After a drive that was only slightly longer than anticipated, I arrived in Okutama. It's a long stretch of mountain town extending along a road and the river along which it runs parallel for a few miles within local train distance of Tokyo. First thing I noticed when I got there, was all the locals noticing me. I get stared at in Tenryu, but here, I got the distinct impression I was being stared down.
Tori on Mt. Mitake
After meeting up and spending an hour or so looking for parking, we hopped on the cable car up the mountain to the shrines, trails, and our youth hostel. The hostel was great and as soon as I walked in to the room I would be sharing with 6 other men, a 40 something Japanese man, hiking alone, introduced himself in English. "Nice to meet you. My name is hard to say, so please call me Yama-chan." Yama-chan basically translates as "Mountain Child."
Mountain child and I went off to dinner where we began discussing our plan for tomorrow.
Mountain Child: "What is your plan?"
Us: "We don't really have one."
GASP! Cardinal transgression number one. Japanese hikers nearly always have a plan ages in advance. We had broken a key rule.
Mountain Child: "I will leave at 7:30 tomorrow morning. When will you leave?"
Us: "Maybe 8..."
GASP! To a Japanese hiker, waking up past 5 is late, leaving past 6:30 is late, and going to sleep after 7 is late. I don't do that schedule well. In fact, the disparity in internal clocks between Japanese hikers, trekkers, mountain climbers, and the rest of the world is well documented. Lonely Planet's Japan hiking guide makes special note of this call foreign hikers attention to the early starts, early sleeping, and planning of hikers. They also state that these tenets are rigidly adhered to, regardless of such factors people might consider like, inclement whether, crowds, or any other such nonsense. The fact that the HALF HOUR DIFFERENCE between our start times elicited such a response, along with some aspects of my story of hiking Mt. Hakuba should be ample evidence of these facts.
Planning or some such nonsense
After being made to feel thoroughly inadequate we talked with the other lone hiker men populating the hostel that night, nearly all of whom spoke excellent English. After dinner, we looked at a map with Mountain Child to discuss our plan for tomorrow. After a while, we began to notice his use of the singular first person pronoun "I" shift to the plural first person pronoun, "We." This did not go unnoticed.
Sure enough tomorrow morning as I was munching on my breakfast in the common area, I learned that Mountain Child was planning on hiking with us that day. Sure why not. But we made him wait to leave til 8:30.
The hike on Day 2 was up a mountain covered in Wasabi. REAL Wasabi.
The hike was great, we saw a Rock Garden, waterfalls, and made it up three peaks during the 7 hours on the trail that day. Mountain Child was a great traveling partner too. He kept us from getting lost with his amazing skill at... reading Japanese. We fed him yaki soba and helped him carry his backpack during the hike. Despite his plan and concern about our starting time, his behavior on the trail was much closer to what you might think hearing his name. He was a lot of fun and loved showing us all the neat spots on the trail. A great time was had by all.
Fuji san from the Hike on Day 1
At the bottom of the hike, we said goodbye and exchanged emails. It was at this time that I learned that I had misheard Mountain Child the previous night when he had told us his name. Part of his name was "-yamayan," dangerously close to "-chan" explaining my mistake, but not changing my mind that his name was, in fact, Mountain Child.
Yeah. Mountain Man.
It was another good day of hiking, and I had another great Japanese bath to close out the night.
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