Return to Hell Mountain

This time, we were stronger than before.  The days since Busan were much faster, more productive (though inexplicably, the weeks passed just as quickly as last time, back when it seemed every other day was a rest day or sick day).  We could do more miles with fewer problems, we were smarter about staying out of the rain.  We picked only the best campsites, got more sleep, spent less money, shopped more efficiently, ate better, were better prepared.

Somehow that didn’t make Hell Mountain any different from last time.  The giraffe-print sidewalk was still impossibly steep and coming apart in pieces.  There were still cyclists pedaling up this monster that we could only push up: young college kids, middle-aged moms, grandparents even (though it’s worth pointing out that none of them were carrying violas).  The grade was still a laughable 13%, which probably would have meant something if we hadn't seen gentle slopes marked as a 15% grade and sheer cliffs marked as 5%.  The manure factory was still doing brisk business, seasoning our bitter curses and buckets of sweat with an otherworldly stink.

"I hate this," I said after thirty minutes of pushing.

"Blarrrgh," Jenn agreed.

"At least this time I didn't forget my ukulele."

"Blarrrgh."

At the top of the mountain, there was a congregation of old men and ladies, all clad in flashy new lycra cycling clothes, all of whom had evidently pedaled up the whole mountain.  They laughed as they read our sign while we politely tried not to die of heart failure right in front of them.  One gruff old brute beckoned for us to come over for a photo with him.  We obliged, and after the photo was snapped he started explaining something to his friends; all we could understand was "Foreigners."  He talked about us for a few minutes, and we heard the word, waegukin (gaijin in Korean, essentially) tossed around several more times by the curly-headed ladies.  No one deigned to ask us any questions, though one of the ajumas did give us a big bag of homemade banana chips.  After we had rested sufficiently, we were down the mountain again, our brakes squealing our departure into the cliffs and pines, a solitary voice from behind shouting, "Fighting!"

Before long it had grown dark again.  Hell Mountain was exactly as terrible as we remembered, but it did seem to take up less of our day this time.  Just as it was getting too dark to safely continue, the Travel Gods dropped a beautiful roadside park in front of us.  We proceeded with our usual routine: we played a little music on the ukulele and viola, then set up our stove to cook some dinner.

Yes, it's supposed to do that.  Sort of.

It bears mentioning that in addition to being a proficient world traveler, a proud amateur blues musician, and an all-around scruffy-looking nerf herder, I'm also a damn fine cook.  While it's been tough having to do all our cooking on our one lonely little stove (man, do I miss fresh bread), I've still been able to whip up some excellent dinners from time to time.  Pasta with red sauce and anchovies, vegetable curry, ramen, Chinese noodles, yakisoba, tuna salad, pasta with white sauce, kimchi quesadillas, pasta with sauce of an indeterminate color: I can do it all.  Well, all of the major noodle-based dishes, anyway.

Just as I switched off the stove and we began wolfing down our chanko nabe, we heard a metallic ting come from somewhere in the dark woods around us.  We put down our chopsticks and listened: there was singing as well.

"I don't think I like the movie we're in," Jenn said, laughing nervously.

"It's probably...uh...maybe a temple somewhere in the woods down there?" I suggested, and we slurped our soup and tried to believe it.  The woods echoed with chanting now, whistly voices carried on the woods and filtered through innumerable spiderwebs.  Gongs, maybe, cymbals or bells and a steady thump that we hoped was our heartbeats.

When we finished the last of our dinner and set up the tent in the shadow of the roadside pavilion, I caught sight of something across the river: though it was almost too distant to see, especially viewed through the pine boughs, it appeared that there were figures dancing in a circle and beating drums on the unlit grass.  The singing must be coming from there, we decided, and relaxed slightly.  If it was indeed some manner of religious ritual, at least we were probably too far away to be in danger of human sacrifice (or worse, being asked to dance with them).  The voices and drums dropped away not long after we zipped our tent and instantly fell into sleep, though the forest seemed to sing and chime long into the night.

Can you spot our tent in this picture?  Oh man, you can?  Crap, start packing up, we gotta get outta here!

Jenn and Harry Go to Hell (Again)

We panted, pushing our bikes up and up and up.  Surely we had traveled more vertical miles than horizontal ones by now.  I looked back: the road stretched dizzyingly far behind us.  If I dropped a bowling ball, it could have demolished a city (not that there were many cities around here, anyway).  The bike path had turned on us, transforming from a pacifically flat, perfectly-maintained bikes-only thoroughfare into a crumbling red stain on one edge of a highway, a suggestion to passing cars that there might be some cyclists about.  Our clothes were perpetually drenched with sweat, except when they were dry and crunchy.  Road grit had mixed with sweat and chain lube on our legs, making us look even more comically dirty than usual (imagine a Victorian street urchin crossed with Pig Pen from "Peanuts").  Implausibly, we were walking by what I can only assume was a manure factory: the stench of industrial-strength dung filled the air and poisoned every breath we took, sweat mixing with tears and rolling dirty, salty water down our faces.  Eventually, we passed a sign helpfully informing us that we were crawling up a 13% grade.  This, then, was hell.

Of course, we'd already been to a hell, but this mountain was the Hell.

Also, this Hell was a lot less whimsical than Beppu.  Though it did smell just as bad.

Up ahead, at what couldn't possibly be the top of the hill, two Korean cyclists plunged towards us at mach speed.  One of them whooped in excitement.  They smiled and waved to us, and we somehow mustered the energy for a weak thumbs-up.  If, as I've heard, the most popular activity in heaven is watching the suffering of the damned, then the most barbaric punishment in hell is surely the damned watching the saved watch them.

It was 5:30, already getting to be dark.  Under ideal circumstances, we would have already staked out a camping spot by this time, but as it was, we had no choice but to keep going; each free camping site poses its unique set of dangers, but "sleeping on a 13% grade" was one too far.  We rested, we pushed, we rested some more, at least as much as holding up an enormously heavy bike can be called "resting."  We were too tired to complain, too tired to curse.  We were even too tired, somehow, to talk about "Game of Thrones."

Somehow, the farther we got from the city (and all of the weekend riders whose taxes paid for the trail, no doubt), the more the trail started to fizzle into nothingness, becoming vague signposts and cracked blue lines that carried us onto tiny country roads, steering us past stooped old women working in their rice paddies who stared at us.  "Hey, we're as confused as you are, believe me," I thought at them.  We'd even been directed up another mountain earlier that day, which made this one more impossible.

Of course, with each successful mountain climbed, no matter how difficult the journey, come the twin joys of perseverance and oxygen deprivation. 

That was hours ago, and this mountain, this steep, crumbly, empty, stinky mountain wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.  Much like us.

At last, inevitably, we did make it to the top of the mountain, just as it was getting too dark to push on.  What awaited us there, apart from some very unimpressed-looking sport cyclists in electric-white lycra, was the tiniest of rest areas, a scant few square meters of wooden planks and bolted-down benches.  The prospect of camping on such a tiny spot filled us with apprehension.  Perhaps it would be best to push onward?  The bottom of the mountain might provide some green space, maybe even somewhere we could stake down our tent without being seen by every passing car?

As we considered, I felt an odd nagging feeling.  The dread worsened as I tried to puzzle it out.  Had I forgotten something?  I scratched my back, noticing that it was drier than usual, and then it hit me.

"Shit.  Shit.  Jenn?"

"Yeah?"

"I forgot my uke again."

We sat on the benches and thought it over, trying not to panic.  There would be no hopping on the subway to pick it up in a safely locked apartment.  Neither of us could remember if I had left it at the store where we stopped for instant ramen, on top of the mountain, or at our free campsite that morning.  At the latter two, it would almost assuredly be gone by now, taken by thieves, turned in to the police by well-meaning passersby, or stolen by crows (I wasn't ruling it out).

Then I had an idea.  I checked the photos we'd taken on the last mountaintop:

Why must I insist on wearing a T-shirt under my T-shirt?
Oh, wait, that's my pasty white flesh.

Sure enough, there it was, strapped to my back.  That means it must have been left behind at the strange little general store.  Which was, naturally, back down the mountain a ways.

There was nothing else for it.  There would be no climbing that mountain with all of our stuff again, so I had no choice but to unstrap everything, leave it in Jenn's capable hands, and fly back down the mountain, stuffless.  I tore down the asphalt, passing the sports cyclists who'd scoffed at us going the other way, and before long, I was at the bottom, pedaling madly along the riverside path.

Meanwhile, Jenn took photos of the mountains.

I tore down the gravel-strewn path, screeching to a stop at the odd picket fence that surrounded the store/restaurant/house.  Out of breath, I stumbled up to the door, where the curly-headed ajima who ran the place walked to the screen door, dangling the ukulele by its strap with one finger.  I thanked her profusely, using one of the four words of Korean I happened to know, then grunted back to my bike.  I checked the time: it had taken 10 minutes to retrieve the ukulele, where it had taken over an hour to climb that mountain.  I sighed deeply, trying to ignore the cramps in my calves.

I did make it back to the top, ultimately, just as it was definitely too dark to move on.  We cooked a quick meal of canned fish (for the fourth time in three days) and set up in the far corner of the shelter, hoping that our reflective tent surface wouldn't attract too much attention.  Where there's no grass, we're unable to stake down our tent, making the structure quiver with every toss and turn.  Every now and then a truck blew by, its lights growing brighter, its engine growing louder until it seemed right on top of our heads, then passing perhaps 10 feet by us.  If any of those trucks spotted us, I have no way of knowing, but we were uninterrupted for the night.

And Harry never left his ukulele behind again.  Ever.

In the morning, we had just enough water to make the last of our oatmeal for breakfast.  The steep hillside was covered in wild raspberry bushes, a few of which I harvested for the oatmeal.  We packed up and left just as our need for a bathroom became intolerable, and we barreled down the mountain to the next town just as the rain started to pour down.  There were definitely no camping spots anywhere past where we'd stopped for the night.

Return to Shikoku: (More Than One) Day in Photos

The last of the sakura, still blooming on Ommishima.

At the very top of that mountain, children, is the very site to which we pushed our bikes, the place where we weathered a storm and a crow took my goddamn gyoza.

We dined like kings on Ommishima, where the speciality is a kind of fish known in English as "convict grouper."  Bon appetit!

We did not take advantage of the Kaido's many offers of a cup of pee.

Strange omens, indeed.

The sign that graced every one of those bridges.  A pun of sorts.  That anguished boat became a familiar friend by the end of our trip.

Shimanami Kaido 2: 10% Grade, 99% Sucky

I yawned, the morning sun falling softly through the tent’s little plastic window.  It was warm this morning, and calm.  What a beautiful day today would be, I thought, unzipping the door, a day that GAH AGAIN!

I blinked, rubbed the sleep from my eyes with one hand while trying not to fall and crush my tent (and, uh, wife).

Oh.  It’s just a goat.  I’m still scared, actually.

We made off quickly in the morning, hoping not to disturb our host (whose name neither of us caught, but to be fair, he did talk extremely fast).  We had no idea of knowing if he was still inside the school -- indeed, if the party had even ended yet -- but we went with the age-old children’s wisdom that yes, teachers live at the school.  We left him a thank-you note and packed up our things quietly.

We took off across Oshima, pausing only for breakfast and second breakfast at the conbini just down the road.  Oshima sadly proved to be big vertically as well as by area; the entire island is split by one of several mountains, such that by the time we made it a scant six kilometers from the mysterious cram school, we were already ready for a break.  Fortunately, Mt. Karei Observatory Park was only 2.5 kilometers from the main road, and according to our map, this park had a campsite.  At last, a return to camping at campsites, we thought, setting up on a patch of dirt where we wouldn’t be afraid of offending the owner or being bothered by an axe murderer!

Why, just look at all the fun we're having!

We stocked up on provisions at a supermarket on the main road, the proprietress advising us where we could buy beer nearby, and also that camping was no fun without beer.  Truly, a land of ancient wisdom, Japan.  Ready for a couple of nights of camping, armed with beer, gyoza, and fresh pasta, we started up the road to the park.

Unfortunately, we found that 2.5 kilometers was an inaccurate gauge of the distance to the park, though perhaps it was more a vertical estimate than a horizontal one.  We quickly took to pushing, then to cursing, then to sitting.  After a time I went ahead, leaving Jenn to have a rest so I could come back for her once I’d left my bike at the top.  It didn’t take me too long to get to the park (in geological time, anyway), though it was unfortunate that all of my muscles went on strike before I could get back down to Jenn.  All said, it was a full day of pushing, perhaps 3 hours, before we got to the top.  Really, “Observatory Park” should have tipped us off.

The view was incredible, and the giant mural that played a warbly enka at random intervals fascinating.  Sakura were peppered all over the steep green slopes that look out over the nearby islands and the sweeping white bridges of the Kaido.  There were few visitors to the park that day, even though it was a Sunday, so we had the whole summit to ourselves, virtually.  Giddy with the view (and perhaps altitude sickness), we made ourselves a late lunch, then went to set up our tent on one of the narrow precipices that passed for a campground.  As there was no one manning the park office, we helped ourselves to the flattest green stairstep on the mountainside.  This is one of the greatest parts of camping in Japan: if it’s not in camping season, then the campsite is free!  Inasmuch as there is no one there to make you pay, anyway.  Typical for Japan, really; why would anyone go camping when it wasn’t the proper season for it?

While we set up, we left most of our things by a fire pit at the bottom of the stairs (I know, stairs at a campsite, why?).  By the time the tent was erected, an enormous crow had helped itself to some of our groceries.  “Hey!” I shouted, lurching down the steps, as the crow responded to my threat by doing absolutely nothing.  I got to the fire pit just in time to see the crow grab hold of a bagful of white bread and flap away, thus solving a week-old mystery and depriving us of valuable nutrients.  I couldn’t do much in retaliation but shake my fist and check the rest of our goods.

“Fuck!  That crow took our gyoza!” I shouted to Jenn.  Indeed, a package of premade dumplings the size of an abridged dictionary was utterly gone.  Strange portents, indeed.

The next day we decided to rest, and we passed our time happily on the mountaintop taking photos, writing, singing, and making elaborate meals, some of which were passed on to lower creatures with no hard feelings.  We had eaten nearly all of the groceries we brought up the mountain with us, and drank all the beer as well, but no matter, the grocery store was only an extremely short trip down the mountain, we thought as we went to sleep blissfully.

The following day we awoke to rain.  Like, rain-rain.  Some of the rainiest rain we had encountered, in fact, breaking occasionally only for fog.  We huddled in the tent for the day, trying to make our leftovers last as long as possible -- there was no way we’d be hurtling down a mountainside in this kind of weather.  We knit, tried not to think about food for the day, and played Tale of Tales’ brilliant game “The Path” on our laptop.  In retrospect, spending much of the day playing a spooky, atmospheric game about being lost in the woods wasn’t that bright of an idea whilst alone and trapped in actual spooky, atmospheric woods.  We fell asleep to troubling dreams of being stalked by wolf-sized crows and crow-sized wolves, awakening only to the PA system playing the Go To Sleep music and, much later, the Wake Up music.

Wakayama: Singing Mountain, Sweating Gaijin

It was time to put The Plan into motion.  We were newly outfitted with coats, as well as all of our luggage from our last few trips -- we had torn across Missouri and California, and now Japan was ours for the taking.  First up was Shikoku.  Oh, but first, a bit of fun and culinary exploration in O-Town:

Our guitarist, Sa-chan, rockin' with one of his many other bands, Kaze no utage.

Shikoku is the smallest of Japan’s four major islands (PROTIP: when biking across an entire anything, go with the smallest one).  It’s regarded as something of a backwater, with only small, regional airports and no real metropolis to speak of.  It’s famous for sudachi, which are like limes the size and shape of ping-pong balls, and for its particularly pork-fat-filled ramen.  It is also home to the storied 88-Temple Pilgrimage which religious types have walked, biked, or taken a tour bus for centuries, which means that Shikoku is rather used to weirdly-dressed, unshowered transients with a need for free campsites.  Though only a relatively small inland sea separates Shikoku from mainland Honshu, it is reachable only by ferry, by car, or by train from a pretty out-of-the-way (for us) terminal, so the first step would be to bike to the ferry terminal in Wakayama.

We packed up and (hours later) left for Wakayama, our bikes even heavier than the previous week through some trick of advanced physics.  Wakayama City lies at the bottom of the great peninsula on which Osaka was founded, some two hours-plus by train from our old house.  Sadly, 80 kilometers to the ferry terminal meant 8 hours of biking through urban sprawl, and believe you me,  it doesn’t come much sprawlier than Osaka prefecture.

Also, there was a whatever-the-fuck-this-is.

Gaijin guest star!

Another night free camping in a city park, and before much longer we were at the mountains.  We met up with our friend Jake, with whom we would be sharing the next few hundred kilometers and alcoholic beverages, at the ferry terminal.  Jake’s a seasoned bike traveler; he’s been in Japan for the past four years, and in that time he’s ridden the circumference of Shikoku (about 800 km in total) enough times to give us plenty of guidance on our trip.  He would go with us as far as the Shimanami Kaido, the great series of bridges that connected northwestern Shikoku to Honshu, where we would part ways.

The ferry brought us to Tokushima, a town that as quiet as it was disturbingly familiar, where we would begin our journey.  The air was cold and windy, and a light rain had begun to fall while we were napping on the ferry.  Jake led us through the mean (by which I mean unlit) streets of Tokushima while the rain and wind picked up, rendering us invisible to cars and the road invisible to us.  When we had gone barely 5 kilometers, stopping at a grocery store to pick up some produce that we would then carry for several weeks, we stumbled upon a quiet park that was bathed in the light of a nearby love hotel.  It was a wet, empty, desolate place, so we figured it would be perfect.  We ate, drank, and cooked pasta until the wee hours.  All said, a most auspicious start to our trip.