#25 Hiking to Kongo Falls in Tokyo

Transcript

Alright, back to the scene of the crime. Some light bird noises that are real. It's something I didn't mention in the subways. I first noticed this in Fukuoka, but they do it in Tokyo as well. They play bird noises, I guess, presumably to calm people down, you know, let people help them chill. Help them chill acts in the subway. You know, I've always got earphones in, ear buds listening to something just to dull the subway noise, so I didn't really notice them. And yeah, then one time I took out the headphones and I was like, what the hell is that? I mean, I guess it's well-meaning, but it seems a bit silly as well. So yesterday, I finished off the day where I saw this highway on the map. It seemed mysteriously nondescript, but it mentioned there were castle ruins there. And I was like, well, I could either just go back to the subway, the way I originally got here, or I could try this weird thing. So I tried this weird thing, and I didn't realize that there's a subtle brown color to certain routes that I think maybe is more subtle because I have my phone on night mode. It's pretty hard to see. And I found out the weird way that that means tunnel. That means this is a tunnel. So I walked through what I didn't realize was going to be a 1,200 meter over a kilometer long terror tunnel. You know, it's just creepy being the only person on foot in there, and the traffic noise was so crazy loud, it was just insane. Rattled my brain. And then I realized that I'd missed this castle ruin because I went right under it. So today, I woke up relatively early, did as well as I could. Let's see what time it is now. 1038. On for anyone who wants to follow along on a map, it's the Ajiro AJIRO castle ruins that I'm referring to in Akiruno, Tokyo. So I'm trying to get to the Congo Falls that I saw yesterday, but by the time I learned of them, I just stumbled upon a sign that said, hey, waterfalls this way. And since it gets dark really early, it's mid-November right now. I just didn't have time. I saw some other guys returning and I was like, yeah, that seems about right. It is time to be returning, not time to be going. It was like past three o'clock at that point. So that's my thing is I think if I can get there by three o'clock at the very latest, I'd like to hopefully get to the waterfall more like two, because I just want to be sure I don't get stuck in the dark. I especially wouldn't proceed forward in the dark. I'm pretty confident that if I was coming back in the dark with lights on the phone and stuff, I did that in Fukuoka before on Mount Abreyama, where it is super dark, but the light from the phone helps a lot. And if you already know where the path goes and there's not a lot of variation or a lot of options, I've walked it at night. It's not the worst. It's just scary. You know. So if that does happen to me, I'm quite confident. I'll be fine, especially now that I've got better GPS on my phone than I had in 2019. But it'll just be scary. I'll ship my pants. And I'd rather not. I want to ship my pants. I'll fucking eat some lukewarm fucking karage from Lawson's. All right, I met my first choice. There's a clear normal path ahead, but there's a very slight, definitely less used path that goes up the mountain. But I think I'm going to try going up, because surely if there's castle ruins and stuff, they're probably up this mountain, right?

You wouldn't build a castle at the bottom. But yeah, my thinking was I could either go to the end, there's getting a lot of spider webs in my face. I could either go to the end of the train line, Musashi Itzukishi, and walk to Kamene Park from there. But if I went to the station before that, Musashi Masako, it's about the same walk to here, into this freaking tunnel. And I had to go across the terror bridge that scared the crap out of me yesterday, but it wasn't nearly as bad. Yesterday, after having my brain rattled from walking through the tunnel, and it was getting really dark, I found that really tall bridge quite scary. Where today, in the sunlight, and I'm all 5:00 better rested and stuff, not nearly as bad. I even took some cool pictures. But I still had to stand away from the railing and kind of lean forward with my phone. I can't stand right next to the railing. It'll freak me out. So yeah, now I'm here, and I noticed yesterday, as I came out of that tunnel, that there was a path above, a path that went over, over top. But it was too dark to go in. So yeah, that's what I'm doing now. Though I've already gone off the path. And whatever semblance of a path, I thought I was following is already gone. Now I'm just walking up the hill.

But I still feel like that's the thing to do. Okay, here's another little path. I'm not even sure if these are human paths or if these are like fox paths. These are not well used paths. But it seems like going to the top would make more sense because that path along the edge is probably utilitarian if you just want to walk from one side to the other. But I'm here to see castle ruins, man. And yeah, theoretically, this won't take too much extra time.

It is on my way to the falls. So I think it'll all work out. The weather is the coldest day yet, but it's only 12 degrees. It's not that bad. But my thermal shirt served me pretty well yesterday, especially out in the open and on those bridges and stuff. Once you get in the woods, I notice this back in Canada as well. It's much, much warmer in the trees. And when you're going up a hill and exerting yourself right now, I'm feeling very warm. But I got my thermal shirt, it's a chance of rain. It's very cloudy. And I got a second thermal shirt tucked into my back pocket just in case. I'm starting to think like I've got this quite heavy winter coat, a winter jacket, I'll call it, that it's, I mean, it is really old. I'm ready to abandon it in the spring if I'm still traveling. I'll just abandon it anyway. So I've really been thinking I should abandon it now because this winter has been so mild. Every day has been over 20 degrees. It's been like a, it's been too hot if anything. It's been ridiculously warm. So it's like, why have I got all these layers?

But as soon as a cold snap hits, it's like, okay, I fear the cold. I love the cold, actually. It's my favorite thing about Canada. I love the shocking cold weather. But you have to be prepared for it. If you're prepared for the cold, it's a lot of fun. And if you're not prepared, it's the worst thing that can ever happen. So I'm already thinking like, how hard is it really to keep an extra layer? I really only, it's only a problem when I'm going between Airbnb's. And then I can just, if I don't use it, I don't use it. I can just sit there. And I think, and this is very hard to tell, Google Maps is not my frontier. What is this called? A Jiro Bentanyama Park, AJI ROB ENT, ENY AMA Park. But I think these castle ruins are kind of on the other side. I think I should just, just, just roam. Not worry too much about where I'm going. Fuck it. If I see a path, follow a path. I was also thinking, I got this cheap flight from here to Fukuoka, $55. It's very nice deal on peach airlines. But, you know, with normal airlines, the weight restriction for your bag is like 50 pounds. For peach airlines, it's 15 pounds. That's such a small, that's absurd. You know, and then it's like $35 more if I have to check my bag. So my plan is, since I have my bags, set up small bags within my big bag, is I'm going to just wear, basically, wear two of my little mini bags on my person and just kind of conceal them under my many layers of coats at the airport. So I think no one will really notice that I'm wearing them. This rain jacket I got, it's XL, which is too big for me. But that's handy in case it's like this. You know, when you got a bunch of layers, you can just put this on top and everything works out okay.

But then I was thinking if I'm wearing that coat, that's also additional pockets. I'm going to fill every pocket with stuff. So theoretically, all that'll be in my main book bag is just my clothes, which will be under 15 pounds. And I can sneak my way on. Because I think what I did last time was like a sneaky, like, you know, when butchers, that thing, put your thumb on the scale. 10:00 They put their thumb on a scale to make something seem heavier than it is. They can put charge more. Now I'm kind of going along the edge of this mountain.

I see some kind of building down there. I wonder what that is. But I'm pretty sure as I put, because you got to put your bag in this thing that shows that it's small enough that it'll fit in the container to show that it's the right size. But that also weighs it. And I'm pretty sure what I did last time is I just kind of held it up a little with my muscles without anyone noticing. So it didn't seem heavy. But that is some wacky on the fucking fly thinking that I don't want to try to repeat. So instead, yeah, I'm just going to fill all my pockets with stuff. I think I'm going to keep my coat for now. Hmm, okay. I think maybe this has been a terrible idea following this little side path because I see a parking lot ahead of me. So I mean, I think this, uh, these rustic, forgotten fucking ruins. And I know. It's just a tourist thing. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? I got to go back to that main path. Follow that path. It's going to take me to this parking lot. Then there's probably a whole fucking little center with drink machines and, uh, fucking washrooms and stuff. Because between here and there is a ravine and a big wall, a rock wall. That ain't happening. So, okay, straight back, straight on back, tried to get fancy, didn't work. Never works in Japan. I've never taken a successful shortcut in Japan. It's impossible. Be it in the city, be it in nature. Don't do it. Just take the direct route.

If you had the other thing that's cool because this is a bit of an extended adventure. This is my farthest adventure outside of civilization. You know, getting to the edge of the Kamine Park local map. And then it's like, okay, you're going into the sort of more regional trail system now. The map expands out. You're really, really hiking now. You can't guarantee there's going to be drink machines and shit. So, because I got my bags within bag system, it's pretty cool. I just emptied out another one of my bags. So, I've got my normal day bag with all my stuff in it that I need for just walking around Tokyo. And then I brought another bag which, uh, I bought a carton of coffee. There's a leader carton, although I just realized if you buy like cartons of, uh, like yogurt, they have a twist on cap. And I just realized now that this carton of coffee I bought does not. Does not have a twist on cap. Once I open this carton, it's open. So, I'm in a way till I get to that main trail system heading out to the waterfall. Then crack this bad boy and just drink the motherfucker. I pretty much just got to drink the whole thing as I go. But there's no, uh, resealing it and putting it away. That was my bad.

They probably had one with a twist on cap. It's not a 7-11. Maybe I could have tried a different store. But I didn't realize. But then I also got, they had a little bag of, uh, assorted sweets. You know, just cookies and fucking biscuits and crap. But then next to it, assorted Japanese sweets. And it's like, god, delightful. Weird little mochi and stuff. That's much better. If I need snack energy later on, I get to try some, some unusual, more Japanese type stuff. Because man, that's one thing, you know, whenever people are peddling things on their, uh, YouTube ads and stuff. The one that I would absolutely get are those little boxes, boxes or whatever that send you little care packages from Japan every month. If I had a standard address and money to burn, that just seems fun. I'm sure it's like a terrible deal, but whatever. They just send you crap from Japan every month.

If I had more money than I knew it to do with and I was just sitting around not changing addresses constantly, that seems delightful. But anyway, that's the plan for today. Off to, uh, an inauspicious start as I try to rewind my immediate mistake. Going back is so much harder than going forward. Obviously, because going forward is just whatever. Just go wherever. Do whatever you want. You'll end up where you end up. Going back, I mean, I just found another little path. But I just walked across a little, like, log bridge thing. It's like, I don't remember that. Here's a huge spider web. Between two trees. I don't see the spider, though.

My new friend, the Joro spider is not here. But I don't remember any of this stuff on the way. 15:00 And this is not the same path. There's another giant spider web between fucking between trees. Man, the spider webs are fucking big. Okay, here's the main path back down to the first path that I bailed out on. Yeah, and there's the street that goes into the tunnel. Okay, good. Many failure one complete.

Alright, this is kind of interesting, so that path I was on went down onto a road that leads to the Tokyo Itzukishi Country Club, which is fucking enormous, but it's sort of leading toward the western edge of it. You know, maybe it's like golfing and stuff, who knows? However, so it's like, okay, that's a pretty major thing, and that's very clear. Literally where I'm going, it was a very beautiful little back road, like really quiet, and just really pretty. And like I said before, this Japan in general, the edges, especially. They remind me of Campabello Island in New Brunswick, where a bunch of my relatives live, which is a very small island. This has that same feel, that island feel, that backwood's island feel. It's just Japan is obviously way fucking bigger. But I was looking at this Country Club, and it's like, okay, so that's a thing, for sure. And there is a distinct road out of it that connects to another highway, that then loops around to Camine Park, so I could, you know, in like an hour, I could walk there, it would be no biggie. However, oh, and there is some hiking paths I'm seeing now. On the maps, I'd probably be fine. But the final stretch is that dreaded brown tunnel. And it's like I would really, really prefer heavily not to walk through another tunnel if I can help it today. And I guess from the looks of it, it does seem like there's a bunch of, there's at least two different hiking paths that seem to go around the tunnel, so I probably would have been fine. But I saw this little overgrown road, like just two tracks going into the woods. And at first I wasn't good, I was going to take my own advice and say like, you know, these fucking shortcuts.

Shortcuts never work. But despite being totally disused and pretty overgrown, it's like clear enough that it's easy to walk on, and it seems to just kind of go. So I'm on that right now. It's bamboo here. It's not a lot of bamboo in Japan. It's kind of rare to see it.

But it's taking me directly toward the supposed castle ruins, but I'm on the other side of the highway of the tunnel. But I guess it doesn't matter, right? It's the point of a tunnel. Like maybe you go over the tunnel. And there is a little, the little hiking symbol, little green man hiking on the map. But he's just sort of floating. There's no path or anything. He's just sort of around where I am. So it's like, all right, I guess we'll see what happens. But there's also an old, one of these like old from 80 years ago kind of houses just sitting out here disused, seems abandoned. And I used to think when I went by those places, like I wonder what it would be like to try to live in one of those places. Because you couldn't do it, say in Canada, it's too cold. But around here, it's tempered enough. It would be chilly.

But I bet you could live in one of these old houses. It would be cool. But I realized from my last Airbnb, it being just a house from like the 1970s, you know, the wooden frame and the sliding doors and everything, that it had a significant number of insects, you know. I saw a couple cockroaches. I saw a couple spiders, different things to get in there. And that made me realize these old abandoned buildings, they must just be insect playgrounds. You wouldn't be living in a house. You know, you would just be living with insects. I don't think I'd be down for that. That would be too much. Too close to the outdoors. Too close to just not having a house at all.

Alright, this road has devolved into a single person path. It's even more overgrown, but it's still going. It's got to go somewhere, just not at all true. I've walked down many paths in my life that just stop. But this one seems to be going. And the other thing I saw, even though this house seems very evidently abandoned, is a little satellite dish over in the corner. So it probably wasn't abandoned too, too long ago. And yeah, I saw that in Tokyo a lot of these old-style houses with satellite dishes. But it seems extra weird when it's in the middle of nowhere and no one's around and it seems like no one has lived here in a while. 20:00 But at some point, they were still rocking that their satellite dish. Get them channels.

Oh, now we're heading uphill. Oh, wunderbar. Oh, and this is getting a lot less distinct.

What are you saying, Mr. GPS?

Well, I'm almost at the underpass. I've almost crossed over the underpass, so just keep going. See what happens.

Oh, what is this now? Did it just stop? I think you may have just caught the moment of me getting stymied in real time. It was just about to take a little pause on the podcast and then jump back in later.

Yeah, that is just, there's no more path. It just stopped very abruptly. This is like in a video game. It's like this is a level of trees in your way that clearly denotes a wall. You cannot go any further. Maybe I missed a turn off, but no, I think I got to go back to the main road and just go to the Tokyo Itzukishi Country Club. I think the same exact thing happened. Don't try to take a shortcut. It never works. Just take the main road. Will I learn that lesson by the end of today? Who knows? I haven't learned it yet, apparently. Jeez, it just stopped. There's just nothing else. God dang.

I've been moving pretty distinctly upward. I was right. The Country Club is in fact a golf course. It's weird. It's like I just passed like a beautiful, gorgeous view where you can see into the distance. But it's the first time I've seen one of those where I had no inclination to take a picture. Because it's just a golfers and golf courses. It's not interesting. I guess I don't have anything against golf per se, but there's something weird about it. It sure does take a lot of space. It's a bit odd.

Man, no matter where I am. It's like, wait, I sure am far away from stuff. Then I hear that ambulance in the distance all the time. Just constantly. I guess there's a lot of people in Japan. There's always somebody in trouble. But yeah, cross from me back in the direction where I came. I think again, this has happened to me so many times that I'm saved from myself on the strip. I think I'm very lucky that that path became rapidly impassable because the peaks of the mountains over toward where I was. They're really fucking really high way up there, man. Really fucking big. Much bigger than his normal around here. Those are some of the bigons and that would be a fucking nightmare and a half to walk up. I'm sure I would have given up anyway. But here's something a bit interesting. So I'm staying on the major road now. It's like, let's not fuck around anymore. This is getting ridiculous. I'm on the major road that goes around the golf course. Oh, I guess that's one thing. On the way to the golf course, just the most beautiful country road. Just so nice. And I didn't see a single other person or a single car. Very, very obscure route. But there were a lot of signs like with a little cartoon crying garbage. You know, crying cans and crying various balls of trash that obviously denote. Please do not dump your garbage here. And then I saw these other signs with big like warning, but they were all text. And I was like, I better just in case. Let me check those. And it's the same thing. It's like, hey, if you know anyone who's dumping, please report them. It's a big fine. Stop dumping garbage. And I guess now that I realize I'm this close to the golf course, maybe that's part of why. Maybe, you know, it's the golf people that are like, how dare you get away. Get away from my environs. But just that there's so many signs seems to denote that it is a problem. And it's just kind of a bummer because it's such a beautiful area. I mean, so is this everything. Everything's got to be beautiful. And I'm always saying how, you know, there's so many things in Japan. There's like, you can just leave a Sabu five story department store for multiple exits with nobody checking your receipt or anything. Just basically the trust system out here in the outskirts. There's those places where you just can you leave your vegetables out. People just pay on the honor system. And it's nice to think that everybody's just following the rules. Definitely in Japan, people follow the rules more so than they do in North America. But stuff like that is evidence that some of them don't. There's still some wrong and some badans. And maybe partially it's because it's so hard to get rid of garbage around here. The Airbnb I'm at now. It's just a nightmare of, here's the kind of trash bag you need for the specific kind of trash. Here's the days that it's picked up. 25:00 I just never leave trash. My last Airbnb, they left me a nice review because I kept the place so clean and didn't even leave garbage and stuff.

Because I just dumped my stuff off at a convenience store. Just constantly ferry out my garbage so there's none around. And other than that, I don't know how to get rid of it. It is a pain. Today I had a noodle cup and a carton of yogurt that I bought yesterday. It said to cram down the carton of yogurt and whatever other wrappers and stuff I had and cram them all in the noodle cup and slightly awkwardly walk to the 7-11 carrying the noodle cup. And then throw it out there. But then I bought a bunch of stuff, got a pair of socks. It's okay that I'm throwing out garbage there because then I buy stuff. I'm not just using them for their garbage. But it is awkward to get rid of stuff around here. Anyway, I'm walking along this road very distinctly or almost at. Jeez, we're pretty much right there. Time for me to be vigilant. I was like, I'm going to follow everything directly. And I could keep walking on this road to a highway through a tunnel, come out by Camine Park. It's not the worst thing. It's not that far, 45 minutes or something.

But there's a hiking path and I'm like, well, that would be much better. And instead of trying to wing it anywhere, it's like, this is the hiking path that is labeled on Google, the little brown trail.

So let's just do that. But this trail, it's pretty long and it leads to the back end, the backside of Camine Park, which theoretically it's like, oh, perfect. That's exactly where I want to go. That'll get me to the beginning of my adventure toward the falls. But I was at that back end of the park. I walked around the whole edge of the park. And the only path that I saw was that one with all the signs that say, this is impossible. Do not take this path. This is not the path for you, my friend.

And it's like, oh, fuck. Was that my future? Was I preparing for my future? Am I, is that the path? Is that the one I have to take now? Although I cannot find the entrance to it. I've locked a little bit past it on Google. So maybe I'm, again, saved for myself. Maybe I just can't do this.

Because that path didn't seem that bad. I was like, this is doable. I could do this. But that was, you know, going 300 meters down the path. And once I got a little dicey coming back and then great success. I did it. But in this case, I'd have to make it the whole way. I have to make it all the way across. There's these, oh, here's my first car going by. What a fancy car, of course. There's these fairly indistinct paths going up into the woods. That has failed me every time today. But this says the path starts right here. Maybe if I just get started. Maybe if I just clamber up here and just see what's going on.

I mean, it's really not that far to the highway and to just do this properly. But whatever, man, fool me twice. Why not fool me the third time? That's how it goes, right? I literally don't need to clamber up this quite steep thing. So I got to put all this shit away. So wish me luck. I'm sure I'll report back next with how I completely failed and just came back to this road. So let's go.

Oh, alright, I'm going to start mainline in that fucking coffee, by which I mean I'm just going to drink the whole liter in little dribs and drabs over a long period of time. Can I be drip? But I see what they mean, I think, about why they say don't come on this path. This is functionally impassable. I did see two of these little obscure scrambly paths up the mountain. I passed the first one and I went up the second one. So the one I went up was worse. The other one wouldn't have been as bad. But I got to the top and I'm on the proper path and it has the little markers with the little pink ribbons. I'm for sure on the path. This is all good now. But that was extremely steep and I was very glad I was going up. Going up is tiring, but it's easy. And even though this was like very steep, there's a lot of different little big trees but then small bushes and all kinds of stuff to hold on to. Not a serious problem, I can say you're the gulfers in the distance too. But it was one of 30:00 those cases whenever I looked back, it's like that's not good. That is really steep. And then it gets crazy steep right at the end and drops you unceremoniously onto the fucking pavement of the highway. You would get very, very heard if you fell down that. So going up it again, I feel like that wasn't too irresponsible, it was like that wasn't too bad. The only problem was halfway up, I realized I'm now dedicated to this. I'm glad that the path is so easy to find up here because it is just a single ridge of the mountain. Once you're up here, you can't miss it. But I was like, I mean, I'm not going to go back down that. Even if I don't see the path, I'm just going to try to forge my way through the woods if I have to because again, the golf course is right there. I got GPS, it'll be fine, but I would not go down that. So I think that's maybe what they mean is like this path, it's not the worst. You know, it's very uncapped and kind of rough. It's that last stretch. Again, the other part that I missed, you know, on your way down, you would be taking the slightly better slope than the one I took, but it still looks very bad. I would not want to go down that at all. So, so I do not recommend this path in the other direction. And why would you be honored in this direction? I'm only here because I was trying to get to some castle ruins that I utterly fucking failed to even find. I was going to Google them and just see what's the story with these, and I just forgot. I'm like, oh, well, whatever, I'll get around to it. And I was just like, oh, well, whatever, I'm sure I'll find them. So I think I will Google them and I get home, but I don't think I'm going to try again. I don't give a shit. I don't even care. Castle ruins are because of Goddamn. It was just something to try to, you know, just like the fun was to get there, like geocaching or whatever. It doesn't matter what you find there. It's just trying to get there. Another big uphill, but yeah, now that I'm on the crest of this mountain, it's really no big deal. It's actually a pretty good path. It's just, yes, like this crazy steep. Well, like I'm looking at the edges of this, and yet both sides of this ridge are very steep and you would never go down them. And that's the problem. When you get to the end of this and the highway cuts across the path, you have no choice. You have to go down. That's really a case of, I've seen places on paths where people tie ropes, you know, like a rope with a bunch of knots in it. So you can use that to go down. This seriously needs one of those. Very, very much, but I guess just like literally nobody uses this path. So it doesn't have one. But yeah, yikes. For real though, I'm on the way to Camine Park. And since I'll be coming in from the back and I'll be right by the sign that leads to the power substation and then the waterfall. And even, even with my Cluso-esque bumbling, it's 11.55. It's not even noon. All good. I'm on schedule. I'm not ahead of schedule, but I'm not behind. Good enough. That is weird. To my left, outer, rugged wilderness. To my right, light trees and a golf course. Classic. Again though, this is kind of like how I was saying, like hiking from Shibuya to Itabashi. It's kind of my favorite kind of hiking. You know, city hiking is underrated because it's still kind of like hiking, if you hike for four or five hours. But you can bail out at any time. This is a step up from that. But it's not exactly some Christopher McCandalist shit. I'm not exactly into the wild here. There's a golf course to my right. And ahead of me is a park where busloads of seniors show up, hang out at the visitor center and buy drinks from the machine. Not that crazy. But it still feels like an adventure. It's still fun. I still climbed up a fucking mountain.

I'm way up right now. I highly recommend this type of fucking around. It's a good time. And it's very low risk. I mean, there's probably still stuff I could have, especially because I'm so near civilization if I had a proper cell phone. I'm sure there's a cell signal here. And you know, you can get better GPS systems that have a little SOS stuff.

All stuff that you should have if you're a real hiker. But this stuff is is really no big deal.

And it's still very, very fun. All right, heading down now. I'm going to break at that coffee. I'll pop the podcast back to life when I get to the substation because there 35:00 was two paths there. There was a path that just kind of continued forward that seemed like probably the more logical path. But there was a side path that went down some really steep steps and had this cool little wooden walkway. And it might go nowhere. It might just lead to the substation. And I might have to turn back once again, but that place was like that was the one yesterday when the sun was going down that I was like, God damn, I want to go down there. I want to see what's there. So today I will go down there and I will see what's there.

All right, I'm not at the substation yet. I was just going to hop on to say this is what a long trail this is. But it's only 1220. It's only been 20 minutes. It's not actually that long. I guess it's just because it's so rough and rugged. It feels long. And I guess I got it in my head. I was halfway somehow. And then I checked the GPS again a few minutes later. And at that point, I was halfway. So I guess I played a trick on myself. But yeah, this thing is pretty rough. And there was one part where instead of being safely on the top of the ridge, it looped sort of around the side of a ridge. And that's the only part where it was like, you know, it was fine. It was still a flat path. It was no big deal. But I did have to kind of be like, okay, don't overthink this because if you did slip for some reason, what if this was the time that a spider fell on the back of your neck and you went, what? If you fell down this thing, you'd be really, really hurt. Yeah. Where, like, I mean, like right where I am now. Like, yeah, if I fell down that side, I'd be hurt. If I fell down that side, I'd be hurt. But it just, I don't know how I would, even if I fell, I'd have to roll 12 feet. And then I'd start really falling. Like, it's just, it's really no big deal. But that one part, I guess that's the thing with these trails. Like, this might explain why there was the, hey, idiot, don't, don't go on this trail sign. Is that it doesn't matter if 99% of the trail is pretty much fine. If the 1% say, you know, like that part on the ridge and the very final descent down to the highway, if those parts are legitimately dangerous, which I would say they are, I guess that is the rating for the whole trail, right? I don't know how these things work or how people delineate these things, but that makes sense to me. The most dangerous part is how dangerous the trail is. So even though this trail is mostly no biggie, and the fact that it's so natural is actually nice. I mean, instead of steps that people made, which is nice in its own way, but like just there, I just walked up routes. Just routes that trees have made some natural steps. So this is one of those things that I'm glad I stumbled into it. This is a neat thing to do. But I won't do it again, and I wouldn't recommend anyone else do it either.

It is a little too dangerous. Although, I mean, I did just pass, there was a building I saw yesterday with a really tall spire kind of, and I was like, I wonder what that building is. I still don't know, but I passed by it. It was right there. But right there, quote-unquote, you know, it was right there down a precipitous drop where I would absolutely break both my arms. So I mean, I'm near civilization, and I'm not. I do feel like this is, there's going to be times in Fukuoka if I do what I did last time, that are going to be a little similar to this, where I may be a little bit slightly ill-advisably off the beaten path. But I think this is actually worse. I do feel like those two parts that I passed were legitimately a bit of a dumb thing to do, and because if I do somehow get hurt out here, I don't have a backup plan. I got nothing. So I'm dumb enough to do these things, but I'm smart enough to recognize when I'm pushing it, you know, and to not do it again.

Nice, the opening just opened up in the trees.

You can see across the city, and there's some kind of building way in the distance. I wonder, I mean, that looks official enough that might have a name or something, like this is where you'd pull out the shika slate in Breath of the Wild. The pura pad and fucking put a little marker on that bad boy, and I wonder if I can find out what that is purely from this, because that's one thing I 40:00 realized with this, which is kind of cool, is that this Pixel 2 I've got, which is 2018, 2019, not the newest, but it is like much better than my other phones. I've learned how good this GPS is, like I'm amazed I even found the entrance to this path, because it literally was just scramble marks on the side of the mountain. It didn't look like a path at that point at all. I would have just walked right by, but this thing is so accurate that I walked past the first entrance, and I only walked an extra 10 feet, but that was enough for my blue dot to be like your past the point you've gone past, and I was, and it's just interesting, I guess I knew that from the city and stuff, like it always told me exactly what corner I was on or whatever. It's not like it was just, here's sort of where you are, but to be kind of out in the middle of nowhere in such an abstract, you know, I'm just looking at a little dotted line on a road, and then in real life, a barely noticeable scramble path up the side of a fucking cliff, and it was all accurate. That's really cool. This phone is amazing. I think I probably mentioned at some point, but how I got this is it said it had shadow on eBay, and I was like, what does shadow mean? I did look it up, and it says it's like there's a burn in, a screen burn in. So this actually wasn't used technically. It was a display model that was just one of those, you know, every time you go into a cell phone store, all the phones that are just displayed there, this was one of them. So it was just set to show a red G on a white background for who knows how many years. So that's what the shadow is, but like with this dark mode map, I cannot see it. Even if I look real close, I can't see it. You can only see it on a white background, and even then it's like a light watermark on, like a piece of parchment, or something. It's like no big deal at all. And I got this phone for $60 Canadian, which is like 40, 45 bucks American. Like really cheap for, you know, brand new retail price, $899,000, blah, blah, blah. 60 bucks, and then 20 bucks shipping. And it is so fucking good. The only thing that's bad about it is it's terrible for audio, just terrible. It doesn't have a headphone jack. You gotta buy a weird adapter that makes the audio all crinkly. I suppose you're supposed to use Bluetooth. But other than that, I just use my other crappy cell phone for music and MP3s. For everything else, it is remarkable. What an excellent device. Okay, so north from here, Comine Undo Park. And no, I'm afraid not. There's some things that it maybe is, but it's very hard for me to judge distances. And a lot of the stuff on this map is just in Japanese.

It's just a really, it looks like it's hard to tell from here, but it kind of looks like an observatory. And it's all by itself up in the mountains. I wonder what you are. Yeah, it's weird from this vantage point. Like I can't tell, is it on this side of the Aki River or the other side? Don't know. Probably the other side, but I think that's a mystery that will remain unsolves because I don't even think you could get up there. Any, there's no obvious path up there. And it's probably a lot fucking further than it seems. Yeah, I was thinking though, because this path keeps going up and down, up and down, same as the ones in Fukuoka do. I guess all mountains do this. You know, we just don't have mountain ranges like this where I'm from in Canada. And even in, I guess there's sort of stuff like this in BC. There are. I guess there, there are mountains in BC. I guess I haven't really explored because of mountain bikers. There's these people on YouTube, dangerous Dave and stuff. They just ride mountain bikes down these mountain paths in British Columbia. And it's some fucking amazing shit. Just like they make these cool bike paths and just go down an actual fucking mountain. It's very cool. But I don't know where all those places are because they have to drive cars to get there. But yeah, the way it just up and down, up and down, the ridges as you walk across the whole ridge, it kind of just made me think of like the ancient days, you know, like when these were the routes between cities. And this is what you would do. Just gotta hike two or three days, get to the next city.

I mean, I do think that is what I would do. I don't think I would be, well, just stay home and I'll make bread or something. I'd rather be the guy that hikes through the mountains back and forth. Hopefully bringing messages and not supplies. But as I have these idle 45:00 fucking fantasies, oh, the ancient days where, you know, my feet would just be bound up in weird wrappings and I would have all manner of problems and stresses that I can't even imagine in this modern age. Whereas I have little signpost markers that keep popping up. Here's a new one. I'm still on the right path. And I was just thinking how this carton, this leader of fucking milk coffee that I bought, the lady at the 7-Eleven gave me a long bendy straw. So I only had to open the top of the spout a little bit and then put in the long bendy straw. So I don't have to worry about anything falling in my coffee. I don't have to tip it back to drink it down. I can just sip, sip, sip, sip on my bendy straw as I go. And I was thinking like, ah, what a nice lady. I never would have thought of that. I'm so glad you gave me this bendy straw. I have the easiest life, like by so many orders of magnitude compared to anyone in history ever. As recently as like 30 years ago and then going back to the beginning of the human species, everyone has had it just unbelievable magnitudes, leagues harder than me. Literally millions of times harder than me. Sip sip. It's just like, man, man. I'm just in the right place in history. I don't know, man, I'm just lucky. The apocalypse hasn't happened yet. This is the peak. So making the most of it, you know, got my leader of coffee and my sippy straw and I'm fucking hiking on the ridge. I do think it's kind of like I do get a little tired of people that try to pull the woe is me card in the 21st century. It's like, yes, I am very lucky. Yes, it's nice that my family has money and I inherited some of it. I'm not saying that's not nice, but everybody has it. So fucking easy. It's just out of control. I feel like people are either wired to complain or not to complain because that doesn't matter how good it is. Some people go and complain. They want that complaint equity. They want me to recognize how tough they got it. Well, I ain't going to bitch. You don't have it hard. Your life is easy. Fuck you. Just my life's even easier. I'm not here to make friends. I'm on the mountain by myself. Oh, man, there's a... What the hell is that? It's even higher up on the mountains. It's way up. I thought it was a power station. Yeah, maybe it is because I'm right by one right now on this mountain as well. Yeah, I guess they have power lines way up on the mountains. Cool. All right, this path is a little less obvious. I think I have to go down here through these trees, but I've also noticed people have painted signs on the trees. So you can't get too lost. They'll always let you know pretty quickly. Jesus, that's really rough. They'll let you know pretty quickly where you're going. Oh, wait a second. Oh, phone to the rescue. Because the other thing that's nice about this phone, the little vision cone that says which way you're pointing doesn't always work. Sometimes it just gets flipped around. Sometimes it's backwards and stuff. But today it is dead on. Oh, Jesus, I'm almost there. Okay, so I do have to go this way, pointing me the right way. But this is the most indistinct path yet, but this must be it. Here's how tough my troubles are. How do I grip on this stuff when I need to hold both my recorder for my podcast and my leader of coffee, which is only three quarters still there. I'm getting low on coffee. Yeah, okay, this is okay. It's just that I got to go under a branch. This is definitely fucking sus. But the path continues under this branch. What the fuck? Now there's a big branch in the way. Okay, around. So yeah, that's yet another alternate title for this podcast. Spoiled boys podcast. I'm Mr. Spoiled Boy. This is my spoiled boys vacation. I'm Mr. Spoiled Boy. I'm on my vacation. I'm so spoiled. I walk around on my vacation. If 50:00 you don't like that, surely you would have stopped listening by now. All right, back on the path, almost at Camino Park. Sally Vorth, coffee time. Okay, this is a bit interesting. I say, as though willing it to be true, but interesting to me. So right after the last thing I recorded, I got to the rickety bridge. I saw yesterday that looked like it would collapse. So I'm like, oh, sweet. It's weird to be on this obscure mountain ridge path and then to recognize something. Like, yeah, we go back in the old hood. And I did not walk across that thing because it looks like death. I just walked, because you know, it's just across a dry little mini riverbed valley thing. I just walked across it. But I just walked through it. So then I was back in the park. Still had to go up some, not the main nightmare steps, but the mini nightmare steps. I hadn't even noticed that I walked down them yesterday, but I sure noticed walking up them today. And then I was at the main intersection at the corner of the park, the highest peak of Camino Park. I walked to the big sub station that I was at the other day and went down the very steep stairs. And all of a sudden it was at a paved road. And now I'm just walking down this nice little paved avenue with these nice trees that are definitely turning. Now that we've had this little cold snap, the trees are turning color for sure. They're yellow. And it's like, oh, kind of back in civilization.