#23 Escape from Tokyo's Spider Mountain

Transcript

Alright, as you can no doubt here, the rain finally hit, so I've been visiting Japan in the fall in late October and early November, and I've been frankly shocked at how amazing the weather has been. It's been like summer. If anything, it maybe has been a little too hot. I don't know how people come here in peak summer. It must be insane. The other time I visited was early summer, and that was one of those like still crazy hot at two or three in the morning type of situations. If it got even worse than that, yeah, because I mean, I've seen those videos on YouTube and stuff. If you can get the like jackets that have fans in them, which don't really work, and just all these things people do to try not to die from the heat. So even though it's like, oh my beautiful sunny day's gun, now it's just the gray skies, and it's a little rainy. But that is not a bad thing, you know, the alternative would be worse. Even some of the days I've been here, it's been like, it's a little hot. I could go for a little cooler than this. So here we are. This is what I thought I was getting the whole time. Today's the only day for the upcoming week with actual little rain droplets on the weather report, but I think it will stay a little cloudy. So I've also said how this apartment building I'm staying at. When I was here before, I used to go out on the balcony in the morning and it just felt good. Good way to start the day. The other place that I would go is for some reason all my Airbnb's, all three of them when I visited in 2019, all had intermittent internet problems. The internet would just come and go, but free internet was easy to find at all the convenience stores. So this place, the internet, I don't think ever worked. But there's a 7-11 near here where I just go, get something to eat for breakfast, and just stand outside and download some podcasts. Listen to that day or something. And the free internet was like 20 minutes, but there's a 7-11, a family mart, and a Lawson's all in the block surrounding here. So I'd make the loop if I had to. If I needed extra internet later in the day or something, if I used up one of them, I could just make the loop and go to the others. So that was a nice little routine as well. But now that I found this little shrine that's near here, I was thinking, let's just go up to the shrine to start the day. Let's go annoy the birds. Because yeah, my start of day report here is that the human body, what a miracle it is. Because my problem I've been having here is that when I stayed before in Akiruno, which is just a gorgeous place, man, it is so beautiful. I really love this part of Tokyo. I was in a building near a train line, but I was on the second floor and I was at the back of the building. So it was no big deal. Now I'm on the bottom floor right next to the train line and it's just been rattling my brain. It's been awful. So yesterday I woke up at like 5.30 in the morning with the first train and I never really managed to get much sleep beyond that. And I was concerned because it seemed like, is this just what's going to happen for the whole week that I'm here? Is it just going to be a sleep deprivation nightmare? But I'm happy to report. Things are a little better. The trains don't stop until like a little after midnight and it took me a little while to fall asleep. I was going to break out some like melatonin and stuff but I was like so exhausted. I'm like, surely I'll just fall asleep and I did. But then I didn't wake up this morning until 7.30 which normally would be like yikes that's pretty early, but given these circumstances that was like luxurious and that's proof positive. Actual factual proof that I did in fact sleep through the train for like two hours. So that's pretty cool. And then I got a little on and off sleep after that. So I don't exactly feel super spry but I feel a lot better than yesterday. And it seems like for whatever reason it's like every fourth train. The trains don't come very often out here. Probably a few times an hour. And for some reason like one of those trains is the one that rattles the whole building. So that's the one that's very extra hard to sleep through. And the other ones are just loud but they at least don't shake things. I'm not sure why though. Maybe one of them is bigger I suppose.

But yeah it's weird because there's so few affordable accommodations around here. Even this one I would say is a little more expensive especially now that I know it's so close to the train. It's more expensive than it feels like it should be. I hope next time I come to Japan more options that sprung up around here because man this morning too I was like so many places I want to go. I want to go to the end of the Yutukashi line and explore around there. I want to go south up the hill and try to find there's a some ruins of a castle. I want to go down by the Aki River and walk that route. I just even want to go to the A on Mall and hang out with the Starbucks again. You know like I can't. I can't waste the day doing that. I did that yesterday and it was a fun little homecoming. It's like oh I'm back at the mall but I can't go back to the fucking mall but I could if I was just staying here for like you know weeks and weeks. That's what's fun about staying in a place for way too long. You can really just do the dumb stuff that doesn't matter. But today today I got another plan and in fact I guess I'll just recount the plan while I'm in mid-plan. Don't need to do that right now. But because of the rain I got my little umbrella. The new bag I bought the other day on a Yammer Road. It's a bit smaller than the crappy Montreal one I had that was falling apart. So it's a little tough to squeeze an umbrella in there but but I was like today I need to. I need to sacrifice some things to bring an umbrella but then it was raining when I opened the door. So it looks like the umbrella is not going in the bag anyway. I have to use it right away and I'm also wearing my... I got like a jacket in Montreal. It's not like full like super Gore-tex. I've never had one of those that's just like mega waterproof but this one's like the next step up. It's pretty good and I got it for like $30 at a thrift store. I think because it has like paint flax on like the black sleeve of the jacket. There's a white paint flax. They are pretty noticeable. So I got to assume some Montreal guy was just like small ho ho. I'm not going to wear this. It's time to get a new jacket you know. That's just how fancy pants is. That's how they function. They're just discarding stuff where it's amazing how much stuff you can get if you live like... I think you've got like a comet. The head of the comet is just everybody buying new shit all the and then the trail that follows behind the tail of the comet within that debris is just everything that you want. It's everything and it's cheap as shit because they're just trying to get rid of it. They don't even want it and this is a perfect example. And what's kind of neat is the paint has been slowly flacking off bit by bit. I thought for sure. It's like well whatever. I'm not a vain person but it is a little it's sort of sucks because there's little paint specks on the arm of this jacket that will probably be there for all time but that's fine. I don't care. The day I started to care about shit like that I got bigger problems. Anyway now is just basically jockeying the weather. It's like I think this jacket will be okay. It doesn't seem like it's too much. The temperature says it's like 17 degrees but it doesn't feel it. It feels a little chilly. And then I'm always concerned about the other side. What if it gets freezing cold and I don't have any layers with me? It's like I this surely I don't need to bring a jacket and a thermal shirt. Every time I've done this it's always ridiculous. It's my Canada brain. I'm in Japan. It's not like that. At least down here. Not unless you go up north. So I got my jacket. I got my umbrella. And I got to admit I guess this does draw me a little more toward. It does make the mall idea feel cozier. Oh just go to the mall. Sit at Starbucks with my laptop. You know the rainy day does like when I woke up I was pulled in all directions of like oh I want to do all these different things.

Baaah which one. Yeah I think once I get going it'll be okay. This rain it's like it's slight you know it's it's not hard rain but it is continuous but it's coming straight down. It's not like windy rain. I suspect it'll be okay. But I would speak into that 7-11.

That was one of my many many failures to communicate. There was a guy there who you know I went there all the time and he was there a lot of the times. And he always tried to speak English you know I could tell he was an English student. But if I tried to speak back oh man you know just because I figured like right across the street and just down the street a little like right across the field was the building I was staying at. And since it's a taxi dispatch building you know it's very it stands out a lot you know it's a whole shit ton of taxis in there. So that was that was all that was all I tried to impart was just like yeah I'm staying over there I'm staying at the taxi building across the street. And yeah all I got was the blank stare the poor guy you just you know 10:00 he could speak English he could say the things but I know how he feels because that's how I feel in Quebec. I can spout out some oh I was in French school as a kid but now my French is a little rusty j'étais dans MLZ en France est c'est quand j'étais p'tit mais met non mon français imporier you know and he'd be like okay he's that sounds alright the accent's probably off a little bit but he can speak French but then they start speaking back to me and it's like holy fucking slow down you fuck it's too fast I don't know what you're saying your all your words emerging together talk to me like I'm in second grade please you know I gotta assume that's how that guy felt but anyway I haven't been to that 7-Eleven yet since I got back so let's go to that 7-Eleven get some fucking coffee that's one thing about a little rainy day though sure does make a nice coffee feel good I've been loving to the warm stuff how when I was here before since it was early summer everything was just cold they did have the warm section in the convenience stores but you have to be a maniac you know I got like a tea I do like the hot teas just to try it but you know it wasn't a sensible thing to do but now it's like yeah let's get some soup let's get some get some little hot coffees get some hot whatever it's delightful I predict this is going to be delightful but we can catch back in when I'm mid-adventure man the mountains in the distance are so fucking pretty here I would say they're prettier on a sunny day but in a different way on these misty grey days I mean they're still beautiful it's like gorillas in the mist style it's like the misty mountains but awesome man this is another fall bonus so I was standing outside of the old proverbial 7-Eleven eating some stuff and what I always liked about it was just standing on that corner and the big field like I mentioned when I would come out of the apartment near there and stand on the balcony and just look out over the field and I realized that's something I definitely do like a lot about this neighborhood is there's so many open fields because that's one of those things down in like sanganjaya when I was near shibuya you know it's very exciting and cool in its own way but you literally never get to see just a wide open space it's all buildings and it just feels good to just see not only the fields in front of you around here but then combined with the mountains and the deep distance it's like fuck yeah it just feels feels very good that sense of distance with everything what do we have here ice cream machine a that would probably be a bit silly I mean it's not that cold out though okay well what's this okay you got me a thing I never had before so they have these things that are kind of like ice cream bars but they're they have the ice cream in the middle and then the outside is like a it's like an ice cream cone but surrounding the whole thing so it makes that an ice cream cone sandwich so they have those but I've had that before they're good but it's not cold today but I don't know that it's ice cream weather you know ice cream sandwich weather it stopped raining though for the time being however this thing coolish from lot a low TTE brand coolish and it's it's like one of those little like the energy jelly they sell that comes in these little packets and you just squeeze it out except this one has ice cream on it coolish vanilla smooth texture drinking ice to enjoy with one hand so probably it's just gonna be melted ice cream right this might even be this might be gross but I've never had it so let's try it but yeah not only was the field just very very pretty in and of itself this time of year it's even better it was just an open field when I was here in the early summer now it's all got stuff in it greenery and stuff growing everywhere and specifically by the seven eleven there were greenhouses and uh and flowers so most of the fields around here are just greenery it's like I think legitimate vegetables but the flower parts out man they're so beautiful no it's ice cream all right this package is in fact ice cream okay it's a little diagram with hands saying to kind of think they're saying to mush it up a little let's see if 15:00 my translate can actually read this don't smoke and enjoy it okay it definitely doesn't say that come on There's the 12 o'clock bells. Softness without sucking. Don't suck. Please enjoy it and enjoy.

These words are right on the seam of the package, so it ain't happening. I have no idea. Now that I'm holding this thing in my hand, too, it's like, fuck. I don't want this. It's fucking freezing. It's nice that it's hot raining though. Still very overcast, but Mania just not having to hold the umbrella. Still light-full. Still light-full. All right, I'm just going to put this ice cream in my pocket for a bit and let it melt a little. Because yeah, now that I bought it, it's like, what am I going to do with this? So maybe I'll let it melt and do ice cream soup and then just slurp it down.

Oh man, one side ice cream melted a little. That was really goddamn good. I mean, it's weird on an overcast. I think it's actually warming up a little. So it's not that cold out, but still a weird day for ice cream. That was at a big park where I got that. And whenever I get stuff like that, I think of, like, what if I was just like a kid if I grew up here and I get that stuff? Oh man, I mean, we have stuff. You know, we have good stuff in North America too, but it's more like the person that comes by on the little bicycle selling ice cream maybe a little jingle. It's not as convenient. It's not just there. Having just millions of convenience stores everywhere and just these machines that you can just get stuff out of, you know, it was a lot more hoops to jump through in North America. And it would have been a popsicle or something. It wouldn't be a cool little pouch with a twist off top full of ice cream. It's just like, man, it's so good. Luckily, it's not too late because sure, I'm in my 40s now, but I can pretend I'm 8 years old and just eat it and just be like, yes, I'm pretty, pretty goddamn good.

I figured out also in a previous episode, I was trying to buy red bean soup out of a machine. And I was trying to pay for it with a sweet card and I failed utterly. I figured out how to do it. I figured it out at just through the convenience stores. The button you need to press doesn't necessarily say sweet guys as I see. There are a bunch of different little cards that you can use little commuter cards, so they're all under icy. So you choose icy, you choose an item, you hold up the card and ding-ding, then you get it.

So today's mission is already, it's already failing, but this is, I mean, everywhere that I'm walking is awesome. But it's like, oh, I've been here before. I'm walking down this slope, but I'm heading north across a little bridge. Maybe I might still be definitely gone down into this park before. I mean, that's the thing is you can't fail around here.

There's nowhere you can go that isn't amazing. This is the Hirai River. Next to the Akiruno City baseball field that I'm walking across. Yeah, there's this one particular route I was trying to take that has significance to no one but me, but kind of inspired by how last episode I walked south into the mountains, but I did it in a reverse way. I did the horseshoe in the reverse order.

As I did in 2019 and it's really cool because I get to do the run again. I get to do the little nostalgia thing of like cool. I'm doing the thing again. I'm going back into this cool walk I did before. But doing it backwards makes it a much more distinct adventure, a new thing.

Oh, oh, as I speak in too soon, I was going to say how, but the thing is that there's turns you're supposed to take that you don't, you would have walked past the first way, but when you're 20:00 going through backwards, now it's a decision. Is this the turn or do I keep going? In my memory, what I'm looking for is a family mart. There's a family mart that was the point where I turned and was like, okay, from here, I know how to get back to my Airbnb. Oh, there it is. I think it's got to be it. It's a family mart. That can't just be a coincidence, right? I think I'm on the right path, but this road is busier than I recalled. Again, I'm just putting off describing this dumb random walk that means nothing to anyone but me. But I just don't want to have to battle with the sounds of cars. So let's just continue with the walk. And then I'll talk more about the walk later in the walk. What an amazing podcast. Man, I'm a lot closer now. These mountains that I'm always saying had the mountains in the distance here are super beautiful. Some of these mountains are like right there, like 10 minutes away. But I've learned that just because a mountain is close to you doesn't mean you can go to it. Probably there's people's property all along the edges of the mountain. You can't just wander through their through their yards and stuff. And even if you could, you probably can't just like the mountains are so dense, they're so covered in trees. You got to find a path. You got to find a pre-established route someone has devised. Or you ain't getting up there, you know. But they're right there. They're so close.

All right, today's little adventure. Let me tell you a story from 2019. So when I visited Japan in 2019, my phone did not have the cool GPS stuff that my current phone has. It was like literally a 7-Eleven burner, which there's something to be said for that life. I think the phone was like a hundred dollars Canadian. But they had some kind of deal that if you bought X amount of prepaid 7-Eleven dollars, you just got the phone for free. I don't know how much it was, 150 or something. And then you could get unlimited texting for 10 bucks. So basically for $10 a month, I could text all my friends in Toronto. And then if I did need to call someone, it was horrifying. It was like 25 cents a minute for a local call. But who cares, whoever calls on a phone? It was great for just being a guy bumming around Toronto. But when I got to Japan, it left me often not knowing where the hell I was. And I don't have a great sense of direction. Anyway, so one day I was walking around somewhere east of Hyjima Station. And I don't exactly remember the specifics anymore, but it was I knew like off I walk in this general direction, I'll bump into the train line that'll lead me back to Hyjima. And I messed up somehow. I ended up hitting like somewhere where the train split, you know, like a different line went off at some point that I had never been on before, I wasn't aware existed. So I was following the wrong train line. So I ended up at what I now know, because I can just check, like magic, is Fusa Station, FUSSA, if even. Maybe it was Higashi Fusa. Anyway, I knew I was not where I was trying to get to. But it was a train station and it's like, well, I could just get on this train and, you know, I've only been walking. So by train, surely it won't take me along to get back to Hyjima and from there I can get back to Akigawa and back home and whatever, no problem. And it was late, it was already dark. And I guess why this little story sticks in my mind so much is because I have a very poor sense of direction. Cardinal directions, I have no idea. There's definitely nothing in my mind that has any sense of magnetic north or whatever. I just I never know. I can only figure out directions relatively speaking, like relative to landmarks. Like, okay, this, to this, to this, to this, that's fine. But as soon as something goes wrong, then it's like, well, now I don't know. I've literally just started walking the wrong way, the exact wrong way, many times. When my intuition says I'm going the right way, I have no idea. But in this case, I saw the river, which I didn't even know was called the Temer River at the time, 25:00 but I knew that is the river. That's the river I would have to cross to get into Akiruno. And I figured like, well, surely if I just think about what I did today and where I generally was and what probably happened, probably I'm just north of the bridge that would cross near the, it's a Kaishi line. This is just a different line. This is just a different bridge, probably parallel, although with the way the river curves and twists, I was lucky that it that was the case and it easily could have not been. But I figured, you know, even though it's all dark out, and I technically don't know where I am. And I could hop on Wi-Fi to actually learn where I was, but there didn't happen to be any near there. But I was like, fuck it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to walk across this bridge, which walking across bridges at night is very scary. Even last night coming down off of the mountain, how I was saying I didn't remember how the crossing of the Akiriver went. It is just a bridge, but not a super well lit bridge, and everything under it, you know, the river below beneath is just dark and terrifying, and just like so horror movie scary. But I was like, fuck it, I'm going to walk across that, and I'm just going to have faith that I know what I'm doing for once, which never works. But again, it just turns into a different adventure. Obviously, it all works out in the end, or I'd be dead in the woods somewhere. But I guess this one stood out because I was so proud of myself that it did work. I walked across that bridge, and then I walked down this road that just stuck in my mind a lot. One of the things about it, I guess, was at a part where it was sloping upward. There were a bunch of sandbags holding construction signs in place, and seeing the sandbags made me think of, there's this place in New Brunswick, Canada called Campobello Island, and it's where a bunch of my relatives live. A whole bunch of them, a big whack, even though it's a very small island. It's a weird place because the only bridge to Campobello connects to Lubek main in the United States. So you technically have to drive through the United States to get to this Canadian island, unless you take a ferry. I haven't seen any of those folks since COVID, but I imagine that was a bit of it to do, because they had to cross the border pretty much every day just to go by groceries and stuff. A bit of an odd little place, but you know, lots of nice nostalgic memories of visiting there when I was a kid. And it's just a very small island. I'm going to guess 2,000 people live there, but I'm not sure. Too small to have in McDonald's is how I always think of it. That's when you know you're fucking pretty small. And seeing the sandbags on this road in Japan, that's where, again, one of these things that's very obvious that I did in fact know, but there's like a different ways of knowing stuff. You can know stuff by hearing it or reading it or just absorbing it, however, through conventional information. And then you can really know stuff. You can know stuff in your bones. You can feel it. And seeing the sandbags that you know were there so that if crazy winds happen and the weather gets all nuts, these signs won't move. The exact kind of thing I would see on Campobello Island, which is, you know, getting attacked by the Atlantic all the time. That made me realize, oh yeah, Japan is an island. Which again, I know, so dumb, so stupid, everybody knows that. But it doesn't feel like an island in the way that Campobello does. Campobello, you know, you can see the edges of it all the time. Japan, it's, you know, what is it the size of California or something? You really don't have a sense that it's an island island. It just seems like a place.

But that thing I'm always saying how it reminds me of camping, being in Japan just the way the buildings are, the way stuff is set up, the, I guess, because the climate is relatively mild. The delineation between indoor and outdoor is much fuzzier than it is in like a big city in Canada where you got to just, everything needs to be secure for the cold in the winter. Here everything feels a lot looser. And that's, yeah, that's when that hit me. It's like, oh yeah, this is island life. This place is an island. It's all set up like an island. It feels like an island. That's what I mean when I say camping. I guess I really mean island life, campabello life, you know. It adds to the nostalgia where I have all this weird nostalgia for, you know, like the childhood of a kid in Japan in the 80s because it's like a remix of my childhood in Canada in the 80s. But this is another piece of that as well. I have nostalgia for 30:00 visiting my family on this island when I was a kid just by walking around here because it feels like that except on a massive scale.

Here's the thing by the way. Maybe Google translate this bad boy unmanned store, it says. So I mentioned how one of the things that makes Akiruno feel like the countryside is these little stalls where people would just put out vegetables and on the honor system, you just pay for them. And there's one right here. This is not. Am I still in Akiruno? I'm not sure.

Because I take a little detour. So I'm just across the river. I'm across the Tama from Fusa. Yeah, this one's got, man, it's like a lot for 100 yen.

It's like a big bag full of green peppers or I don't know what this other thing is. This other vegetable. It's like a leafy vegetable. And this one's not as fully in the honor system. It's not just an envelope that you put money in. There is a little box, like a little donation box at a church or something with a little padlock. So you put your 100 yen in there. You take one of these bags. I mean, I wish I could buy one. There's just no reason. I mean, what am I going to do with it? I can't cook stuff. I'm not remotely prepared for that. But yeah, then as I was walking down that street, I hit the family mart that I mentioned earlier. And when I turned the corner from there, that was like, oh, yeah, okay. I think it was, it was big like electric power. What do you call those? Like the big power towers, the big metal towers that electricity cords attached to. I saw one of those. And I was like, oh, okay. I'm pretty sure I know which one that is. And then from there, I got home. And you know, it wasn't that big of a deal, especially now walking back along it. It's actually quite a short route. But because it was nighttime and I had never been there before and I was just forging forward and deep down in my soul, I knew I always do this wrong and get lost. The fact that I pulled it off was like, fuck yeah. And it's just one of those things that really stuck in my mind when I'd think back to Japan. I would think back to just that one specific road a lot. I think because I'd only been on it once, which in a weird way makes it more memorable in some ways. And just because of the little moment with the sandbags, oh my goodness, am I going to get detoured again?

I see a little path. These little steps up into the woods. I'm like, is that anything? Is that just someone's house? But now that I have a map, Mount Dichosen, D-A-I-C-H-O-Z-A-N.

And there's a shrine called Kezuin, K-E-Z-O-I-N. Fuck it. Fuck it. I guess I'm going up there. I guess we're going to see what's up there. Because again, my ultimate goal is just eventually to cross this river and get to the subway. So fuck it. Up in the mountains we go.

But yeah, just being on that road the one time and having my little revelation about the sandbags really made that area just stay in my mind. I would just think back to it a lot. So it was just one of those things on my little docket of like, I should just do that walk again whenever I get to go back to Japan. Because you know, now that I'm back, it doesn't even, I'm getting pretty comfortable with the idea that I'm, oh I'm here, you know, I've been here a little while.

Jeez, there's the thing here to throw away cans. And I just had a coffee can. I was keeping in my pocket to throw away. It's all beer cans. Oh, there's the Coke can. It's 95% beer cans. Because we know what people come to this mountain for.

Yeah, now that I've been back a little bit and it's like, oh yeah, okay, I'm getting pretty comfortable with the idea that I'm back in Japan. And you know, theoretically unless there's another horrible pandemic, I should just be able to do this once in a while. Every couple of years or so, maybe I can come back to Japan, you know, should hopefully become a more normalized thing. But in the midst of COVID, it was like shit. It feels like you'll never get to go back.

Cool, here's a little shrine. I'm not quite sure how to get deeper into the woods, but I'm sure there's a way.

So yeah, I'd think back to this, this, you know, one just random road I walked down. And it would seem miles away. Like these just mundane sort of random trips I would go on. It would just take on a much greater significance of just like, I hope I get to go back there. 35:00 Someday, I hope I get to go do that again.

So now that I'm here, I went to do it again. And I was like, I'll do it backwards this time. And at first, I was like, oh, I think I'm failing, but I figured it out. So I walked down the road. And yeah, when it's not nighttime and now that I know where I'm going, it's not just like into the unknown, you know, for all I knew. It was really, I guess it was the river that gave me confidence that it would all work out because again, like relative directions are what I'm good with. So I at least knew, hey, I'm on the other side of the river. My Airbnb is also on the other side of the river, somewhere over there, you know. If you just look at it as a mass, this side or that side of the river, at least I am on that side of the river, even if I'm not walking in the right direction. But then I was walking in the right direction. Amazing. And I found the path into the woods. And this is pretty steep.

I should stop yammering before I walk up here.

But yeah, I got to the end a lot quicker than I expected. Got to the bridge and it's like, okay, right across the bridge, you can see a bunch of, you know, the density of civilization where it's a lot more dense on that side of the time. Where this side is a lot more calm and nature.

And then when I looked to my left, there was a big curving road that just went up, really steep up and curved and was very quiet with almost no traffic. And I just stared back and forth like, do I go into, okay, across the bridge, civilization, subway station, et cetera. Or up this cool looking road. And the road looked so cool. And then I was like, fuck it. That's where I'm feeling the pull. Go do a new thing again. Because if I go over there, that's just the same old thing. I did the run. I basically did it. So I walked up there and I died. That's where I am now. It's where I saw the little vegetable stand. And now I'm hiking up a fucking mountain.

So this has worked out pretty well. It stopped raining. I did get to do my nostalgia route backwards this time. And now I'm going to a new place. So I'm not going to record while I huff and puff my way up this mountain. Let's see how this goes.

All right, I guess. I guess I made it. Mount Dichos N, D-A-I-C-H-O-Z-A-N, 192 meters. This is the official marker. So I guess this is as high as this goes. It doesn't feel super duper high. But I guess I don't know. 192 meters. What does that mean? I don't know. I don't know how mountain heights work. Starting to rain a little bit again though. So this is a nice place to stop. Because there's a little just like a picnic table area with a little roof.

And an okay view, although the view is just of Fusa. Just like, look at that city over there. I bet this looks good at night though. However, getting here, I guess why I sound a little like, oh yeah, I guess this is it, is this has never happened to me before in Japan. There's always people around everywhere. Like I haven't seen anybody here yet. But if somebody jogs by, I sure won't be surprised. But this place does seem way less busy than I'm going to say anywhere that I've ever been in Japan, especially that is like a place on a map that has a name. Because before I came to this specific like mountain top area, there was another path up another part of the mountain that from here it looks higher. But maybe it's just the trees making it look that way. I don't know.

But those terrifying spiders that I mentioned seeing all over Akiruno, which I still don't know what they are, I hope they're not deadly. Maybe it's better not to know or I'll just freak myself out.

But I tried going up this mountain path and there started to be spider webs that I had to duck under and that's that even that's never happened. I mean if something that's a path, there's just so many people in Japan that if there's a path somebody's walking down the path, you know, so there's spiders all over the edges of the paths, but not the path itself. In fact last night when I was coming down from the mountain in the dark, there was a little dark side path and I was like, I'll just stop in here real quick and just pee in a bush and I didn't realize there was a big spider right in front of my face. It kind of freaked me out and it's like reinforced that like, hey pay attention don't just assume there's no spiders because these things have enormous spider webs and 40:00 they're way bigger than any of the spiders back home. And yeah again I don't know what they are. Maybe they are horrifyingly deadly. I have no idea. They look scary as shit that's for sure. But as I went further up this path I had to keep ducking around spider webs until finally there was a big spider web right in the way right across the path with a big terrifying spider in it.

And it's like well shit I don't know what to do I can't I can't go any further here. So I went back down the path and circled around to another path that went up that mountain and the same thing happened. I got a little ways up and there's just too many spider webs and spiders in the way. I legitimately need like a fucking machete. I need to hack my way through. The way I parse this is old Sega Master System games. You know I feel like I'm in one. I said that a bit last episode too but I never thought about it. It's just all those games were from Japan and on the Sega in particular they're very unlocalized. They just present you Japan basically. So all the biomes and all the animal types and just the environment is Japan and I never thought about it because it's close enough to North America until you get here and you see this stuff and it's like oh fuck. If you're playing some video game where you're hacking through the fucking jungle with a machete and there's these big scary spiders well hey that's why because that's that's real that's what they really have to deal with. So yeah I mean I got to this part of the mountain but that little exploratory part of my brain is mildly frustrated. It's like what's up there? What's that other mountain? Maybe nothing maybe that's why nobody goes up there but if like I can't know I can't get up there and that's never happened to me before where I've just been I've had times in Vancouver when like I I've taken a different route because a wild fox is in the way and it's like well I'm not going near you I'm not risking that or in Fukuoka I did also turn and go a different way because of a bore you know a big wild bore which is a bit frightening and concerning but this was the first of just spider webs with terrifying big awful evil spiders and I can't get up there however where can I go from here there's Mount Sengandake 2.2 kilometers but I don't see that on again I've got a map but it is just a pre-downloaded map so it doesn't have all the stuff necessarily so if I type in Sengandake nothing comes up so I don't know what that is or where that is then three kilometers is Hamura City Museum okay well there's Hamura yeah I'm really not sure what it's referring to with that stuff so I don't even know where to go to get to these things but then the other way much closer 0.3 kilometers to the Kusabana Ginger Shrine and the Jishoji Temple so that's obviously where I'm going to go so I guess those paths in particular I mean they're super overgrown maybe there really is nothing up there but this one it could be that there's nobody here also because of this intermit and terrain it's definitely been a lot calmer and quieter out and about than general the park where I got the ice cream out of the machine I went into the little washroom there and there's just not a soul around I didn't see anybody bathroom is just empty and that's a nice feeling because you know it's ironic that I like Japan so much because I also like not having people around the two things don't go together often but sometimes they do and it feels cool oh yeah I almost forgot but I just noticed it so another thing that I think is cool there was this one shrine I found in the woods on Aburiyama Mountain that's in Fukuoka that I'm going to try to find again when I get there but I was really impressed with how well maintained it was for just being in the woods because in Canada it would be destroyed and covered in beer cans which even now that I think about it that little container I found at the bottom of this mountain filled with beer cans how nice it's not that people don't want to come into the woods and drink beer they just don't leave all their shit everywhere like they do in Canada but also that shrine had a little straw broom next to it and I don't know I thought that was so nice too because that was another one of those communal things it's like clearly just hey feel free you know if this place needs to be swept up go ahead so I noticed here under this this sort of picnic tabley kind of bench thing there's two two little straw brooms and this area I mean all it's got is a little bit of 45:00 of fallen leaves there's not much to clean up everything is pretty spikenspan but hey while I'm here fuck it I'm gonna sweep up these leaves it's the least I can do then I guess I'll head on to the shrine and the temple this will also be a test of my other favorite topic constantly washrooms you know I wonder a lot of temples do it turns out have washrooms but maybe not here this is pretty dang rustic I can hear a jingle from down at the bottom so Well, that sounds warbly and terrifying. I think I did daytime if that was at night hearing this creepy sounding song coming out of these distant speakers that would be scary as shit. But yeah, that'll be a test. Let's see. Let's see if there's a washroom up here. Possibly not. I mean, if there's ever a place that's not going to have one, it's surely Spider-town where apparently no one ever goes. But all right, let's sweep up and then continue on. Oh, I just realized why that sounds so scary is because it's clearly coming out of two different speakers and then the two are hitting up here. It's slightly different time. So it makes it sound extra crazy. Oh, and there's a little thermometer here attached to this little picnic area. According to the thermometer, it's just below 10 degrees Celsius, which maybe, maybe I got my little jacket on, but it feels like it might be a little warmer than that. Well, am I, though, to argue with Mercury? How do these even work? I have no idea. So many things. That's where people gave the insane clown posse so much shit for magnets. How do they work? But yeah, how the fuck? How does anything work? How does anything work? People just walk around so arrogant. Like, oh, I know how everything works. No, you don't. You're just observing it working. It doesn't mean you know how it works. See, I have no idea how this shit works, but this thing goes to negative 30 and plus 50. Holy fuck. Of the two of those, negative 30 would be the least bad. You'd still die. But I mean, that could be a thing that could happen. You know, that's a terrifying, but I feel like I've probably been damn near there in my life. Plus 50, though, holy fuck. That would be so hot. If we got up to that, that would be serious problems.