木. The maples 紅葉 were just starting to turn colorful for the autumn.

Upon reaching the mountains's sixth station 六号目 at 2100 m elevation, tall vegetation gave way to scrub and another scattered tree that was either white birch 白樺 or beech ブナ, which I don't know how to distinguish. Along with being the threshold of tall vegetation, the sixth station also marked the location where, up until the Meiji dynasty 明治時代 of the late 19th century, women were not allowed to climb above, as such was said to have made the mountain's diety angry. Only male pilgrims were allowed to climb higher, in order to pay homage to their patron spirit.

After lunching at the sixth station, we climbed higher up the mountain's flank in fair weather and blue skies, enjoying views of the Alps surrounding us. After an hour of hiking, however, at about 2:30pm, the weather turned, and we were caught in the mountain's 初雪, the first snow of the year. We were prepared with appropriate clothing and gear, so it was an enjoyable and beautiful, if cold, scene. Above about 2500 m altitude, scrub vegetation gave way to a barren landscape of bare rocks, most of which were of obviously volcanic origin, pumice with rough edges that had sometime in history been ejected forcefully from the caldera of the sleeping volcano that is Ontakesan. We pushed on through the snow and cold to an emergency shelter 避難小屋 on the summit ridge, at about 2800 m altitude, built beside a shrine to the mountain's dieties.


Being a bunch of cheap folks, we decided to spend the night in the emergency shelter, rather than spring the 5000 Yen each for the luxurious lodge that was half an hour walk from the shelter. The shelter really wasn't a bad structure, however; apart from a lack of heating, it was a lodge unto itself, though unstaffed. Using our camp stoves and the food and water we lugged up the mountain, we cooked a savory pasta dinner in the shelter, lined up like sardines on the wooden deck floor in our sleeping bags, and let pass a peaceful yet chilly night, with the wind howling outside at -15 degrees C, and even the inside of the structure dropping a few degrees below freezing despite the 15 or so folks inside to keep it warm. As usual, I was running a few degrees above everyone else, so enjoyed washing my face with snow, and "chilled out" outdoors for a while to admire the starry sky, where even the Milky Way 天の川 was starkly visible in the clear night sky after the snowstorm ended. I even saw a shooting star 流れ星 near the horizon.


The morning held a beautiful sunrise in chilly skies that were alternately clear and foggy.

By 7am, the fog had succumbed to the heat of the sun, the skies remained clear, and we were able to see our savior shelter, its patron Shinto priest, and the shrine's bell.


The ice coating all the structures and the rare scrub glistened in the morning sun.


Views of the mountain opened up. We could see some of the summit's crater lakes with a backdrop of the surrounding Alps. Even Mt. Fuji 富士山 was visible on the horizon. What a wonderfully clear and cool morning it was!


We scrambled on up to the 3067 m summit shrine by noon, refilled our water bottles, and lunched there with hot water supplied by the friendly staff of the summit lodge.



Then began our afternoon descent down to about 2000 m on the mountain's south ridge. In clear, warm weather, we descended through rocky volcanic wasteland, then scrub and white birch, then coniferous and bamboo grass forest to ToNoHara 田の原, a plateau with souvenier shops that also functions at the base of a ski area in wintertime. There we caught a bus to a local onsen 温泉, and then to a campsite, where the Kansai folks cooked up spicy mushroom pasta before another peaceful (and not so cold) night under the stars.

The next day we took an easy hike to Kiyotaki 清滝 and Shintaki 新滝, two waterfalls in forests on the moutnain's south flank. Both are religious (Shinto) areas, where pilgrims absolve themselves under the beating cold water of the falls.



Places where groundwater seeps to the surface as springs are regarded as holy here, and also have shrines built around them for those seeking purification.


Prayer bells about in the shrines around the waterfalls and all over Ontake-san. Their sounds reverbrate for a while after being struck. I tried to time just how long the sound was audible.

In the early afternoon, we all caught a bus back to Kisofukushima, where we lunched on hot udon at a cafeteria next to the station. Then all the lovely Kansai gals boarded their train to the west, leaving us lonely boys to wait for our eastbound train back to Tokyo.

Camping and trail run in Shiga

Camping out before the race in Northern Shiga.



View from the top.
Celebration afterwards!