A visitor’s guide to Shinjuku’s Neighbourhoods
“There’s an anything goes feeling to the place.”
From time to time, the question arises on travel discussion forums: which is the “best” neighbourhood in Tokyo? Never mind the vagueness of the question. If I had, say, 24hours in Tokyo, I’d head to Shinjuku, a city-within-a-city. There’s no better place to get a feeling of 36 million people living together Blade Runner-style than in this west-end microcosm of The Big Sushi.
It’s where I first landed in Japan 18 years ago. Then, I spun a jet-lagged fugue through Shinjuku’s neon canyonlands, elevated footpaths, tatami sidestreets and alleys, and labyrinthian train station. You know: the setting for Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Bill Murray? That was me, minus the hair — and Scarlett Johansson.
Now, Shinjuku still pulls me into its orbit whenever I want some “bright lights, big city” excitement in my suburban commuter life. Familiar landmarks — the massive, six-storey Kinokuniya bookstore on the Southern Terrace, Shinjuku Gyoen park and garden, the warren of dive bars in Golden Gai — calm my nerves, and help re-center my wanderlost spirit.
After almost two decades of exploring this multi-nodal city, Shinjuku is still the single neighbourhood which best embodies Tokyo high city and low.
For the same reason, Shinjuku ranks first in places I recommend for first-time visits to The Big Sushi.
Shinjuku Station & Vicinity
If Tokyo is a collection villages tied together by a web of rail lines, then train stations are the village commons, the places around which daily life revolves. And of all the stations in the city, Shinjuku’s is the one by which all others compare. The Guinness Book of World Records awards Shinjuku Station the title of “world’s busiest station.” See the morning rush firsthand, and it’s easy to believe: Over three million passengers a day pass through: Dark-suited office workers, shoppers with oversized brand bags, schoolboys in Prussian jackets, schoolgirls in plaid skirts, GothLolis in frilly dresses and hats, retirees decked out in leather mountain boots and daypacks, English teachers with trademark bookbags slung over their shoulders (why do they all have close-cropped, thinning hair? why do I?), and tourists mesmerized by the spider scrawl of coloured lines on the transit map. Uniformed staff, “the human cogs in the Shinjuku machine,” do their best to keep passengers from tumbling off the over-crowded platforms. Sights that might otherwise catch your eye — a sheaf of archers with unstrung, spear-long bows wrapped in velvet; a super-sized sumo wrestler in kimono speaking into a Hello Kitty cellphone — blend intothe constant, ever-changing parade of humanity around you.
Channel5’s recent documentary “World’s Busiest Station” gets it right: “a perfect storm of busy-ness.” There are 36 platforms serving twelve or so train and subway lines. At the station’s busiest time, apparently, a train moves through every three seconds. Including underground passageways, there are some two hundred exits. No less than ten malls and department stores are a part of the main building; many more are linked by those aforementioned passages.
And all that’s only counting the main station; there are many more of all of the above if you include satellite stations.
The Station is the gravitational heart of Shinjuku: shops and restaurants can’t seem to resist its pull. UniQlos and fast food joints cluster around the tracks and buildings and exits.
Out the East Gate exit, giant screens loop ads for cellphones and animated PSAs on earthquake safety. Karaoke bars blast J-pop into the streets. A pair of electronics superstores battle for customers with chirpy welcome songs and sidewalk displays of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners. Trucks blare more J-pop, and tow larger-than-life bikini-clad robots. Pachinko parlours are already hard at it, cascades of small metal balls triggering flashing lights and bleeping, blipping, blooping alarms. The crossing signal twerps for a green light. From somewhere in the core a siren wails. And all this noise is channeled, amplified by the 10-storey urban wall that presses in all around. And everyone, all the time, talks on cell phones, as if they’re not really here, but somewhere more exciting, with more interesting people.
Compared to the East Gate, The Southern Terrace is relatively calm — except during Christmas illumination season. There’s also not a whole lot of reason for the visitor to drop by unless a guest at the Odakyu Hotel Century Southern Tower or craving a Krispy Kreme donut. The seven-story Tokyu Hands in the Takashimaya Department Store does, however, have an eclectic selection of character goods, stationery, and other omiyage, souvenirs. The Takashimaya Book Store also has one of the larger selections of English and other foreign-language books in Japan.
Continuing in the west side of Shinjuku Station’s gravitational field, electronics superstores Yodobashi and Bic Camera both have large outlets — Yodobashi’s is more of a village, really — where you can play with the newest cameras and lenses and check out the latest in Japanese consumer electronics.
Near the track underpass at the north end of the station, the ramshackle bars and eateries of Omoide Yokocho’s so-called “Piss Alley” are a throwback to the post-war Showa era.
Skyscraper District
Staying on the west side of the tracks, but straying a little further afield is the Nishi (“West”) Shinjuku Skyscraper District. Here, starting in the 1970s and growing along with the infamous Bubble Economy of the 1980s, a former working class neighbourhood and student ghetto were razed to make way for a new generation of skyscrapers and international hotels. Not everyone likes what’s happened to the old neighbourhood. Keizo Hino describes the area in his story, “Jacob’s Tokyo Ladder:”
Some particularly grand skyscrapers… were built in the latter half of the sixties and into the seventies, during the flood tide of rapid growth, and are nothing less than massive parallelpipeds, constructed with absolutely straight lines and planes, utterly without embellishment or a light touch. The steel shells of these buildings are massive and the walls thick as fortress walls, and even the relatively small rectangular windows, fitted with tempered glass from top to bottom, are set in perfect alignment vertically and horizontally.
The Bubble Economy has burst long since, but today architect Kenzo Tange’s computer-chip-inspired Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building still towers over the area, and offers a great — and free — panorama of western Tokyo from 202 meters up.
Kabukicho
On the other side of the tracks from the Skyscraper District, a 10-story urban wall of shops, restaurants, karaoke bars, and the landmark Don Quixote discount store along Yasukuni-dori, featured in countless movies and music videos.
A couple of dim, narrow archways lead to a warren of side streets and narrow alleys. Welcome to fabled Kabukicho, Tokyo’s “Sin City” and Shinjuku’s blue-light entertainment district — the largest in Asia. Photographer Watanabe Katsumi documented life in Kabukicho circa the 1960s and 1970s in the collection Gangs of Kabukicho. In 2009, Mizoguchi Atsushi published a long essay on the history of the area titled Yabasa no Shincho, “Kabukicho — The Truth of Its Dangerousness”, which explores the historic events and social conditions that transformed Kabukicho into an akosha, bad area.
Kabukicho has been the setting of several novels and movies by Western and Japanese writers and directors, including In the Miso Soup by Murakami Ryu,Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, and the inspiration for the setting of the cult classic cyberpunk dystopiaBlade Runner. 2009 was a banner year for Kabukicho in culture: Jake Adelstein wrote his memoir Tokyo Vice about his time as a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper; Jackie Chan released Shinjuku Incident, and Gaspar Noe’s psychedelic melodrama Enter the Void premiered at Cannes.
“There’s an anything goes feeling to the place,” reports Murakami’s narrator, Kenji, a thoughtful young sex tour guide. According to Kenji, in Kabukicho there’s “no ‘normal’ standard of behavior to live up to and illusions of glory or shame.”
Not that Kabukicho limits itself to sex and crime. Couples young and old also frequent the bars and restaurants in the area, and sometimes pop into one of the love hotels in the area. More recently, tour groups from China have started to navigate the narrow streets, Nikon and Canon DSLRs and cell phones snapping.
Golden Gai
Beside a Mister Donut on the corner of Yasukuni Dori, a flagstone path leads to a six-lane warren of some 200 tiny bars double-stacked in ramshackle buildings. Long the haunt of intellectuals and artists — Wim Wenders filmed part of his 1985 Tokyo-Ga in the legendary La Jetee bar for film aficionados — the Gai is currently undergoing a transformation which includes open doors and welcomes to visitors in places once reserved only for regulars. I have published a guide to Golden Gai on Medium.com: ‘Down the Rabbit Hole in Tokyo’s Best Nightlife District.’
Hanazono Shrine
Never fear: there’s an oasis of calm next to the highrise hostess clubs and karaoke bars and other distractions. Not the most likely location, maybe, but one of Tokyo’s major Shinto shrines lies at the end of either of two nondescript paths. The nameHanazono means “flower garden”, so you can think of this jinja, “shrine”, as a secret garden just outside the Golden Gai and Kabukicho nightlife neighbourhoods of northeast Shinjuku.
Apparently the shrine comes alive several times a year, including the Grand Festival in late May, and Sundays for flea markets.
The rest of the time, during the day at least, the shrine’s grounds make for a quiet retreat from Shinjuku’s bustle.
Shopping
Shinjuku has all kinds of shopping options above ground and below, from department stores to boutiques. It’s not really my area of expertise, so I’ll point you in the direction of another blog, Japan Visitor, which has an excellent overview of shopping in Shinjuku.
Nichome
I’ve been to Nichome a few times: it’s certainly straight-friendly as well as being Tokyo’s most happening LGBT ‘hood. Once again, however, I defer to the expertise of others: it seems to me that JapanVisitor offers a good insider’s perspective…
Shinjuku Gyoen
Shinjuku Gyoen is a gated, entry-fee charging (200 yen as of February, 2016) park a few minutes’ walk from the New south Exit of Shinjuku Station. There are gardens and park-like fields within the boundaries, and it’s a nice place to take a break from the city. Especially popular in spring cherry blossom season and in autumn when the leaves change.
All this is just one part of Tokyo, of the megalopolis that I call The Big Sushi. Perhaps that’s one reason I’ve stayed in Japan so long: to try to get a handle on what Tokyo Time Out magazine recently called “the greatest city in the world.” Different people have different styles of travel, of course, but if you like to step off public transit and go for a walk, a circumnavigation of Shinjuku Station will introduce you to Tokyo, high city and low.
Wild things roam the land of the rising sun
From time to time attention-grabbing headlines such as “Radioactive wild boars rampaging around Fukushima nuclear site”, “Parents left seven-year-old son in bear-infested woods as punishment,” and “Warning after four people killed in bear attacks in Japan,” burst the urban bubble of daily life in mega-city Tokyo, and remind me, among other things, that Japan still has a surprising amount of nature scattered among its 3,000-plus islands.
I’ve already written about Japan’s wild places in ‘Ka Chou Fuu Getsu: Flower Bird Wind Moon.’ In fact, the chance to explore such unique and photogenic places as the smoking volcanoes of Kyushu and Hokkaido, the Jurassic Park interior of Iriomote’s rain forest, and the alpine fastness of the main-island Alps, are part of what have kept this Canada-boy in Japan for going on two decades now.
But landscapes aren’t the only wildness in Japan. A whole bestiary of critters fly and swim and stalk and slither through these jungles and mountains: giant, shovel-headed salamanders, “living fossil” wild cats, raccoon dogs, goat-bearded serows, snow-loving monkeys, and perhaps the king of them all, Hokkaido’s higuma grizzly bear. Plus, of course, those radioactive boars…
Really, though, as in most places I’ve trekked, wildlife encounters in Japan are few and far between. In my two decades in-country, I’ve seen little more than the occasional fox or deer, a muddy grizzly print, and a family of macaques at play. “Nature red in tooth and claw” has, to date, touch wood, meant little more than plucking a partly-engorged tick from my friend’s back, and flicking a giant — and admittedly very toxic — mukade Okinawan centipede into the sea as it made a dash into my pant leg. Other than that, it’s been junpumanpan, smooth sailing. So, you know, this post isn’t a collection of animal-attack porn. Just saying.
Honestly, I don’t give potentially dangerous animals much thought when I grab my boots and head for the mountains and forests of this lil bejewelled archipelago we call home. I hardly even bother with bear bells any more — don’t rangers in Canada call them “dinner bells?”
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t creatures to be aware of. So take the following list as one hiker’s anecdotal experience of wildlife encounters real and imagined in Japan’s great outdoors. In this post I’ll focus on mammals: poisonous snakes, insects, and parasites will have to wait for another post…
Higuma Ezo brown bear aka “grizzly bear”
I spent the first four years in Japan living on Hokkaido, the remotest, least developed of Japan’s five main islands. Undoubtedly the king of the forests and mountains is the higuma grizzly bear, which approaches Alaska’s Kodiak grizzly bear in size: over two meters tall and over 500 kilograms. Although the estimated population of 3,000 concentrate in the Shiretoko peninusla area of eastern Hokkaido where people are fewest and rivers still run thick with salmon, they also inhabit the central mountain areas such as around Daisetsuzan National Park where I did much of my hiking. This part of Hokkaido, however, is thick with dense sa-sa bamboo grass, and it’s easy to imagine that there was more than one bear coyly hiding in the undergrowth trailside. Are they dangerous? Well, apparently there were 86 attacks and 33 deaths in Hokkaido from 1962 to 2008, with possibly more since though I haven’t found any numbers. Then there’s the notorious Sankebetsu brown bear incident, when around 100 years ago a single bear terrorized a village for several days and killed seven settlers.
Tsukinowaguma Asian black bear aka “moon bear” or“crescent bear”
Although black bears also inhabit Hokkaido, as far as large and predatory mammals go it pretty much has main-island Honshu to itself — other than humans, of course, who sometimes like a nice bear stew as comfort food in Japan’s surprisingly cold, snowy winters. The name comes from the distinctive crescent-shaped patch of white fur on the chest. Sounds cute and all, especially given that the Asiatic black bear tends to be smaller — more like a big dog — than other black bears, but in fact they are quite aggressive and attacks on people are more frequent. At risk of tipping this post into the animal-attack-porn category, one recent news report from the Hakone area, just outside Tokyo, carries the stomach-churning headline “A Bear Is Ripping Off My Nipple” — definitely not a read for the squeamish (trigger alert: I found the story fascinating, but I also couldn’t finish the read as it literally made me sick to my stomach).
In Okutama, an area just under an hour’s fast train trip from here, and where R. and I often go hiking, the Visitor’s Center updates a bear sightings page. I note with some trepidation that koyo autumn leaves season, when the mountains are full of hikers and photographers, have by far the highest incidents of bear sightings. Perhaps this is why the mountains of japan are a-ring with the constant sound of bear bells. Of course, whether or not they work as intended is another question…
Nihonzaru, Japanese Macaque
Monkeys, specifically the “snow monkey” macaques which winter-over in the hot springs near Nagano, are Japan’s most famous large mammals and, until recently, lived near fields and villages, relatively close to humans. They also figure prominently in Japanese religion and folk tales, where they have played the roles of companion, mediator, and trickster.
Macaques are still a common site in the mountains in many parts of Japan — except Hokkaido. Yet, surprisingly, I hadn’t see any in the wild until encountering several individuals and a small troop along the Azusagawa River in Kamikochi in the Japan Alps. They seemed oblivious to us, which is a good thing since they do sometimes attack people. Fortunately, for what it’s worth, back in 2007 Michelle Tsai published on Slate an article “How to Fight Monkeys“. Her report focuses on the long=tailed variety of macaque found in places like Bali and the cities of India. The gist of it? Give ’em your snack, or bop ’em on the head with a stick.
Inoshishi, Boar
Anyone who has seen Studio Ghibli’s animated Princess Mononoke won’t be surprised to learn that in Japan the boar is a fearsome beast, reckless and brave at the same time. Lonely Planet’s Hiking in Japan guide calls them ferocious, though doesn’t elaborate…
This may be why boar/people encounters are on the increase, as people push further into their native forests and the hard-pressed boars come into town to scavenge food. The boar population is also apparently exploding, as are the populations of other large mammals once hunted by the now-extinct Ezo wolf. The number of hunters in Japan is also on the decline — except apparently among women in their 20s and 30s in Hokkaido…
Unfortunately, all this means an increase in the number of boar attacks in forested areas, especially in Hyogo prefecture around Kobe.
Kita-Kitsune, Northern Fox
Of all the larger animals in Japan which the trekker should worry about, perhaps the common, gregarious red fox found on Hokkaido is the most threatening — although not directly. Turns out, these cute little guys — a common site along roads and trails — are host to a variety of tapeworm, scientific name echinococcus, which they pass through their feces into the water supply. These parasites are truly disgusting — and life threatening to people. People still dye today of undetected parasitic infection. Trigger alert: don’t read up on these suckers before bedtime. Seriously, they’re a real danger and you must take precautions while out of doors on Hokkaido: always always always boil river and lake water — any water source found in nature — before drinking.
So there you are. Japan is full of surprises. Just outside mega-city Tokyo, there is still plenty of nature to explore and encounter. Just make sure you boil your water. And wear a bell. Or not…
How about you? Any wildlife encounters in the land of the rising sun? Leave us a comment about it!
“wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful” — D.T. Suzuki, channeling Shakespeare from As You Like It
For about one hundred years, until the late 16th century, Kanazawa ruled as the capital of the so-called Peasant’s Kingdom, a nominally Buddhist independent province in west Japan, until the shogun Oda Nobunaga sent his main man Lord Maeda to put down the factious state.
What Lord Maeda took with one hand, however, he gave with the other. After quelling the rebel farmers and monks, the tonosama invited artisans from Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo) to the wealthy castle town, where they mingled with the local samurai to produce a unique artisanal culture. By the 19th century, Kanazawa was Japan’s fourth-largest city.
Today, Kanazawa has dropped out of the top ten cities. What it lacks in citizenry, however, it makes up for in cultural and historical impact. Traditional arts and crafts thrive in the historic streets and alleys of the old town, among well-preserved samurai houses and geisha teahouses. When my wife, R., was still a teen in rural Niigata in the 1980s, Kanazawa was apparently the place to go for Japan’s burgeoning indie music scene. Traditional silk dyeing, lacquerware, and gold leaf ornamentation continue, even flourish, and in 1996 UNESCO recognized Kanazawa as a “City of Crafts and Folk Arts.”
R. and I took an overnight bus from Tokyo when we visited last year. In March of 2015, the Hokuriku shinkansen bullet train started its run from Tokyo to Kanazawa by way of Nagano, and takes 2.5 to 3 hours — and is, apparently, included on the JR Pass.
Higashi-no-Kuruwa
R. and I really enjoyed getting lost, cameras in hand, by day and by night in the narrow lanes between these 100-year-old wooden houses and teahouses in the old entertainment district along the Asanogawa River. Today some of these old buildings still operate as geisha teahouses; others are open to the public as living museums — see the Kaikaro Tea House, below.
Kaikaro Tea House
One of the geisha teahouses open to the public — and photographer friendly!
Kenrokuen Garden
Kenrokuen is, apparently, considered the best of “the three most beautiful landscape gardens” — or maybe it’s a stroll garden — in Japan. Unfortunately, we arrived, like, a week too early for the sakura cherry blossoms to be in bloom. In any case, a stroll around Kenrokuen’s ponds, teahouses, and mossy forest struck us as a pleasant interlude in an early spring day of siteseeing, and that was enough. Besides, the precocious plum blossoms were on full display…
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
A 10-minute ride by public bus from Kanazawa Station, and near major tourist spots such as Kanazawa Castle and Kenrokuen Garden, the museum provides a place for locals and visitors to Kanazawa to take an art break, either outside in the interactive installations or inside, in the peripheral galleries or the main exhibition space. Here’s how the English-language pamphlet explains the concept:
“Museum open to city like a park”
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa is designed by Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue nishizawa/SANAA. It is situated in the center of Kanazawa city. Anybody can drop in whenever they want. The museum is designed as a park where people can gather and meet one another. The glass-made circle results in an ambiguous spatial definition, a kind of reversible membrane, through which visitors can sense each other’s [sic] presence. The Museum pays careful attention to its openness and brightness from the courtyards with skylights.
… The aim of the Museum is “casualness”, “enjoyment”, and “accessibility”.
They also serve a mean buffet lunch, if you can get a table.
Unfortunately, the main exhibition space happened to be closed the day we visited, as curators prepared for the next event. So R. and I made do with exploring the outlying exhibitions. Enjoy the pictures…
D.T. Suzuki Museum
“wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful” — D.T. Suzuki
Great 雰囲気, funiki, as we say here in Japan: great atmosphere.
In his 2006 book on practical aesthetics The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton writes
“A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life.”
Buildings shape our moods and ideas and experiences. Thus, every time R. and I visit an art gallery or museum I find myself mentally re-decorating: my computer desk goes here, by the picture window onto the rock garden; we can hang the Clifton Karhu on this cool grey concrete wall; some portable screens will break up the space nicely, but the gift shop has GOT to go…
So, when we visited the D.T. Suzuki Museum in Kanazawa, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, who also apparently is responsible for the redesign of the MoMA in NYC, my biggest impression was, “Of course! Who needs a garden when water will do?” Seriously, there is something almost hypnotically tranquil about the Water Mirror Garden which surrounds the minimal Contemplative Space at the heart of the small, intimate complex of buildings.
Clifton Karhu Collection and Ema Boards
“If you do not like my pictures, then hang them upside down.” — Clifton Karhu
There’s a term for foreigners who come to Japan and end up becoming, as they say, more Japanese than the Japanese: henna gaijin, or “strange foreigner”. Doesn’t sound very nice in English or in Japanese, does it…
Clifton Kahru is probably one of the more successful westerners to embrace a traditional Japanese art form, moku hanga, the woodblock print technique made famous by ukiyo-e landscape — and erotica — masters Hokusai and Hiroshige. Kahru used the technique to depict scenes of old Kyoto and Kanazawa — and, apparently like these earlier masters, some erotica — albeit with a pretty soft, whimsical touch. Kahru also produced a series of 12 ema boards, each with a different animal from the Chinese zodiac, which is on limited display at the shrine in Kanazawa. Many of Karhu’s prints are on display, and on sale, at the Kahru Collection gallery in the Chaya District, near the Asano River. Friendly and informative curator, though doesn’t speak much English I’m afraid. Nevertheless, he tells me, many international collectors visit his gallery to view and buy Karhu prints.
Climbing Mount Fuji, out of shape and out of season
The trail glows bone white under our boots. Konohana, the Shinto spirit of sacred Fujisan, smiles on us mountaineer-wannabes in the form of a harvest moon and cloudless sky. On short notice, I’m attempting an early, out-of-season ascent of Mount Fujisan – an overnight dangan tozan, bullet climb – with two friends from Tokyo, David and Naomi. The weather forecast looks good; the crowds on the most popular — read easiest — trail should be thinner. So far, we’ve been right. With a moon like this to light our way, we have no need for headlamps. Eight thousand feet below, Mount Fuji’s triangular moonshadow turns the Aokigahara, the so-called “Forest of Suicides,” a deeper, darker shade of green. At the top waits the promise of the fabled goraiko, the so-called “honourable arrival of light:” sunrise from the summit of the highest point in Japan.
We’ve also been lucky. Even in the official climbing season of July and August, conditions on the mountain — actually an extinct volcano — can and often do take a turn for the worse. Many of the 300,000 climbers who start never make it to the top of this newly anointed World Heritage Site (inducted in 2013). Wind, cold and altitude can turn this seven-mile, 4,900-foot-gain “day trip” from Tokyo into an arduous trek. Some who get caught out never make it down.
Once the snow arrives, only experienced and well-equipped mountaineers tackle Fujisan’s exposed slopes. Tonight, though, we’re in the shoulder season. Cold, yes, and it’ll get colder as we go higher and through the night: the average low bottoms out at about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, well below sweltering, tropical Tokyo. Still, only a mercifully light wind blows, and snow and ice have yet to cover the rocks. Lights shine from some of the huts, and a few tour groups follow guides up-trail.
Early September. A few weeks after my 44th birthday. And I’m here for the wrong reason: to test myself. Middle age caught me out during overtime in a three-year overseas adventure, with no end in sight. What started as a post-graduate trip to pay student loans and kickstart a writing career has turned into a career, a marriage, a house in the suburbs: the Canadian Dream written in kanji.
But staying overseas comes at a price, best paid when young, and I’m off to a late start. Meantime, until I retire, I’ll continue to hang on in the world’s biggest, busiest city, and in a samurai culture that embraces a work-till-you-drop ethic. In Japanese, the media call it karoshi, occupational sudden death. No wonder. Long commutes, longer hours, bento-lunchbox-sized apartments, and a work-hard-play-hard ethos has trashed my active-not-athletic lifestyle, and culminated in a precipitous midlife crisis. Again, Japan has a word for it: yakudoshi, the years of calamity, which for me manifested in an acute attack of back spasms, and a week on the couch.
I worked out a daily regimen of yoga and other exercises, and slowly, slowly, began inching towards recovery, speedy as the hero in Kobayashi’s famous haiku.
Katatsumuri
Sorosoro nobore
Fuji no yama
(Little snail, slowly slowly climb Mount Fuji)
Being in Japan helps. Genki, “lively,” retirees head to the mountains west of town for daily hikes. On a mountain trail in remote Hokkaido, I met a pair of septuagenerians hand in hand, enjoying the view and each other’s company. I thought then, “That’s how I wanna grow old.”
The memory of that couple kept me on the yoga mat.
Now I’m on Fujisan to see whether my self-prescribed physiotherapy has done the trick, or whether it’s time to hang up the Patagonia boots and socks.
In the distance, lightning cracks a ceramic sky over Tokyo and the broad Kanto plain. The spirit of Mount Fuji makes her own weather, however, and a clear, thin sky seems to pull us higher. But for the light of the harvest moon, we’d have a canopy of stars above.
Less than a mile from the summit, however, my knees and back are aching. If anyone asks, I’m more than ready to admit I’m cold, tired, and hungry. Not that anyone does ask. My friends can see it on my face as they wait in the halo of light around one of the precarious trailside huts. A hut! I could throw down a futon among the other climbers stacked like silkworms inside. Snap sunrise pictures from the front door and meet my friends on their way down. We would return to the city and back to work Monday like nothing had happened. Then I’d settle genteely into the reclining sofa of middle age…
On the other hand, conditions will never be better to summit. Besides, if I succeed now, I never have to challenge this blasted cone of ash again. After all, as everyone knows, “He who does not climb Mount Fuji once is a fool, but he who climbs it more than once is also a fool.” But what I do or don’t do here and now will set the pace for the rest of my life. So when I reach the hut, I warm myself with a paper cup of coffee from the all-night canteen, then continue up. A glow-worm of headlamps crawls up the trail. And passes us…
Never mind.
Step by step, breath by breath in this airless place, I follow David and Naomi, one foot in front of the other up the steep and rocky trail. By the time we see the little white torii gate that marks the final summit approach, my pack sways drunkenly on my back and my knees have locked.
But it’s done.
We make it to the summit of Fujisan at 12,388 feet, the highest point in Japan. Guess it’s not time to hang up the Patagonia quite yet. The sunrise is spectacular.
This story first appeared in earlier editions on my Japan blog site, Big Sushi, Little Fishes
(Update: Not sure when things changed, but there is apparently now an official(?) “extended” season to climb Mount Fuji. In 2015 the Yoshida Trail, for example, the one I climbed a few years back, will remain open until September 15th. Check the government’s Council for the Promotion of the Proper Use of Mt. Fuji for dates on other trails.)
Lavender, Patchwork Fields, and Active Volcanoes
The photos in this gallery are from a return trip I made a couple of years ago to the Biei area, a small town in central Hokkaido. I lived in Biei for a year, at the tail-end of a four-year stint on Japan’s northern frontier island before relocating to Tokyo and starting the next phase of my Japan adventure. At the time I was still shooting film, and it took me ten years to return for a visit — with a digital camera this time.
Most of these pictures were shot through the Grainy Film art filter on my Olympus E-P cameras. The pictures posted in this gallery have all been somewhat post-processed, mostly adjusted for exposure and clarity with a slight vignette added — in Lightroom 5. The “feel,” though, is all Grainy Film. The most common lenses I used were the legendary Lumix 20mm and m.Zuiko 45mm.
