#35 How an idiot mountain hikes in Japan

Transcript

Alright, it's my first proper day back in Fukuoka, because I got in yesterday after the sun was already down. And this is like a fucking enormous magic trick. Like one of those huge ones back in the day where it would be like, David Copperfield's going to make this statue a liberty disappear like some ridiculously huge thing. Because I was walking around last night in the pitch blackness, and you know, it was just pitch black, and I had no sense of how close I was to the mountain to the Aburiyama Mountains. Are they all called Aburiyama? I don't know. I'm going to have to learn, I guess. That's what they're called over by Umabiyashi Station. But there's no lights on those mountains like in Vancouver, even if you showed up at night, you wouldn't have a great sense of the mountains despite how huge they are. But you'd see some lights up there. There's at least like ski lodges and some stuff. You see twinkly lights up in this guy, and it's kind of cool. Not here. Here there's nothing, which is why I got to be a little mindful when I go up there, that I'm not up there when it gets dark, because it's going to be the darkest thing that ever existed.

The episode just started, but already a time jump. I just found a second hand store called Second Street. That's very much like hard off, but playing really cool music instead of the horrifying hard off jingle. It was playing music that I'd describe as a light jimeraquai, which might sound like redundant, but hey, jimeraquai, man, jimeraquai could rock when they need to rock. But in there, I was looking at Bluetooth headphones because I got these cool wireless headphones in Akiruno, that I figured it'd keep my eyes peeled if I saw any more, just as backups, because these things were like $20 and they're awesome. And they're Sony. Sony is nice because you can always trust. You can count on Sony. There's no such thing as bad Sony headphones. You can get the cheapest ones you can find, and they'll be good, even if they cost like $12. They're fine. So they had a bunch of Bluetooth headphones that were much more expensive. Specifically, I want these ones that have a wire, so the two sides are wired together, because I only just recently learned that those exist and they're super cool.

So they have more expensive ones if I really needed a new pair. I'd do a little research, you know. I don't know, just had such bad experiences with headphones when you buy weird brands. You can spend a ton of money on headphones. It sounds like shit. So I'm only going to buy unnecessary backup copies if they're Sony. But within all the stuff that was like 60 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever, there was a pair that was 300 yen. It's like $3. And I used my little Google translate, like, does this say broken? Does this say for parts only? Like 300 yen. What the heck? So I'm curious to try them out because even if they sound like shit, if they work at all, like that's fine. I just don't understand why they're so fantastically cheap. So I'll experiment with that later. Sorry though, she's immediately got distracted already before I had a chance to say anything. But yeah, what I was saying is the magic trick. I was walking all around yesterday and everything was very dark out. So today, I leave the house and I turn the corner and it's this like incline that goes up and turns the corner that I walked both ways along it yesterday. And all I saw in the backdrop was just the darkness of night because Japan and the late fall, when it gets dark, it is fucking dark. It is just complete utter darkness. So I turn the corner and boom, the mountains are they're bigger than I remember. I think they must be bigger over on this end than they are by Umabiyashi station. Because by Umabiyashi, I go hike up them. In fact, that's what I'm going to go do today. This doesn't look like something you could hike up. This looks insane. I'm looking at them right now. This is like Skyrim, like you're at the edge of the map. This means you cannot proceed. Even the big mountains by Itzukashi station, way at the edge of Akiruno, even the really big mountains there. These are a bit bigger. They're so big. And it's just like holy fuck, that's so crazy that that was there yesterday. That's been there the whole time. That's everywhere. When you're at this end of town by the mountains in the south, the southern part of Fukuoka, you can't not see the mountains. They're fucking everywhere. It's just like whoa, like that was hidden there all night last night. It's just such a cool feeling. It's so weird. And then as I was walking along, I inadvertently 5:00 passed one of the things I passed last night, which was a really cool children's playground that was like a castle. Whereas like, oh, that thing looks fun. I want to climb on that. And I took a picture of it, put it on Instagram. It was a good thing. Rules. So today I saw it again and behind it, yet again, secret hidden information. A gigantic super beautiful mountain. Just just sitting there, taking up the entire horizon. That's fucking awesome. That's so cool. See, I am closer to the mountains than I thought I was. But I don't know how to approach them from here. I've only gone up by Umebiyashi Station or a little east of there where the Aburiyama-Katai observation deck is. It's a ludicrous 22 degrees out, which is so stupid warm. And tomorrow, it's also supposed to be 20 degrees. Then after this, it's supposed to drop way down to like 12 degrees, 14 degrees, which sounds like a big drop, but that's still very nice weather. You know, and that would probably be better. Because I have a lot of memories of hiking up this mountain in 2019 in the summer, where I am not a takeoff my shirt kind of guy. But it was so hot and so humid and I was hiking up a hill. That a lot of times, yeah, it's like I got to take off the shirt or I'm going to die. So it'll actually probably be good once the weather cuts a little. Just to avoid that fate. Nobody needs to see this skeleton walking around. These fucking xylophone ribs.

So I'm almost to to my goal, my Umebiyashi Station goal. And yeah, these mountains are much bigger than I remembered. Like they're just huge and it's like these are them. I think partially maybe in my mind, I reduced how big I thought they were because I hiked up these things all the time.

When I visited Fukuoka in 2019, my Airbnb was right by Umebiyashi Station and I found this cool little path up into these woods. So now I'm kind of forcing it. Now I've got to walk for an hour. So to get to this starting point, because I'm also not near a train line.

But yeah, for the three weeks I was here, I mean, I went up them every second day probably. You know, just like a ton. So I'm looking at this mountain and I'm like, that's the, I did that every with every day or two. What the fuck? But now that I think about it, there are intense stairs at the start. And there are parts on the mountain where there are houses that go all the way up to like halfway up. So now that I recall better, the first step is to go up these insane stairs. The biggest stairs I've ever been up in my whole life. And that gets you to basically the top of the highest neighborhood, the neighborhood that most encroaches on the mountain and then a little higher up than that. And then from there is the beginning of the mountain path. So I think that sort of explains it. These mountains are pretty fucking big. But I'm technically kind of starting halfway up. It's going to be weird to them getting close. Going up those stairs again after four years. Those stairs. They're just harsh. They're so brutal. Yeah, this is kind of interesting is that there's unfortunately this hour-long walk I've got to take. There's not a very quiet way to do it because there's like a giant overpass, like a big overhead highway that travels along beside the mountain. And that was always very handy to me back in the day because if I saw the overpass, I'd be like, oh, cool. I can just follow the overpass and I'll get back to my Airbnb at the time. But now to make my way across town, I don't have a ton of options besides following the overpass. You know, everything else is a twisty dead end neighborhood that I can't really cut through. So it's not the greatest walk in the world. I got to walk along the super highway. But then I hit a point where it's like, oh, here we go. I recognize this stuff. This was all what I would do before since my loop would start at Umabayashi. And I would go up usually to the Apariyama Kitai observation deck. Then back down the observation deck and then this would be my route back home. Now it's my route to get to the start. So forcing this nostalgia run of getting to Umabayashi is, I mean, it is. I do have to force it. It's a little, it's not just like 10:00 outside of my front door like it used to be. But this isn't too far away and I'm here for about a week and a half. But then my next Airbnb is like an additional hour further away. So it'd be a two hour walk to do this. So at that point, I think, I think this first Airbnb, this is where I'll get in my nostalgia. And then next Airbnb, I mean, the mountain range just goes on and on and on and on. So I'm sure there's plenty of other ways to approach the mountain that I may even start to explore before then. But at that point, for sure. And yeah, they weren't kidding about this 22 degrees shit. The longer I walk, the hotter it gets. It's like, oh, fuck, this is absolutely. I'm just right back there, except that there's still fall colors on the leaves. I guess that's a little different. But this feels about as close to a time warp as I can get. All right, so I'm going to go to do the whole thing. Do it properly today. I'm going to go to Umabayashi. I'm going to walk past my old Airbnb. I'm going to go to the 7-Eleven that I always went to that was really close. That's where I'm going to gear up to head up this mountain. And then I'll hop back in because it's obviously a lot quieter once you're on a mountain trail. Though the trade-in is hearing me huff and puff. And yeah, this is pretty cool, dude.

Holy shit, balls. So I'm walking right by my old Airbnb. It's very distinctive. It's this yellow building. And it's right in front of a big slope that goes down into a field, like a rice field. And across from it is a greenhouse. So there's a, there's really nothing in the way from here and the mountains besides the greenhouse, which is pretty. And yeah, just seeing this again, I can really understand why I was so obsessed with this mountain. It's so fucking beautiful. I just tried taking a picture. It just doesn't work. It doesn't, doesn't come across properly. Yeah, that's where this is like, there's a bunch of ways to approach specifically this observation deck. If you look it up on Google Maps and stuff to tell you, like, oh, here's the bus you can take and the paved pass that goes up to the the observation deck. But it's all like tough to get to. This one is amazing because I just walked like I can see that big super overpass mega highway right behind me. But I'm just far enough that you really can't hear it. But it is just right there. Umabayashi station, which is U-M-E-B-A-Y-A-S-H-I. Just an obscure, weird little station nobody uses. I almost walked right by it. I'm like, oh yeah, here it is. Like you really kind of got to be looking. But from there, it's such a quick little walk. And there's like a little bit of a neighborhood. There's this the aforementioned greenhouse. There's a 7-11 right behind here. So that's also perfect. Between here and the mountain is a 7-11 and that's all you need to fuel up.

And there is a path here that it is hard to find. It took me several days to figure out how to approach this mountain. But once you do, you get on to a path. It's not hard to follow. That also takes you to the uh observation deck. And it's one of my proudest achievements in Japan is that I discovered this thing. And I added my way to get to the mountain onto the Google Maps entry. And I made a little YouTube video that is that's the only video I took in 2019. I didn't have a gimbal or anything. So it's just it's awful. It's such a terrible looking video because everything's all shaky and stuff. But it's called How to Hike to the Aburiyama Kitai Observation Deck. If you're curious. And yeah, it's like such a, it's just it's peak Japan. It's perfect. It's there's a subway station. You can just take a subway ride right here from downtown. You get to walk through an neighborhood that's still very pretty. Yeah, I can see this time of year. These uh, I think they're raised patties, but they're dry. These things were shockingly loud in the summer where they're filled with frogs and the between the frogs and the cicadas. It was like shit they're allowed. Right now it's dry though. And then yes, 7-Eleven and then a walk up into a beautiful mountain. It's it's fucking like it's everything. It's everything that I fucking want in my life right here.

Yeah, this is cool because there's not a ton of mountain stuff obviously in Tokyo. And even once I got to the outskirts that stuff was cool in Akiruno. But it's not as immediate and as accessible as it is here in Fukuoka. Like these like I was saying, I can see from here the neighborhood 15:00 goes halfway up the mountain. I just like spills. It looks like the buildings are spilling up the mountain. And then it just hits a point where it's finally like, okay, this is a mountain now. We got to stop. But yeah, just this perfectly beautiful verdant mountain that is just covered in trees and just and it just goes on and on and it goes all the way west and all the way east and it's just like fucking beautiful.

Like, I don't know how, you know, I've said before, how I'm not trying to move to Japan. I don't really want to live in Japan at all the bureaucracy and trying to culturally assimilate. I'm not interested in all that stuff. But if I was an old man, because I met some old people on this mountain hiking, and it's such a good way to keep yourself motivated, get a dog, go hiking every day. And like, I can't, I've never seen a situation in the world better than this where you just leave your house and can just go hiking immediately. But you still have all the conveniences of a city right here. And even though this specific neighborhood is like nothing, there's no coffee shops, there's no malls, there's nothing. But the subway is right there if you want any of that stuff. I mean, in this specific building is so perfect, where I was on the second floor, in this perfect view of the mountains, and it was this really cool apartment. And that's what I would want to do when I'm old. I mean, it's all just, I don't know how I would ever range any of this stuff. I'd have to be, if I was a millionaire somehow. Though even if you're a millionaire, PewDiePie, the YouTuber, he tried to move to Japan during COVID times, or like he was headed in motion, and then COVID happened. And apparently, I took extra years, many years, these here now. But even with millions, it's a huge bureaucratic to do. It's not easy to do. But I just feel like this would be my perfect retirement. I want to live in that building. And I want to hike this mountain just to keep me from the grave, just to keep me, you know, every day. I got to, it's like that motivation. I got to stay fit to some degree to be able to hike up a mountain.

I think that would be awesome. And we're speaking of, what time is it? Once we get up on the mountain, I'm in a Yammer a bit about my Airbnb experiences so far. This six tatami, cool little room, I mean. Almost three o'clock. Yeah, I was up really late last night, and then I didn't wake up till noon. So it's like, fuck it, I'm going to go. But today, it's nice because I'm not exploring this mountain so much. I did that in 2019. I'm sure I got some more explorations in me. But today, I got a preset path. I know where to go. So I know this is safe even though I've only got two hours of sun. That's okay. I got a route I can take to reacquaint myself with this mountain that guaranteed very easy. Can't get lost. Well, definitely get me up and then back down before it's dark. And I just was spotting as I walked by. Because this was a weird case where the Airbnb listing isn't deactivated.

And in fact, they updated the description to say, you know, definitely some post-COVID stuff of like air filters and stuff. Don't worry about COVID.

But it was one of those cases where it wasn't showing up on any maps. I could only see it because I'd been there before. And there were no bookings for years, you know, just everything was quote unquote open. But nobody had reviewed the things since like 2020. It was a very confusing listing because at least the other ones, if I spied enough, I could figure out, okay, it says here it's deactivated or whatever. So I considered sending them a message because I like this place so much and just being like, just what is going on? This isn't, this is not an Airbnb anymore, right? It's just a normal apartment. But it was just, it was clear that it was. No reviews for years. It's not active right now. But I noticed all the Airbnb's I've stayed at. They've got a distinct big sticker on the door that says it's like a, you know, like a hotel type lodging rental type lodging. And none of the doors on this building have that. So yeah, I got to presume it's just a normal apartment now. You lucky fucking prick whoever lives there.

Man, this is so cool too. I forgot about this. This is on a different building across the street, but it says home Umabayashi base. It's like, yep, you sure are, dude. Even when I can't stay here, I will walk across town just to come back here. This is my spiritual base.

I guess quite a bit of this podcast has been me sort of trying to determine like, what's my favorite neighborhood in Japan? And it's so tough because they're all so good in different ways, but maybe I'm just tired, maybe I mean I am tired. Maybe it's because I'm a little overexhausted.

But I'm feeling a little tightness in my throat.

I think this has got to be my favorite. This feels very good to be back to.

Man, so the mountains were a lot bigger than I remembered, but those stairs I'm glad to say are smaller than I remembered. It really wasn't that bad. Compared to that park in Western Tokyo, whose name I don't recall at this very moment, those steps were Kameena Park, I think. Those steps were such a fucking nightmare. They were twice as bad as this, three times as bad. This isn't that bad anymore. I think I've recalibrated my idea of what difficult stairs are. And since it's a sparser foliage up here, obviously you can hear that siren, but I can hear construction somewhere, I can hear that highway a bit. It's really interesting how once you get above the city, you can hear everything. Like I couldn't really hear the highway when I was down on the ground because there's barriers and stuff set up and buildings in the way. Up here you can hear everything. And since I can see through the branches here at the top of these steps, before I get under the mountain proper, I can see the big stadium, whatever it is, the dome thing in Fukuoka. And then over next to it, it's like, oh yeah, there's Fukuoka Tower. Because that's another walk I'm going to take, head to the tower. I don't remember that walk being so, so bad. And yeah, there it is. It's right there, although, as usual, it's a terrible way to gauge a tower.

Okay, into the mountain proper. It's 7-Eleven, I got a salted grilled mackerel on a giri.

Super delicious.

And speaking of Western Tokyo, when I was out that way, trying to get to Congo Falls. One of the things I did was I bought this like, leader of coffee, of milk coffee, with a straw in the carton. And I got water too. Gotta have water, you know, don't be insane. But I was really surprised how great fucking, having a leader of coffee was just to sip on while you hike.

Gives you that sugar energy, that coffee energy. You used to always buy just like, crunky or like, weird little candy's eat. Half way up the mountain. But I think for my sugar energy of choice, this carton of milk is so good.

Just gotta keep all my garbage with me, of course. It would be a crime to litter in this mountain. So, especially where this path first starts, it's so rough. It's just like, you and into the rock, it feels more like a place where water just eroded something more than a proper path.

But yeah, basically on the ridge of the mountain, if I look down to one side, it's pretty steep.

And then coming up on the right pretty soon, there should be an opening in the trees, where you can see all across the city, or at least the western half of the city.

And how I was saying that my Airbnb is this very distinctive two-story yellow building with no obstructions in front of it. So yeah, I was looking down at the city from up here, and then I spotted the Airbnb, and it's like, so cool. It's such a cool feeling, because I was down at the Airbnb, staring up at the mountain, and then I finally made it up the mountain. And I was staring back.

You know, I think this is a good sign too, like with not finding those stairs so difficult.

It was pretty pleased that I seemed to be in pretty good shape.

I was a little concerned, because when I was here before, I mean, it was only four years ago, but I didn't have a knee brace.

I didn't have to wear fucking weird toast splints to keep bunions from forming.

But I guess I've been hiking around quite a bit, like not only, oh hey! Now I'm not scared to use spider. What are these spiders called? Jorah spiders? Yeah, there's one of these spiders with the yellow and black and green and red. It's all the colors.

The one that was freaking me out, so bad on Spider Mountain.

But there's not as many spiders up here. And now I know the only dangerous spider is the black widow, which is only one of 50,000 varieties of spiders, so I'll probably be all right.

But yeah, not only was I doing literal hiking in Western Tokyo, but just that I've been hiking in general. Oh, my Airbnb is four hours across Tokyo? Sure! Let me just load up my heavy book bag and maybe not carry it the whole way, but even with the little wheelie shit, it's surprisingly strenuous to wheel a heavy bag behind you for four hours. I think I'm just in pretty good shape. I'm feeling pretty good about it. Even just now, I mean, I'm just walking up this and this is a steep ass fucking part at the start before it starts to level out. And I'm successfully podcasting. I'm not just like Huffin and Puffin. I just walked up those stairs. Fuck yeah, dog. That's another big advantage to coming to Japan. I like doing exercise, but I don't want to just do stale exercise. I've never had the gumption to like sign up to a gym. That seems very uncomfortable to me just to get in your gym clothes and go to the gym and other people are around doing gym stuff.

You may have gathered. I've kind of preferred not to have a bunch of people around. And stuff like yoga, I know would be good for me. But I find it mentally taxing. It's hard to just stop like that. It's like the meditation of exercises. It's very unexpectedly difficult to do. My favorite is practical exercise with a goal and the goal in this case is just to explore. And it's just hard to do in Canada. Canada is too big. Not necessarily well set up for not owning a car. Mountains are not easily accessible. And it's just not that interesting to me. Again, it's like it's too much hiking. It's like you got to be a hiker. You got to buy all the hiking stuff and you got to drive out somewhere and go hike. In Japan, you can just hike. It's just accessible. It's just easy. It's just here. Ah, yeah, here we go. Here's the break in the trees. There's my old Airbnb.

Where's the 7-11? Let's see. So if there's the greenhouse. Okay, there's the 7-11.

And then you just stretch it off into the distance. These endless mountains again. This is fucking awesome. This reminds me too. I forgot about this. I don't know if I'll get around to it this time either. But there's just this like mound. A bit just on the left side of where I'm looking. I guess there's kind of two of them, but there's one major one. Well, I guess there's kind of that one too. I guess they kind of pop up all over. These little mounds of trees. Like I guess because it's like the foot of the mountain. So there's just parts where the mountains bubble back up. But there's one part. There's like apartment buildings. One, two, three, four, five. It's hard to see from here, but I think there are five floors high. So this mountain is a bit higher than that. It's like the equivalent of seven or eight stories. And it's just sitting there, boom, right in the middle of all the buildings. And it's just covered in trees. And I don't know if it is accessible. Is there a path that you can go up in there? I mean, I bet there's a shrine or something. But when I was walking around on foot, I feel like I walked all around that neighborhood. But it's just so much harder to navigate from the ground because you can't... I just never noticed it. I never saw it. But then I would come up here and I always see it. And I'm like, what the fuck is that thing?

I bet it's a lot harder to get to than it seems. This is one of the things I love so much about that Zelda game Breath of the Wild. Like this is where you would just place the little marker. Bung! So much of that game was to get to the high ground and look around. And that's how you determined where to go next. So much more organic and nice than that. You know, I don't like video games that hold your hand too much. Where it's just like, go here next, please. Follow the blinking arrow. Follow the dot on the mini-map. Like even when I played Breath of the Wild. I played it after the Master Mode came out. So I played on Master Mode with the HUD. The Pro HUD. And I did that with Two's of the Kingdom 2. There is no Master Mode, but the Pro HUD. Because I love using what's on screen to figure out where you are and how to navigate. And it's surprising how few games really let you do that kind of orient here. And then obviously in real life, real life moves at a much slower pace than a video game. But that's still what I like. I still like this stuff. Here's another opening. 30:00 I don't remember this one.

Yeah, if I was staying in this neighborhood at that Airbnb, I would go try to figure out how to get to that tree mound for sure. As it is, you know. It's a little out of the way for just a weird pointless thing to do. And with my limited sunlight this time of year.

But yeah, I think the best thing with this particular mountain. Just depending on how invested you are in this podcast project. If you want to do a little extra credit work. Is I'll obviously describe it as I'm as I'm attacking the mountain in the coming days from various paths and trying to redo my old routes and trying to find new routes and whatever.

But I actually did a whole podcast about hiking up this mountain. It was kind of what showed me that this could be an interesting idea to do a travel podcast.

Because during COVID, I have this other podcast called XO. Keith McNally's XO, I had to put my name in it because X and O is not only a common name, it's just too hard to search.

But it's just a podcast where I just tell stories about stuff that I don't update very often. Pretty, pretty rarely.

But one of the things I did during COVID, because my mind wandered so often to this neighborhood and this mountain and walking on these trails, is I did a podcast just describing getting an Airbnb in this neighborhood, seeing the mountains in the distance. All the attempts I did trying to figure out how to get started on the mountain, because you do need to be on the ridge as I am now. Another spider, and I'm so glad I looked these things up. I know that they're not scary. In fact, the things said, they're more scared of you, you know? These spiders traditionally do not like people. But yeah, then I described the different paths I found while I was up here, because there was a bunch of different adventures I went on. First, I found this one obvious path, and then this less obvious path to a cool shrine. And then I just got lost as fuck, but that ended up being cool, and then finally I found, I knew, I knew on Google Maps, I saw this supposed observation deck. It was surprising how hard it was to find, but that I found that. So if you're interested, the podcast episode is called introverts holiday Fukuoka. So if you search introverts holiday Fukuoka on any podcast service, or I think it's on YouTube as well, it'll come up, and it's, yeah, just me rambling about this mountain. So I mean, it could be a good primer, just so you'll know a little more what I'm talking about with this mountain, I know it's various routes and paths. And yeah, my initial plan is just to do the same runs that I did before, because even though it took me three weeks last time in many trial and error things, it really boils down to about four different paths that I found. So it won't take too long to do them all again. And then I'll try new stuff and explore some more and see what else there is. I feel like you could explore this mountain for fucking ever, it just goes on and on forever. I like this one particular part, because it was right by my Airbnb. But now that I'm a little further away, there's probably plenty of other cool stuff to be found. Oh man, now this part I'm on now. It is kind of turned into sort of a normal path for a bit, but this part looks like Castle Grace Gull or something. It looks like a kids toy with like a plastic gulch that you would like roll a boulder down to smack into your the bad guy or something. Yeah, and there's definitely an additional beyond people walking. There's like an extra groove in the middle that was obviously from water. Yeah, it's getting steep. I think I will take a little break until things flatten out a bit later on. But yeah, the other podcast, Introverts Holiday Fukuoka, because that was also an initial possible name for this podcast. It was Introverts Holiday. But then it's just like, I don't know, people searching for Introverts stuff would find it. And I mean, hey, maybe they would find this. Maybe this would be up there, Ali. But I don't 35:00 actually know anything psychologically or socially about being an Introvert. I don't really know and I don't care that much. So I just didn't want it to sound like, oh, this is going to be a podcast from some Introvert expert. I'm just going to tell you all about Introvert stuff.

I figured I could just let the proof be in the pudding on that shit. All right, let's take a little break until it stops being straight up.

Oh, this is weird too, where I... Yeah, I had that going back to the old Airbnb seeing the old green house and the old 7-Eleven and everything. It was that moment of like, whoa, again, stepping into your memories or whatever.

It doesn't feel the same here where this is great, but it's just like, you can't get... you can't get modeling, you can't get sentimental about something when you're hiking up a mountain. That shit gets eradicated. It's like, you got other things to think about right now, buddy. You're sweating your dick off and you're halfway up a mountain.

You can think about the beauty of the moment later. I hope you don't have time for that right now.

This thing is maybe even a little steeper than I remembered. And it's weird because you don't feel like you're on the ridge of a mountain most of the time because there's foliage, you know, greenery trees all around you. But every once in a while you can peek through and I think I can see through just better in general since it's late November when I was here before. It was like June or July or some shit.

And I'm looking down, looking down at the city down there and it's like, oh yeah, this checks out. This is exactly how high those mountains are, you know. When you look at them from down there, it's like, whoa, look how high that is, but now that I'm up here and I'm looking down, I'm like, yeah, I feel like I'm exactly that high. All these little buildings are very fucking tiny. I can't see any cars from here. I can hear some in the deep distance, but I don't see any moving because it's just fun to watch cars move around. Yeah, this is at the point that it's like reminiscent of when you're taking off in an airplane. Let's have a small everything looks. It's like Mr. Roger's neighborhood down there. And it's sweet because I'm, I would describe myself as very scared of heights. One time I was at the Skydome, the Roger Center in Toronto. Somebody had free tickets to a football game and I don't care about sports, I only like pro wrestling. But I was like, I mean, if you really need someone to go and they're free, look, I don't go. But they were really close to the edge, not right at the edge of the upper balcony part. I was like a seed or two behind, but I was terrified. I had to leave halfway through the game because it's just like, I'm so fucking high up. Again, what if someone grabbed me by the ankles and tipped me over? I would die. Unlikely scenario, but once it grips your mind.

But luckily, it's only sheer drops that I don't like. There is one part up on this mountain that does feel that way where there's like a big boulder that juts out over a huge cliff. And there's all these signs that say like, hey, no, it's beautiful, but don't. Do not climb out here for a picture because if you fall, you will absolutely die. That part's scary. I don't like that part. But other than that, this is very similar to those mountains in Western Tokyo. Where it's steep, you know, I would get hurt. But if I fell down this thing, it just doesn't trigger my danger feeling it all because it's a very wide path. There's no way. I could stumble all over the place. I could be drunk and I wouldn't fall down. It's fine. And even if I did, there's all kinds of trees and stuff and bushes and branches. A lot of stuff that would break my fall. And I'm sure I would break bones. You know, I might get a concussion, but I just would definitely not die.

So I can be this high up and not be scared. It's the best of both worlds I get to experience being high up and it's not scary. And thankfully, as again, who can predict a person's brains, you know? There's people that have phobias of pickles and shit. You never know. Really, I think fear of heights, if I'm gonna have a phobia, it's a pretty good one to have because it makes some kind of sense. But luckily, it doesn't trigger on airplanes.

An airplane just goes too high up and it gets too abstract. I might have ranted about this already on this podcast, but I feel very lucky about that because if I had to force myself to fly, 40:00 if I had to get up my gumption just to get in an airplane, that would be, I make a lot of things a lot harder in life. So I'd say mostly, my fear of heights is quite harmless. It doesn't affect my life too much. But tall buildings don't like it. Going up in towers, not gonna do it. Across bridges, unpleasant. I'll walk across the tall bridge if I have to, but I don't like it and suspension bridges. Oh, I can't imagine ever doing that again.

But yeah, this, again, best of all worlds, dude. It's no problem.

So this is kind of nice. These signs have been passing all these signs, but unfortunately, the meter elevation is not written in normal numerology. It's a Japanese symbol and a circle and a circle. But here's one someone wrote that says 246 meters. So I presume, I don't know what that means. Is that 246 meters from sea level? 246 meters from the base of this mountain, 246 meters from where this path started? I don't know. And again, I mean, I guess I don't know what that actually means. The numbers don't matter. I don't know what they mean. But if anyone's curious, to some degree, I'm at 246 meters.

Oh, man. And yeah, because I'm climbing pretty much straight up, very steep. I think it's more or less leveled out now. Now it's like just sum up, sum down. This fucking leader of coffee's almost gone. And when I had this out west trying to get to the waterfall, it took me all afternoon to drink this thing. Where here, it's almost gone already. And then I'll just switch over to water, which is probably what I should be drinking in any way. But I feel like this is another great example of how I like to mix the, I'm not going to say high brow and low brow, because I don't think nature is high brow. But what is it? It's like, it's neither. It's not high brow nor low brow. It's, it's non-cultural. It's just the experience of the earth, you know? It's like outside of any value judgment. It's just the earth. It's automatically awesome and beautiful and worthwhile, because it's the fucking earth. So yeah, it's like on the one hand, I'm like a little proud of, like, yeah, I'm in with the woods and I'm hiking and I feel like this is a good use of my time on earth. You know, like today, I'll get into it after, but I was up all night. And I was like, yeah, I could just take today off. Today could be a right off. Just sit around and edit a podcast, and I'm still going to do that. But I was like, yeah, but I got four hours of sunlight. I can sit around and edit a podcast all night. It's going to be dark out. It's nothing, that's a great time to do such things. So I'm like a little proud that it's like, yeah, I had my four hours or five hours of sunlight ahead of me and it's like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to hike over to the mountain and I'm going to take one of the paths that I've taken before that I know will not abandon me in the dark and I'm going to do it. Fuck it. Fuck be entire. Fuck be exhausted. Fuck it. Fuck everything. Go hike. So I'm a little proud of myself that I did it.

Because I mean, my whole early life is just a standard nerd of just like, I just want to be on the computer, please. But to go along with this, I'm still drinking a liter of coffee. Sugar coffee from the convenience store. And I'm just also, it's not like I'm any of these walks, walking across the city, hiking through a mountain. I'm always listening to podcasts and they're probably podcasts about magic, the gathering or, you know, fucking AW wrestling. You know, fucking video games. Just stupid shit. I'm not listening to the fucking collected writings of the ancient scholars or anything. But I like that mix. I think it's just, it feels good not to, I don't know, I don't want to like push it. You know, I don't want to pretend that I'm something I'm not. I don't want to pretend I'm some big nature guy. I don't want to pretend that I'm some big smiley pants. But I do think inadvertently. You can still be a shallow North American tragically adult, not exactly the most useful member of the human race that has ever existed. And still have cool, useful, worthwhile experiences, hiking on mountains and 45:00 stuff. You can do both things. You don't have to give up your old couch potato internet ways to also do this stuff. You can do both.