#40 The coolest view of Fukuoka, Japan

Transcript

You know, I was going to start podcasting while I was walking up a mountain again, but I think I'm finally learning my lesson. Wait a second, I don't need to do that. I can just stop. Stop midway. But I guess it's not quite as cut and dried as that, because the thing was going up the mountain is it would be nice and quiet. I didn't want to, you know, I was listening back to, I mean, I've been editing this podcast. The first one from Japan when I'm walking around, saying in Jaya. And it's like, man, I retrospectively end in the future, because I know it'll have to happen again. But I certainly regret every time I record it around traffic. God, it's so loud, but it's just really hard to avoid sometimes.

So I guess it's the same thing here, is between the traffic and the mountain. I did find a nice little park, so I'm like, let's just stop there.

And, man, yesterday was the biggest weather flip flop yet, where it was so warm when I was heading out to those islands in Northern Fukuoka. Like, I had a jacket, like a windbreaker thing, because I knew I'd be on a windy island, and I couldn't even wear it, because it was just like so hot. It was oppressively mid-summer just sweating to death hot. Then on the way home, not only was it zip up your jacket weather, then it became put on the stretchy gloves weather, then it became take off the jacket so you can put on your thermal shirt and then put the jacket back on weather. Like, I needed an underlayer. It's like, fuck, that was really cold.

Made me a little concerned today, I was like, are there good times finally over? But today is pretty nice. It's right at this very moment, the clouds have passed over, so it's a little bit chilly, but I'm still in a t-shirt. And when the sun is out, it's super warm again, but yeah, it's very, very flip floppy. I am curious to see how it's going to be. When I get back to Tokyo, it'll be December.

One other funny little detail, it's funny how these things just elude my brain. Sometimes these things that are relatively simple, but when I first got to Japan, I was having trouble plugging in my computer because I didn't have any three pronged wall sockets in my Airbnb. And then there was none at the next Airbnb or the next, and then I realized like, oh, they don't do that. That's a very specialized, you can buy a power bar that's like grounded with the three prongs, but it's expensive and uncommon.

But I presumed that my old Airbnb must have been set up with three pronged outlets because I had no memory of having a hard time plugging in my computer. And it just suddenly occurred to me. It was because I did have an adapter, like a multi-purpose worldwide adapter, because I had gone to Amsterdam first. And Europe, I don't know what all of Europe, Amsterdam at least, the Netherlands, they have this strange plug, strange to me, apologies Europe, but it's just like two prongs, just a circle with two holes in it. So I was using that to plug my computer into the main thing and then plug that in. So I was clearly just using that device when I got to Japan, but I was only using it to transfer from triple prong to dual prong. But in my mind, I wasn't using it because there was no need to, there was no power adapter needs, like the power grid system or whatever works the same in North America as it does in Japan. If you have a two prong plug in either country, that's fine. So because I was only using it to convert from three prongs to two, and there was no actual power conversion going on, in my mind I wasn't using it, or I didn't need it. It never occurred to me that it was allowing me to plug in my laptop the whole visit. I actually did need it, because then when I got back to Toronto, I was at an Airbnb with a girl, I think she was from Israel, who needed a power converter. And I was like, dude, here you go, just take it. I don't care. I mean, this thing was like $12, and I will never need it again, you know. Or, you know, when I do go back to Europe, I'll just buy another one. Like, who cares? Because that could be a while. A little did. I know COVID was on the horizon, and it was going to be a long while. But even then, in my mind, I didn't think I should save this because I'll need it in Japan. I just didn't realize that I needed it.

So anyway, that's another little mystery figured out. And I guess, you know, even though my travel tips are vague at best in this podcast, if you do have a triple pronged plug for your computer, which you likely do, you will need to do something with that. But you don't necessarily need to buy an adapter before you get here because, you know, again, it'll be a big expensive, clunky device that probably has a million functions you don't need. 5:00 Turns out you can just go to a store, any store, really, and just buy one of those little extenders, just a little extender for like $250. That extends a plug out from the wall, and it's a little inelegant, but it will keep your third prong away from the wall. So you can plug shit in.

They probably sell them at $7.11. Man, it's still amazing to me at convenience stores. I mean, it sort of depends. Like some convenience stores have more clothing than others, or some have more tech devices than others. Some of them have like groceries. Some of them are like little mini grocery stores. But yeah, when you find one that is serving the niche you need, holy crap.

Man, noise like a thing about how it is a shame that I kind of should have recorded less parts of this podcast and your traffic. It's just kind of not worth it. It's so loud. But even just that guy hammering, that is not close. That is fucking very far away.

But you can just hear it. Like noise is awful. Noise is terrible. It's insane how like noise pollution is just nuts. Like I really never realized. I don't know. I feel like maybe the old recorder I had just wasn't as bad for recording outside. This new one I've got, it's the same company. It's the Zoom Corporation ZOM. Not the Skype program, but just a microphone company from Japan. But this is a different model. And I think it's just, it's not unidirectional. Unfortunately, it just records everything all around you. And yeah, it's just like, man, Montreal was a clattering disaster. It seems like Japan is the same way. And it's not just the recorder smell. Like that is how it is. But you just, it's amazing how well you can block it out in real life. You can block out this noise and just kind of be like, whatevs? I mean, even the fucking train going by my house, I was getting a little used to at that Airbnb in Akiruno.

But it is like awful. How much we're being assaulted by sound in the modern world is just like so easy not to realize, but it fucking sucks.

But I guess it's true, too, that like if you were ever in the woods at night, it is bananas. How much, like every animal sounds three times bigger than it is. If you hear a little squirrel go by, it sounds like a rabbit. And if you hear a rabbit go by, it sounds like a fucking lion. It is scary as shit. If a deer comes out of nowhere, it's like a, it's like Godzilla came out of nowhere. It's crazy how loud everything is when there's no other sound around it.

Anyway, there's my pointless observation for the day. So what I'm doing today is I thought I would take a little wander up the mountain again. But, you know, I had that idea of going to Umabayashi station because that's where my Airbnb was in 2019. And I found a cool path up the mountain from there that I enjoy that connects up to the Aburiyama Katai observation deck. And then I would always walk down from there because from there there's not only a road, there's also like a walking path. It's like a paved walking path that snakes its way down the mountain. But theoretically, that's how you're supposed to go up. You know, I only came down that way because I was, I wasn't near it. My Airbnb was over this, near this walking path. So initially, I thought, oh, I love this walking path so much. It's my favorite. Every day, I'm going to walk all the way over there and walk up the walking path. But really, it was, I mean, clearly better when I was three blocks away. Then it was the greatest, it was the greatest walking path of all time. Or even if I was near the subway line and I took the subway there, again, perfect. It's right by the subway. But I'm not actually near it, you know, and to get to there, I have to walk past my old exit point, the paved walking path. So I was like, yeah, today, you know, fuck it. Why don't I walk up that way? I've never done it. I've never walked up the proper way you're supposed to walk. Let's see, to describe where it is, it's pretty easy to find on a map.

And then you know, they recommend you take buses and crap to get here. But of course, I just walked. So there's a road that goes by Hakata Technical High School and by Restaurant Mori, M-O-R-I, which is a really expensive French restaurant that's up in the mountains. Oh, and then you'll see that that road goes to Aberriama Greenland Golf Course, the Golf Course I got trapped on the other day. 10:00 I think how many fucking golf courses? Geez, that's not even the one. It was the Chico Shigau Ka Golf Club that I was at. That was a lot of fucking golf around here. I mean, again, it seems like if you're going to waste tons of space on golf, why not do it in the mountains? I do respect that. It's not space anyone else is using. But anyway, that street, you'll then see a smaller little street that goes up to the Aberriama Kitai Observation Deck and that's where if you have a car, you can just drive right up there.

However, to the west of that street, you'll see, like, Nagata Pond is actually where I'm at right now, N-A-G-A-T-A-Pond. And if you go south of that neighborhood west, if I got a technical high school, there's just like the road just goes down and then it just disappears. And then turns into a tiny dotted line and that tiny dotted line, that's the walking path.

So that's what I'm going to go up today. And then while I'm up there, I could either walk straight up to the Observation Deck, but there's actually, if you go to the right, that's the Observation Deck. But if you go to the left, there's the washroom with a delightful squat toilet and a cross from it is a little opening in the woods. And in that opening, our stairs that go up through the mountains into a little shrine, and then that loops up around the Observation Deck. So I think I might do that.

And yeah, once you do that loop, then you're at the place I was trying to get to the other day. It's like a paved road. And from there, you can either go on my secret path down to Mabiyashi Station, take the paved road, which is like a forestry access road. It takes a long time, but it's not bad. It's like a slow, languid walk with some beautiful views. You can go down just a little ways to the Observation Deck, or you can keep going up the mountain. And initially, I presumed that would be on my itinerary. It's like, you know, I only ever got to do that one time. I went up there, and I followed along until I lost track of the path, and then I forced my way down the mountain and ended up in Sawara Ward, which is west of Fukuoka, and just very picturesque, nice little place.

That I kind of want to go back to, but then it's just a long walk along the highway, which isn't so not so great. But in a way, even though I didn't explore that particular part of the mountain as much as I thought I would, my golf course adventure of the other day, I think inadvertently kind of explained to me how that mountain works. You know, where I realized what's going to happen if I do continue up the mountain. I mean, basically what happened to me in 2019, where I had to force my way down the mountain and ended up in Sawara Ward, is exactly what happened to me the other day, when I was walking along the peaks, and I couldn't get off the mountain, I had to force my way off onto a golf course. That's clearly just how it works up there. You just walk along the ridge from peak to peak to peak all the way around the mountain. And if you want to get off the mountain, too fucking bad. There's just very, very few official entrance and exit points. You just kind of got to find a part that's not too steep, and then just fucking walk off the mountain and see where you end up. I don't love that idea, you know? That's a little less appealing. Like it's already quarter to two. I think, you know, if it was summertime, and if I had sunlight till 9 p.m., and I just had all day to walk around the mountain, and I was really prepped for that, that'd be one thing. But today, you know, if I just go up the walking path, that's fine. Go to the observation deck, that's fine. Go to the little shrine, that's fine. All of that's fine. It's that extra step, that extra step up the mountain, where you go deeper in. I think that's just best avoided. You know, unless I fucking get up at like 7.30 in the morning, I don't think I should be doing that shit. I think I learned my lesson.

Once you begin the endeavor, you're in. You're in whether you want to be in or not. And I don't. I don't want to be in. So yeah, more of a casual abory, but I haven't technically been to the observation deck yet. And I mean, I went there like 15 times. Last time I visited a choreographer, probably not that many times. Seven or eight though. It was one of my favorite little places. So I'm going to go. That's where I'm going today. There's also, I mean, I don't know his hours and his, you know, what times of year, but there is, there's a drink machine and a hot dog vendor up there. 15:00 And I never did buy a hot dog from him. And I'm not remotely hungry and I have a bunch of candy from fucking Lawson's in my pocket. So I mean, I probably won't buy a hot dog today either. I don't know why I brought it up. But there is a guy up there who sells hot dogs. So I guess just to report, to report the news, potential hot dogs available up there. All right, I'm going to get a mosey in.

All right, I'm on the paved path, walking up. This is kind of interesting. First I got to mention, just because it's part of my brand, is that there was a washroom at the bottom of this fucking path that was still under construction in 2019, and now it's open, so of course I have to bring that up. But I also have to bring up that it has a squat toilet in it, you know, it's a new fucking installation, and it's still got a squat toilet. Fukuoka, or at least southern Fukuoka, is run by coke branded drink machines and squat toilets. They fucking love it. They love it. So be aware of that. But at first, when I first got to this little paved path, I was like, hmm, you know, suddenly it's hitting me. It's like, yeah, I really have only ever walked down this, which was very easy. You know, walking down a mountain trail, or steep stairs, that's tricky. Walking down a fairly gentle paved path, no problem. It's delightful.

So I was at the bottom, and I saw the little sign that said it's over 1100 meters over a kilometer to the destination of the observation deck, and it's like, oh fuck, I gotta walk for a kilometer up, up the whole time. And my initial thought was, hmm, I don't like this as good as the rugged mountain path over by Umabayashi, because if you're going to walk up, that one is like, I mean, that one is better. It is more interesting because you are just going up through nature, like through just a cool, rarely used, but still very accessible path. So I mean, I think psychologically, it's a little easier. Where here, even though I think it is physically, probably technically easier, because it is just a paved path. But in a weird way, it seemed harder, because it's less mentally interesting, you know. Having to pay attention to the ups and downs of the rough path, and you know, it's different terrain and everything. And just something deep in the human psyche that feels like you're, uh, adventuring makes it a little easier to go up.

Where this, at first, seemed a little bland, or it's like, man, it really is just a paved path. And the uphill slant is never going to stop. That's pretty brutal. But now that I'm like, I'm only a third of the way up, and already, I mean, the other one is kind of cooler, but this is still great. Like, once you get a little deeper in, and you're just deeper in the woods, and there's just trees all over. And it's like, yeah, this is, uh, it's still big, crazy, trees everywhere. You're still way totally in the wilderness. And it's still really beautiful. The trees here are more spaced out, and it does just feel more open. And you can look down and see the winding path beneath you that you've walked on. And you can see where it's going ahead of you.

They're both pretty good. And, you know, also, you just kind of get into that rhythm of walking continuously uphill. As a pro tip, just walk really fucking slow. Some junior high school physics, energy over time. You know, if you spend more time, it takes less energy. So I got myself at a nice slow trudge. Just trudge in up the mountain.

Whew, well, man, uh, reverse engineering a route. I mean, I guess I've run into this problem before. It's difficult. So actually, uh, that paved pathway up, it really isn't that bad, because it's not 1,100 meters. Once you get to the top, it's still almost 400 meters of just, uh, road. You got to go up. So it's actually pretty short. I was all like over halfway up. I thought I was a third. And it's, uh, it's definitely not as good. The path over by Umabiyashi's way better.

Cool. Some kind of ceremony or something going on down there. But yeah, then I thought, uh, because there's a, it's a pretty distinct route. If you go up the path from either from Umabiyashi or even just from the observation deck, if you just continue on the path a little further up the mountain and you get to the, you know, it's a hole. It's another mountain path. It twists around and steps into the mountain side. Very beautiful. It goes to a nice little shrine. Perfect. And then it spits you out. You come out of the woods onto the main road that people used to drive up to the observation deck. So I just thought it'd be easy to find in the reverse. And maybe it is, if I went a little further, I didn't go, you know what, I can't give up yet. I can't give up. I didn't even go all the way down the road to the actual washroom that I remember being across the street. Surely I can find this thing. But anyway, I found a different shrine, a great big public one with, uh, paved roads coming up to it. And it's like busy. Yeah, there's banging gongs down there and stuff. I didn't even realize this one was here. I found this weird little shrine in the woods and instead, wait, Torrigate's temple. It's not a shrine. No, fuck. It's Buddhist temple Shinto Shrine. I don't fucking, God damn it. Anyway, it's one of these places and it's, yeah, it's pretty big and elaborate. I didn't even know it was here. Right across from restaurant Mori Obudumond, the fancy French restaurant that overlooks the city. But yeah, I've, uh, I've reinspired myself. I just walked way up as high up here as I could and I'm just up at a extra little bit of the shrine where no one else is just to see if the path did keep going up the mountain, but it doesn't. I'm at a little dead end. But yeah, I'm going to go back down and I'm going to try to find that other one. I have given up too easily. Yeah, this place seems pretty popular. A lot of car traffic coming up here. I suppose, again, I can pull the phone. I can tell you what it's called. Wouldn't fucking kill me. This is the Aburiyama Canon Shokakuji, K-A-N-N-O-N-S-H-O-K-A-K-U-G.

Wait, maybe this is a Buddhist temple because it's the swastika. That's Buddhist, right? And then the one I was looking for, I think. There is a Shinto shrine. No, wait, I'm at the Shinto shrine. So it's a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple together. The one I'm thinking of in the woods, I don't know if it even is listed on maps. Maybe there's something here, but it's a weird symbol I've never seen before. So maybe it's yet a third type of monument. Okay, that's not so bad. That's why I was getting so confused. This is both the things. Yeah, because I'm walking through a Torigate right now. But the rest of this place is clearly Buddhist because I walk through a cemetery to get here. Whew, okay, I'm not totally stupid. That's nice.

All right, this is a little confusing. So join me in real time as we figure out if I have figured out what's going on here. I guess it would make sense that the thing I'm thinking of is probably just an extension of that big temple I was just at, Abu Riyama Canon.

But anyway, okay, so I went down the stairs from that big shrine and then it's like 10 meters more down the road to the washroom and a drink machine. So close. And there was a guy in a van who stopped to clean the place. You know, he's cleaning the washroom. It's like, oh nice, that observatory, the observation deck I was at yesterday. That certainly is not the case. Nobody's doing that. I think the day they built that washroom, a bunch of ghost pirates showed up and pissed all over it. And then they continued to come back for the next 50 years. And no one ever cleaned it. Wow, there's a immediate spider web in my way. Okay, or full. It's hard to walk around a spider web without accidentally touching part of it. Okay, I did it. But yeah, then across the street, from that washroom and drink machine, there is like another road. I kind of didn't remember necessarily, but I guess if you're coming down a path and being ejected, little details like that, you might forget. But then right up that road, like again, just a few meters, right at the first corner is like, has like, man, is this the path I was thinking of? Because this is unmissable. 25:00 It has big metal pegs in the road so that, you know, vehicles can't go in. And like a big headstone looking fucking marble sign about, you know, it's basically just, it must, I was like, this can't be the path. There's no way it was this fancy. I would have remembered this for sure.

And then it seemed like it was just another route up to where it just was. So I'm like, that can't be it. So I walked a little further down the road.

And now I'm on something closer to what I remember, but what I remember was like the steps into the mountain were wooden. They were like, people had placed wood. These ones are stone, and it is a sign for Aberriama Canon, which I assume that's where that music and the distance is coming from too. I don't know. I don't know what the hell's going on. So these are still pretty rough steps up into the woods. They're just not quite as I recall, but maybe they'll become that way as I go, like turn into wooden steps.

So I was considering walking even further down the road to see if there was yet another path. Maybe, maybe I still haven't gone far enough, but it can't be. This has to be it. And that road is one of these no room for pedestrians roads.

Yeah, there it is. I see it. I can see it. All right, so this is it. Again, I don't know. What's the point of me trying to describe all this in intricate detail? Nobody else is going to come here. Nobody fucking gives a shit. It's only relevant to me. Relevant to me because I accidentally came here once in the past. But yeah, it's weird because this is, I guess, an auxiliary part of that big temple, but obviously based on the fact that I had to step around a spider web, nobody fucking comes to this part. Yeah, this is definitely it because this was nowadays. I'm like, oh, another shrine, another temple, you know, whatever. I've seen too many. Where I remember at this point, I was still quite taken with the majesty of just finding these things all over the place. Now, remember, I tried kneeling at this one. Yeah, this one is, makes sense that it was a different symbol on the map because it is, neither temple nor shrine. It's just a big stone with words inscribed in it. But yeah, I don't know, especially because this is actually very close to the road when you come up from the reverse direction. But the way I did it, you know, I walked for an hour up the mountain from Umabayashi and then explored some weird side path that I had no idea where it was going to go and eventually ended up here. It felt quite epic at the time. See, I tried kneeling. I don't know. I was like feeling momentarily spiritual, though really, it was just physical exhaustion. And as soon as I knelt down my knees hurt. I was like, no, never mind, never mind. There is no spiritual fucking observance in the world worse hurting my knees for. I'll take a good knees, please, over any enlightenment or inner peace. I don't need that. I need good knees and kneeling. Who does that? I don't see anybody kneeling in Japan. It's just because of my Catholic upbringing. That's just my go-to. That's all I got. I don't know what else to do. Kneel down. Bow your head.

Cool. Anyway, I found it. So theoretically now, if I keep going up this path, it won't take me directly to the observation deck. It'll actually take me past it a little too high up. But then I can loop around to the right and back down to the observation deck. Cool, though. Another piece of my fucking self-devised scavenger hunt.

This has been a pretty neat little mix of, as I've said before, several times. But my conception of what I would do when I came back to Japan was a bit limited during COVID times, daydreaming about Japan, because I basically all I had to work with was what I had previously done. It was too abstract to envision new places. You know, I'm not just going to make up 30:00 Japanese scenery I had never seen. So I would just think about the places that had already been. And like, okay, I got to go back there. I got to go back there. I got to go back there. And so far, it's been a pretty nice mix of going back to some old places, but also finding a bunch of new places. And by finding the new places, like I was describing earlier, just about even just the mechanics of how hiking Mount Haburiyama works that I realized over on the other end of the mountain, it gives additional context to these things I wanted to come back to. So maybe I don't, either I don't necessarily need to go back or I can just go back briefly, soak it in briefly, but I don't have to really dwell on the old stuff. Old in the new mix together.

Elements of the past. And elements of the future.

This is actually really cool. I mean, I'm still not really focusing on it. This is the other weird thing with stuff like doing podcasts. It's like I've been standing here longer than I normally would. I wouldn't just stand here and contemplate this thing. But I'm inadvertently standing here because I'm yammering to myself because I want to finish whatever dumb shit I'm saying before I keep walking up the hill. So I'm just inadvertently staring at this thing. It's like a big stack of rocks that comes up about to my mid chest. Then there's a bigger rock on top of those rocks that goes over a little higher than my head. And then on top of that is a huge rock that's like twice as tall as me. Well, one and a half times. And then it's got some characters chiseled into it, which could possibly know what it says besides millions of Japanese speakers. But I have no idea. I bet it's good though. I bet it means something. I bet it's some fucking deep shit. Whereas I'm just kind of thinking like, could I climb up on that? Of course I wouldn't. I never would. But I don't think so. It would be very tough. I don't think I can make it up.

Oh, that happened to me yesterday. As I was trying to walk back from the observation deck island and I was walking along the sand bar and then along the same beach along the southern edge like I did before. But the tide had risen just enough that at the end of the sand bar that connects the two islands, there was just enough ocean water that I couldn't like breach the fucking. I couldn't cross the gap. I couldn't make it to the other island. It was just a little too far. So I had to go all the way back and under the bridge and up on the northern side.

And then I just walked along the road to get back to the train. Didn't try the beach because it did seem like it was, you know, it had sea walls and stuff. I probably could have walked more or less along the beach, but it was also dark at that point. And it's just like, ah, the beach is clearly gone. More or less gone at this tide level. So I never mind. But I stopped at a nice little 7-Eleven. Lots of motorcycles on those islands. So it's just motorcycle people hanging out of the 7-Eleven. And it was my first time going to a 7-Eleven where both people working there were not Japanese. But they weren't white people. Although that happened to me once in 2019. It was real late at night. I was in Ikebukuro. And a white guy was working at a convenience, but he didn't speak English. And that's never, never met a white person who doesn't speak any English before. I just presumed, I'm like, oh, this will be a nice treat. I just like, hey, bro, what's up? Nothing. Nothing. You had no idea what I was saying. So I don't know, I don't know where he was from. I mean, maybe he was Japanese, you know? That happens. There's these people that, like, they get adopted when their kids and they are basically fully Japanese, but they run into these weird issues where they just don't get treated like a Japanese person because no one thinks they're Japanese or expects that they are. But no, in this case, the girl working there, I guess she's probably from India, but I didn't talk to her. The guy, I don't know, but it was kind of interesting because he had more English than, you know, your average Japanese person, but obviously English was not at all his first language. He asked, if I wanted choppy sticks. It's like, no, I'm good. Thank you, though. Yeah, it is this. I've never heard that before. Choppy sticks. Anyway, okay, that's enough rambling. Time to continue up

of the mountain. Man, this is a weird phenomenon, too, where I don't know. I guess it's because, yeah, like, this whole, this part in particular, but I guess many things, they're not quite as I remember. Or, you know, if it's things I only did once, four years ago, so it's all a little fuzzy, but I feel like I'm, like, rewriting things in my mind or something. So I started going up this path, and right away, there's different little branches, which I guess that's, again, when you're coming down, it's like you're just going down. There's not really a lot of options. Going up is so much harder. It'll be interesting when I get back to Tokyo, a minute try to go back to the Congo Falls.

Redeem myself on that adventure, but I'm going to try to go in the back way, and it might fail, because it's very easy to leave the falls by the back forestry road, but, you know, so in my mind, it's like, yeah, just do just do the reverse. No problem, but experience is teaching me that the reverse is way, way harder. It's way less obvious. If you don't actually really know where you're going, and you're not just being funneled, it's way harder. So then one of the branches, and this all has, this is like, this is moments later. This just happened. It's just like a little extra cool to sack. You just come down a little bit to another place, and this is the actual, whatever that other one was, I was just at, I never even noticed it before. This is the real one. This one is way bigger. It's like a stone throne. It's huge, and it's got a big, this time, it's like a big rectangular rock with more words. Hune into it. And then there's like a stone tablet over to the side with a bunch of writing. Because I mean, even as I was telling that story about kneeling down and hurting my knees on the rock, I'm looking at the ground, and I'm like, it's really not stone on the ground here. Like, did I just kneel on the ground, and I'm remembering it as rock? But it's like, this has to be the thing, right? This has to be it. So I'm just like rewriting my own memory. I mean, apparently people do that a lot too. Like if you ask people about, you know, to remember like a traffic accident they saw or something, it's really easy for people to misremember details, or you feed them some information, and then suddenly they think that's how it was. I guess it's kind of like that. But now that I see this other one, it's like, oh, this is very evidently the real one, till I get 10 more meters up the mountain, and there's a fucking another one. But I don't know, this is just kind of an interesting phenomenon. I mean, they're very close together. It's a similar type of monument, but that was not the one. This is the one. But I guess also it's that because I can't read the words, and I don't know the distinctions between what these things mean. You know, in my mind, I just, I just inserted a cool, big rock monument. But the two are actually pretty different. And this one has, has, you know, again, stuff people have left. It's all liquid here. And there's coins.

But this one, you know, is some kind of wine. Two more that are partially drunk. A bottle of just water, I guess. And a little plastic. Ooh, this one's open too, yuck. I just got definitely rice wine on my hand. But then there's like one of these little tiny, little tiny cans. I forgot about these. My friend Brad gave me one of these in 2019. It's funny. This one's Asahi Super Dry. Does it even say how many milliliters? We do not sell cans this small in Canada. 135 milliliters. It's a little baby can. And it's kind of fun because it feels like you're a fucking, like you're a giant. The closest we have in North America is you can kind of get coronitos, like the little tiny corona bottles sometimes. But they're not as small as this. This thing is like half that size. It's so tiny. I have a big bottle of water in my back pocket that I have to use a little of my precious, precious water to rinse my hands off because they smell like fucking wine now. That's what I get for fiddling with things that people have left as offerings. Is that you spill them on yourself. So I guess just leave them the fuck alone.

More obvious advice from an idiot. Although I guess, you know, my water's not really that precious. 40:00 You know, it's fine. I'll be fine. It's a stayed pretty cloudy actually. It's very nice day. It's not very hot today. But I would do that. If I was just dying of the heat and I showed up here, I mean, there's an unopened 500 millilitre bottle of water. If I needed it, I would drink the shit out of that because, you know, and if someone ever caught me, I got to be like, I would be so embarrassed. But if I was thirsty, I would drink the water. I'm putting that one on record. I would drink the water if I needed it. But I don't, so. So I shall leave it unmolested.

Actually, maybe just to be an equal opportunity since I grew up Catholic, to be an equal opportunity religion meddler. If I was dying of thirst, I would drink holy water also. I'd go right into the first Catholic church I saw and I just, I'd drink that holy water right up. I know you ain't supposed to, but I would do it. What is religion for if not to slake the thirst of the thirsty, both spiritually and in literal fashion? Riddle me that. Batman.

Oh, this is a serious journey up. Is it 20 to 4? This is going to say this is a, this is a pretty long ways up. That this is probably going to more or less work out okay. I was even thinking like, should I hang out once I get to the observation deck? Should I just hang out till it gets dark? I could see the nighttime view, but it does take a little longer than that for it to get dark, you know, it's not totally 5.30. But walking up this trail, it's surprisingly non-linear, you know, like I say, in the way down. You just don't notice because you're just being funneled down on the way up. There is actually quite a few places where you have to sort of choose, but it doesn't seem like it matters. It seems like, you know, every route goes up and they all reconnect to each other. There does not appear to be multiple ways up. It's just this one way. It's just there's a couple little side-so-jurns. And also it's actually really calm right now. This little spot where I've stopped, but it was really windy before. It was getting very windy and almost like a little quite chilly. It's like, you know, if I was down on the ground, I would put on my hoodie at this point.

There we go. I think I'm feeling a bit of wind still. But whenever I'm going up, my body turns into a furnace. It just burns heat like crazy. It just expels heat when I'm burning the fuel to go up. So it was like a nice balance of like, I would be cold normally, but because I'm walking up these endless stairs, it's balancing out. The wind is balancing out my furnace-like heat. And I'm thinking, like, I really am kind of, I mean, despite the fact that it's really, I guess, just the knee. I'm lucky that my knee has not been a problem so far. It's been okay. But generally speaking, I think I'm kind of designed for this exact type of thing. I have a light upper body. Oh, geez, that's weird too. You can hear the siren from way down there. Again, yeah, just sound. Dude, sound travels. Sound is a menace.

I have a such a light upper body that I have basically like a concave chest, but I have the burly legs of a man who walks everywhere every day. So it's great for going up stuff like this. I'm not carrying a lot of weight and my legs are fucking so weird. But I also noticed as I was going up this thing, as you get a little beyond, you know, down at the bottom, it was stone steps, and then it becomes the wooden steps that I remember where it's like wooden pegs put into the ground and then bigger wood logs placed across and then packed full of dirt over and over and over, hundreds and hundreds of these. Although this path, it's quite, it's like a weird assortment of different, you know, some of it's just a path. A lot of it is these wood steps, some of it is stone steps. It's all like an assortment of stuff. But it's funny that obviously, you know, those shrines and monuments, those are obviously not what stuck in my mind to the point that I didn't remember there were two and I didn't know which one was which. It really is just the path itself because once I got a little further up and I got to these wooden steps like I remembered. And then I stopped and I turned around and saw that view of what it looks like to come down because I only ever did this one time, one time I took this path and came down these steps. 45:00 But in my mind, you know, while I was back home in COVID times, I mean, I did this walk a hundred times, you know? And it's obviously all a very conceptual version of it where I'm only remembering the broad strokes, but the parts I remembered were the steps and just the way these trees looking, looking out over, you know, you can't really see a view from here because there's too many trees, but you can tell that you're just looking out into open air and you can see how it slopes down at certain points and you're just looking out across this forest going down. And just immediately, I got a lump in my throat as like, holy shit, this is it. That place that I keep daydreaming about and pretending to walk and just imagining that I'm walking. Like, this is it, dude, you're here, this is the fucking place. So I guess if I was like a Dungeons and Dragons character, I guess I wouldn't be a priest or a monk, I would be like a druid because it's the physical forest part, the actual path in the woods. That was the part that, you know, it only hit me for a moment. It's so hard to ring feelings out of my poor atrophied entertainment riddled, you know, overstimulated North American little heart, but that is what gets me. That's the shit that gets me. That's just like, fuck dude, that's it. You're here. You are here.