#71 Eff Waterfalls (return to Kongo falls)

Transcript

Oh my god. Life out in the sticks, man. So I mean there's going to be some traffic noises. There's a lot of trucks on this street. But dude, okay, so I'll describe my Airbnb and shit in a bit. But now that I'm by myself again and I'm not packed in with people, it's a lot more relaxing. But I still woke up way too early. I woke up at like 7 in the morning and I'm like, no, try to go back to sleep. Come on guy, try to go back to sleep. And I was just drifting in and out of sleep till about a 20 or so. Just could never quite fall back asleep. But I always have the rain noises. I play like rain sounds through my headphones. And at one point, because I was Jesus a lot of trucks here. And at one point, because I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I, uh, hearing the rain sound and, uh, my little heater in the room that I had set to 16 degrees because I'm not a psychopath. But I heard that hum and I heard the rain to get together. And I was thinking like, oh no, it's fucking raining out. Fuck, that's going to ruin the day. It's raining. Even though I'd already seen outside earlier that it was not raining. It's a clear-ass guy. And then I realized, oh, it's the rain sounds in my ears making me think it's raining. And then I started laughing. And I'm like, alright, it's not going to get better than that. I might still be a little tuckered out. But if you wake up laughing, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good start to the day.

Then I'm like, uh, checking out this new neighborhood because I pretty much just passed out yesterday. I didn't do shit. There's a laundromat right across the street. So that's good. Right around the corner is a 7-11. I'm like, sweet. Alright, this is all working out pretty well. And in the 7-11, they have the MacRill Ginger Soy thing. They got three of them in there. It's fucking insane. They were like completely gone from Tokyo. I mean, technically, I'm still in Tokyo, but not really. I'm away far west.

And yes, like, what the fuck? Amazing. So the dream's not over. I almost feel like I should eat this thing and then just go in and eat another one. But that would be excessive. They're kind of big. And they also had this cream cheese and vanilla thing that itself is also, each of these is like a 420 yen item, which is a lot for a 7-11 thing. Because it's like this big, long cream cheese and vanilla thing. So even these both together is way, way enough. I can't eat more than this. That'd be insane. This is already kind of insane, but I was really hungry last night, but I was so exhausted. I didn't want to leave the fucking place. I was like, fuck it, I'm in, in for the night. And the only thing I had on me was like, sour a bag of those sour fucking plums from 7-11 that are really sour. So I just mixed them in my mouth with a bunch of water to take away a bit of the sour and chew that up. And that's all I had to eat. So I'm starving. So anyway, that's really all I wanted to start the day off with. Start of the day laughing. My favorite Macro-Ginger soy sauce thing that is absolutely gone. I couldn't find it anywhere in Tokyo anymore. Still here for some reason. Way out in, because I can tell you what this neighborhood's called.

K-A-W-A-M-A-C-H-I. And my plan after I eat this stuff is to head to Comina station K-O-M-I-Y-A. And from there, the world's my oyster. Yeah, and it's the larger area is Hachio-G, because that's the station I was at. Fuck yeah, dog. So far so good, man. So far so good. Okay, I gotta stop talking. I'm gonna eat this fucking shit.

Oh yeah, there's a bus going by, too. So there is a bus station near here, and I got to ask the Airbnb guy, because I've only taken a bus once ever in 2019. Me and Brad took one bus to go to a waterfall. And we just paid in coins, I guess. But I'm really not quite sure how the bus system works, because again, he knows I just speak Japanese, and he just, Brad dealt with it. But I did get a chance to ask the guy if the bus has took sweet kick cards, and they do apparently.

So I could probably just take a bus with my little card, but it's like a 20-minute walk to the station. I would prefer to walk than to wait. I hate waiting for a bus. At least walking.

You feel the movement. Man, yeah, this is like truck town. So many guys driving trucks. This is truck neighborhood, for sure. Okay, I'm gonna eat.

So I met the station, and there's the sounds of birds that they often have in the underground stations. 5:00 And I thought, oh, there's gotta be real birds this time, because this is an above-ground station. I'm just chilling outside, but I don't know, actually. It's always hard for me to find these fucking speakers that these sounds are coming from, but I think maybe they have fake bird sounds here too. I don't know. What a weird thing. I guess it's supposed to, in the underground, the idea is it's supposed to sort of calm you down and make things more chill-feeling, but outdoors. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have, I guess I don't know. That's all I don't want to say about some of the things that go on in Japan. Oh, good. There's someone else on my side of the platform, because I was like, okay, looking at the signs, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I want to take this one side, because I'm trying to get to Hajima station. And the other side goes back to Hachioji, which I'm definitely going to do at some point, because I want to go to Lake Takau, I think it's called. But yeah, there's like a lot of people on the other side. And I was the only one over here. I'm like, if I'd done something terribly wrong, but maybe it's that a train just left, I don't know. But yeah, there's someone else on my platform now, so that's good. That means something's coming at some point. It's a small station. There's only two. The way I like it, you go right or you go left. It's not one of these big cluster fucks where I can't figure out what's going on. I don't know that there are any of those out here. Hajima has like, I don't know, maybe four different platforms. Tachikawa is pretty big, but even that's... I was speaking of things I don't understand. A little Mary had a little lamb jingle is playing. And again, I don't know where is that coming from.

Is that part of this station? Okay, it must mean that the train's coming for some reason Mary had a little lamb. But this is not my train. This is the train on the other side. So, uh, yes, so this neighborhood I'm in, at first, I was like, oh, this is very delightful. It really reminds me of Akiruno, where it's kind of agricultural, or even in Fukuoka, out by like umabayashi station. I like the agricultural kind of neighborhoods, because they're really cool. They just have like, because of the field, to get a really good view of stuff around, and there's green houses, and this neighborhood seemed like that. When I left this 7-Eleven, I walked by.

When I left this 7-Eleven, I walked by a house that had these really well curated, uh, like, bonsai tree-looking things, except they're big. I don't know how big a bonsai tree can be. I've only seen little tiny ones, but maybe there's big ones too. I don't know. Endy at greenhouses and stuff, but the tricky part with this neighborhood is there's no ability to like roam through the neighborhood. In Akiruno, I feel like you can just kind of walk around and soak it in, and it's just really cool and pretty. Where here it is like a lot of trucking routes, and if you don't stay on the trucking route, it's immediate dead ends everywhere. So it's not the kind of neighborhood I would hang out in, but that's fine, because I'm not here to hang out. I'm just here to sleep, so it's like a 20-minute walk. Passed two different 7-Elevens on the way to this station. Not bad. Not bad, but I suspect that's all I'm going to do in this hood. Though one thing I noticed, the weird thing about being in these like outlying areas, because like as I said outside that 7-Eleven and just watched the world go by, and it was just all guys and trucks pretty much. And like one guy gets out of his truck and he's got like cool sunglasses on, and it's just like, like yeah, we're definitely in a more rural feeling place, and it really made me feel like that 7-Eleven is probably sort of the equivalent of like a diner. You know, you go in, you're the trucker guy, you go in, and flow was like, hey, hun, what can I get you? That type of vibe. And hey, the upside to that is sometimes they got the fucking delicious mackerel thing, that the city folk ain't got no more. That's so nice too, because it just feels like real food, you know, just like fish on rice. It's so good.

Because after I tried the, the Lawson's chicken the other day, then when I went to Kabukicho, and I was walking around drinking a strong zero, and I did get some more chicken, because I was a little drunk, and it was just like, fuck it. I realized too what it is. It's not, I mean, the chicken's been here the whole time. It's just that Lawson's not all of them, 10:00 but about half of them have rolled out this thing where you don't have to ask people for the chicken. That's why I never tried it. It's just because even getting like steam buns and stuff, it's remarkable how fast that can go wrong. You're like pointing at stuff, and you're saying the name, and you think you're saying it right, but somehow people don't know what you're talking about, and it's just like, you know what, I'd rather just not. I'd rather not. I'll just get something else that I can just pick up off the shelf, and I don't have to go through this, puking my shameful literacy dance, but the Lawson's probably chicken. It's like a thing where you can open it up from your side and take the stuff out, so it's like, oh, that's why. It's not coincidence that I never tried these before, and then I suddenly did at that point. But anyway, I tried like the lemon chicken ball things, and they were kind of good. They were better, but then they also had soy ones, and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Let's try that, and you know, it's unfortunate, but the soy ones are just not that good. I really do think the world is just going to move toward veganism eventually. It's just going to happen, but I'm kind of just in that middle zone where when it happens, I'll be fine with it. It won't bother me at all, but I kind of need it to just be convenient. I just need it to be the way the economic tides turn, and when everyone just only offers vegetarian vegan stuff, then good. Fine. But in the meantime, I'm probably going to go with what's most convenient, and yeah, the soy chicken balls were kind of weird. But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that compared to that greasy chicken shit, god damn, just barbecue fish on rice is so fucking good. I don't know how they're going to do a soy version of that, but I'm sure someday science will figure it out, or we'll have meat cubes with no brain that never had a nervous system and never was alive, really. And then I bet there'll still be a transition period where vegetarians and vegans will think it's weird to eat meat, even if the meat had never been an alive thing. There's going to be some cognitive dissonance, but then everyone will get used to it. That's my prediction of the future. But unraveling these layer after layer after layer of dumb pointless shit that I'm saying, being in these outside pockets, you do find some weird stuff. And I found a new vending machine type that has root beer in it.

Train must become and there's Mary had a little lamb. And yeah, I don't know why it even came up, but I know I brought that up at some point in this podcast already, just that root beer is very not popular in Asia. And I've seen YouTube videos and stuff where they're like, hey, try root beer for the first time. And these people are like, this is gross. It tastes like medicine. People like this in North America. And I always thought that was weird because root beer is my favorite pop flavor, my favorite soda. But I don't really drink any soda anymore. So I saw the root beer and I'm like, at some point I got to try this, I guess, but it's probably just going to be root beer. And I don't actually want to drink it. I don't want to drink a big bottle of pop. I don't know when it's going to happen. But I got to try it at some point just because I didn't think I'd see root beer anywhere. But there's this machine type. I've seen it twice. There's one right around the corner for my Airbnb. So it's just stupid little thing, but just these little things that not once anywhere in Tokyo, did I see root beer? Or anywhere else, in fact, but for some reason in Hachioji, they're like, yeah, we'll give you some fucking root beer. You need root beer while you're trucking, I guess. All right, train's coming. So I'm going to get on this train.

I'm going to get on this train.

Alright, my first official adventure back in West Tokyo. I did a little preview of Ome station last week, but this is the first official one back. Right now I'm walking past a little trout farm thing, just a nice stream. Going across a little bridge, just beautiful fucking mountains all around me. Like right by me now, not in the far distance, they're like right here. Oh, there's some people hiking along. Maybe you can hear their bear bell. They're like across the stream for me and I can hear that bell. The bell makes a lot of noise. That's one of those things that, you know, I guess theoretically I should have one, but I've heard arguments for and against the bear bells, whether or not they're really that effective of, I guess the idea is it's just supposed to warn a bear just so you don't stumble upon each other. Just so a bear knows you're coming by and the bears tend to just go away from the sound. But that clinking would drive me fucking crazy. There's just no way that's not, if I had a bell on me all the time, I would just go nuts. Even just in like games like Dark Souls, if you wear the plate armor that 15:00 makes a clinking sound every time you walk, I got to turn the sound off. I'm just like, God, fucking dammit. I can't take it. So I was glad to see that there was two sides to the bell debate and that I'm not just being completely negligent by not having a bear bell, but also the only bear attacks that have happened in Japan this year are in northern Japan and in the north island. And I'm really not going that far. I mean, I'm still very much in civilization right now. There's a foam booth. I'm just going to walk through a little forestry access pass because I want to get to Congo Falls because I did this earlier and I got to the location of the waterfall and I didn't realize that I was just seeing the little weird foot of the waterfall. There was a hole and a chain and I was supposed to climb through there to see the actual waterfall and I didn't see it. But the reason I want to do this mission right now is that I'm going in backwards this time. Before I went to Kamene Park and then followed some pretty well laid out paths. So it really wasn't too hard to find the waterfall and then to funnel out to exit to this little weird back street area that I'm at now. But I've learned through tough hard experience through my grizzled experience. The going backwards is a lot harder. A lot of these like obvious tracks that seem easy to reverse engineer are a lot tougher than they seem like they're going to be. Like for example, I'm at a crossroads right now and according to my map, I think I'm supposed to go to the left here. But in my mind when I think back to when I walked this before, it just didn't look like this. I was looking at it from the reverse angle. Okay, yeah, no, this is looking familiar now. As I turned this corner and look back, yeah, this view of the bridge. Okay, I did see this for sure because I remember I tried to take a picture of it and the pictures here just with the fisheye nature of my little Google Pixel 2. I can't really alter it. It's not one of these cool phones with three different lenses. It's just got the one and it's not good for these like depth pictures where you have like different layers. Where in front of me, I got like a big gulch with some water flowing end of bridge and behind it another bridge and behind that, the mountains. And yeah, the picture didn't work out at all. Okay, so I'm going the right way. That's good. But yeah, I wanted to do this first because I just feel like there's a pretty decent chance this isn't going to work out. It seems like all I got to do is walk down this road to the forestry access path and just follow that path. But if there's anything on the way there, it felt like a singular path on the way out. But maybe there were other routes that I just didn't see. You know, as long as I was just being directed back out to civilization, it all seemed very easy. But there may have been all kinds of shit that I just was not aware of that I'm going to see now as I go the other way. So in case this fails and I have to do another run back through Kamine Park as the entry point, which that'll be no problem. That one will go easy for sure. But if this one fails, I'll do that one later down the road. I got about two weeks in this neighborhood. So I thought let's just do this right off. Let's kick off with this one. Go see a waterfall.

Man, it's so nice to just take this quick little ride. It's literally one stop from where I was hearing the, I'm very had a little lamb jingle, to Hyjima Station. And then from Hyjima, it's whatever, five or six, just this little mini-line to Musashi, it's Ukaishi. And it's so dang beautiful. I was thinking that because I came here in the fall, I thought maybe if I go down south to Fukuoka and then when I come back up to Tokyo, maybe it'll suddenly be like a severe swing into wintertime weather.

Man, it was only in Fukuoka for three weeks. I think I was. It felt like a long time, but I guess, I mean, I guess three weeks is kind of a long time, but it felt longer than that in a good way.

But then getting back to Tokyo, everything looked normal still. It didn't look at all like the weather had changed and it hadn't temperature-wise and stuff. It's still pretty dang warm.

But then when I got to the neighborhood, my Airbnb is in, I was like, okay, maybe this is it now. 20:00 Maybe I couldn't tell in the city just because the city just always looks like a city. But now that I'm out here, everything's beautiful again. I think the problem is or the issue or whatever is just that the neighborhood my Airbnb is in, Hachioji, it just doesn't have any evergreen trees. So all the trees out there are very spindly and naked. It does look like winter. I noticed that this morning as I'm walking around, I'm like, oh yeah, there's that bleakness. There's that kind of winter death feeling. But now that I'm out here, it doesn't feel like that at all. You know, there's like a little bit of discoloration in the leaves and stuff. But if anything, most of the leaves that are going to change color have fallen. So the evergreen stuff is just even more green now than it used to be.

It's still just like fully beautiful. But yeah, just to take the nice little easy, quick ride out here. It's so nice. Such a nice feeling.

Yeah, so here's this first path into the woods. But I remember I sort of experimented briefly with this on my way out before and it was filled with spider webs. And I was like, okay, I don't even know what that is, but whatever. So it's the next one that I want to go down. So I noticed on the train, on the way here, the girl next to me was reading peanuts comics, you know, Charlie Brown, Charles Schultz. And I was like, oh, that's a strange thing to read. I didn't want to make it too obvious that I was looking at her. I just tried to glance over little microglance. But then I realized it wasn't in Japanese. It was in English. And I thought, oh, that's a kind of good idea. If you want to learn English, a little gag comic like Charlie Brown, that's a good idea. You might be a little confused as to how it's supposed to be funny. I can see that being an issue. But as far as just short sentences and simple language, that's a good plan. But then I noticed her book was not a peanut's book. It was some other book. And I was like, is she, she's not hiding that in there. Is she like in school when you hide one book behind another book? So people won't know she's reading peanuts comics. But no, I think it was just a textbook. I think it was. They learned English book and they just used peanuts as an example.

Now that I think about it, I think I've seen Snoopy in specific. I think he's like the, because he was like met life or whatever, right? For like life insurance. I think he's the mascot for something here in Japan too. Maybe that same thing. I don't know. So I guess that makes sense. And I mean, next to Garfield, it is like the most famous comic strip. So yeah, maybe it's not the funniest thing in the world, but whatever. It's probably a good, good choice. You can't really do old school Andy Cap where he's just like getting drunk and falling in the canal and literally beaten his wife. Old school Andy Cap was fucking crazy. But I was also thinking that would never work in reverse. I mean, I haven't read a ton of gag comics from Japan, but all the ones I have are way inappropriate for general readers. Like crayon chinchan. crayon chinchan is still really popular out here. There's like a movie that just came out. There's a whole chicken chain called Nene's chicken that seems to be based on Nene who was like chinchan's little friend from school, I think.

And I first read chinchan like 20 years ago. And it was already old at that point, I think. And yeah, it's still going strong, but it was like a good example. He's just this little kid who, a lot of the jokes are him misunderstanding or like deliberately misunderstanding what people are saying. So it's like these Japanese puns that don't really make sense to us. So it's a hard thing to translate anyway. But like one of the early strips that made me go like, oh, this is awesome. Is chinchan's mom is always trying to reel him in and stop him from being such a fucking dentist the menace. But instead of just a slingshot in his back pocket, he drew an elephant face on his stomach so that his dick was the trunk. And then he just goes outside and stands in the yard and is like greeting the day, Mr. Elephant greeting the day. Yeah, it's safe to say if you tried to do the reverse. Like, oh, we'll try to teach people Japanese with some nice chinchan fucking strips. Oh, there's a kid's dick. I don't know, North America probably would be like, I don't want the fuck-wise this in a textbook.

Yeah, and also my little sore throat is mostly gone, but I think it's already moved on to kind of stomach problems. I definitely kind of wish I had stopped at the washroom at the family mart I just was at to buy a cart and a coffee for this journey. But you know, I don't feel terrible, but definitely some some stomach probs a little bit. But overall, this is pretty miraculous. Like, the reason I've been so paranoid about getting sick all the time on this journey is that I'm not a person who doesn't get sick. I easily get sick usually. And it was kind of weird during COVID because I just didn't talk to anybody, you know, I just hiked around in the woods near my house. And our drugstore shoppers drugmart, it was the place where it had automatic doors that open when you go, you know, near them and a self checkout. So I just would buy any groceries and stuff I needed without having to talk to anyone or touch anything. And no problem, I didn't not only did I not catch COVID, I didn't even get sick for like three years. But then when things started opening up more, then I was getting sick all the time. Again, just normal colds, but it's like, fuck, like those real bad ones. So it's like two weeks minimum that you're like two weeks where you're like really sick. And then the little more on the end where you shaken it off. And the first episode of this podcast was about me getting wicked sick in the Netherlands and arriving in Japan and having to shake off a cold. So yeah, I don't know, it's just pretty fucking miraculous that I've managed to avoid getting sick. And then even this time when I definitely did catch something unquestionably, but I'm like rushing through it, I'm cycling through it super fast. And it's, I don't know, man, it's just fucking cool. So here's something I noticed from this perspective. I don't think I can get there. This is weird. So I'm walking up this creek and there's a big, it's going to say pile of rocks, but I guess it's just a mini mountain. It's just part of the mountain with trees going out of it and stuff. This would be very hard to traverse. But there's a little shrine behind it. There's no way I'm going to try to clamber over there. It's really hard looking to get to. And it's all mossy and it looks like it's long been forgotten. But that's weird what the heck is that doing there? That's kind of cool. You know, I definitely hit the point while in Fukuoka, where I just officially had my fill of temples and shrines where it's just like, okay, I just don't care anymore. There's just so many of them. It doesn't feel special anymore. But when you see a little weird one like that, that's kind of cool. It's hard to even see that it's there. And you really have to work to get there. You would earn it if you got to that thing. I ain't going to earn it though. I'm not going.

I heard an interesting thing, though, about how the Shintoism and Buddhism technically a lot of people identify as one or the other, if not both. But people in Japan really are not particularly religious in the way that we would recognize. They don't really have some deep attachment to their religion like people do in North America and other places.

But one explanation I heard is that the true religion of Japan, the unlabeled one, is that if you really wanted to pick the thing that everyone is observing and everyone is taking serious and that guides people's decisions, you could say that the religion of Japan is Japanese society.

And that makes a lot of sense, because even just watching people just a little stuff like watching them on the subway, the politeness and the way people bow to each other and the way people interact. It's like walking on eggshells all the time to make sure you're not overstepping a bound or stepping on someone's toes figuratively.

And almost everyone does it and they do it to a degree that we certainly do not.

Like I remember I mentioned it, it's one of my very first experiences I ever had in Japan is just getting on the Skyliner to leave Nareeda Airport, and that the guy who went in to clean the subway car did about to the empty subway car as he left. 30:00 Even though no one was there but me and he did not know that I was watching, he would have done it whether people were there or not.

And that does feel very much like a religious observance and it is just a sign of how strongly Japan tries to maintain its societal norms.

Which on the one hand is like, yeah, I mean, again we're just not collectivists like that in North America. I don't know that I would want things to be that way in North America. It feels like there's a lot of potential bad stuff that can come of that. I think we're probably ultimately better off just being haranging and knowing individualists like we are, because it's annoying that no one can tell you what to do and that everyone just goes off half-cocked to whatever they want. But on the other hand, everyone does whatever they want. And that's nice, you know.

But then there's also stuff like, again these examples are so shallow. But the washroom thing that I just wish we had washrooms the way they do in Japan, everyone did. But it would just never work, like when I am in like a quiet neighborhood late at night, like when I was near that cemetery by Napoli station. And there was just a washroom just right there. Oh, there's actually someone coming up the road in a truck, the only person I've ever seen on this road.

But that there was a washroom right there with the lights on and the door open and just a perfectly pristine toilet right there.

The only reason they can actually do that is because they care so much about maintaining societal norms. No one's going to fuck that place up, no one's going to wreck it. If they do, it's like a very rare event. We're in North America, the idea of that washroom not getting wrecked and not immediately just becoming completely disgusting and possibly non-functional. I mean it's 0%, it can't happen.

So on balance, you know, as much as I would like everyone to be polite and I would like there to be washrooms that didn't get destroyed in North America. It is a steep price you have to pay to have that kind of thing.

And ultimately, as annoying as North Americans are and especially United States Americans, ultimately it is better. It's just better to be more individual and just to be able to go your own way and have your own thoughts and say what you think.

Me and Japanese society, we would not get along if I grew up here. But as a visitor, man, there's some serious upsides.

And speaking of this mission not working, I found the path that I knew wasn't the right one.

But I have not found the right one yet.

And I feel like I've been walking a pretty long time. So I'm wondering if it wasn't as recognizable as I thought. Maybe I can't find it.

Yeah, there is a marker on the map that I don't know if that marker is at the real spot or not. I've definitely walked quite a bit past it, however. I'm halfway to some other. Again, it's in Japanese, so I don't know what it says. But in English, it says city or town hall.

Looks like the same guy driving back. And a little beyond this city or town hall is a garden center. Let's just keep walking then.

Even if I don't make it on this particular waterfall journey, again, who cares? I'll just come back and try again from the original route. Because I'm just walking in this completely deserted road through the mountain. But it does have power lines going all the way through it. And there's at least one guy in a truck. And I passed a parked car. It seems hard to believe a city or town hall is right around a few more of these corners. But let's just go. Let's just see what the fuck this is. Because then on the map, this road just stops. It just ends.

So I don't know what the heck this is.

Well, that almost tied in fucking perfectly to what I was just saying. Because this town hall thing, or whatever it said, where it was like city, center, or town hall. You know, even Google Maps didn't really know what it was referring to. That there's something there. It's like a lodge that had washrooms. And I was like, well, holy shit. What could be better? That's exactly what my rumbling tummy needs. But I really am in the middle of nowhere. It's just too far from anything. Because there was a gate across the main little driveway. But it wasn't locked. So I was able to open the gate and go in. But unfortunately, the washrooms. There was a men and women's and they were both locked. So end of December in the actual fucking middle of nowhere. Yeah, that's the step too far, even for Japan. Those washrooms were not available. And it was unfortunate because, yeah, like I said, I got some kind of stomach bug. I had to sneak away into the woods.

But probably into an area where no fucking human person will ever go, ever again. And certainly not before. It rains once or twice to wash away my misdeeds. But you almost saved me at the last second Japan. That's still pretty remarkable. Like even though I'm here at the wrong time of year and the place was closed. The fact that in my moment of like geez, my throat doesn't hurt anymore, but my belly's kind of messed up. And I don't know where I am. I'm just walking down a random mountain road just disappears on Google Maps. And that there was washrooms. There were washrooms here that I came that close to being saved. This fucking amazing, you know. I gave you points for that one, Japan. That's still, I think that counts.

But as for what's beyond this road, whatever, it started to become an uphill walk. And I did pass one guy, a younger guy with headphones in and an older lady who seemed like she was looking for like, you know, I don't know if this is the third time a year for that. So maybe it's not what she was doing. But when people go gather wild vegetables and stuff, I've seen people in North Japan, the Go North Japan channel. He does that sometimes. He goes out with people he knows that locals that know what is edible and what's dangerous and stuff and they gather wild vegetables.

But I mean, he's in the north. Maybe you can do that here this time of year because it's more temperate. I don't know. So I mean, I did pass some people. But the fact that that thing was completely shut down, that lodge. And the one truck I saw go by immediately came right back. And on Google Maps, it just disappears. The road just stops. I'm like, you know what, I don't care enough. I don't care enough to keep going. Especially uphill after you just took a crap in the woods. I don't know. Feeling a little whew. Having a big poop always takes it out of me. Now let's stop talking about that because it's apologies for, I mean, if you're this deep into this podcast, I guess you're all right with it, right? You don't mind hearing about me pooping in the woods probably. Anyway, I'm turning back around. I'm going to go back to the falls. I'm going to resume the original plan because I'm sure there was just a turn-off that I missed somehow.

Or possibly that first one that I saw that I thought wasn't the right route. Maybe it was. I don't know. If I don't see something super duper obvious, I'm not just going to wander into the freaking woods. I'll just bail out of this plan. But assuming I can find the turn-off, I mean, I'm only 20 minutes away from the original plan. It's not like I've wandered too far.

That's the perfect example of what I was saying about trying to reverse engineer a plan. When you come off of a mountain path, even in this case, I mean, it was like a forestry road next to a stream with a big sign, a big rusty sign that says forestry road access. It feels like that's hard to miss. But you're coming off of that bumping into a road. That's just way easier than the reverse. Where you're just on a big long road, and now you just got to find that one point. I don't know how I walked past it. And then there's stuff like here on the other side. There's a little man-made bridge, but it's like a really sturdy well-made bridge. It's just like the length of a two by four, but it's with like three two by fours and little slats across it, and it's got like a metal railing. It's a pretty good path. And then it goes up into, maybe I will explore this a little. 40:00 I just got to see what this is, because it's so distinctly something.

And then it's got these like paths up the side of the mountain. But these look a little different than what I've usually seen. Instead of little stairs, these are just like diagonal logs laid down to kind of make a series of almost like ramps going up the side of the mountain. I mean, there can't be anything up there. It's just mountain.

I don't know. I'll go up a little ways and see. But it's so weird that it's such a distinct start to a trail.

But what could this possibly be leading to?

Yeah, and of course I'm back to basically the West Tokyo Slash Fukuoka life where my day ends at five o'clock. You know, I got to start reeling it in about four o'clock. And by 5.30 it's going to be dark.

That was definitely one difference being in Tokyo center didn't matter. What time it was, you know. Then the city lights will just turn on.

So around here my days are a lot shorter, but my Airbnb is so close that no problem.

And apparently I'm incapable of sleeping in, so that helps.

Alright, so I walked up that trail. I see. Now it's connected up to a much more real trail through these mountains. Cool.

This is like a hidden trail along the side of the mountains that I had no idea was here. But it's on the wrong side.

And there's less than nothing on Google Maps.

I guess there's just nothing in this direction at all.

But it does go higher up into the mountain. I don't know, this is very cool.

Definitely something I would do if I lived around here.

But like I was saying earlier with the bear bell guys, you know, I'm just doing these little tiny treks that just barely take you outside of civilization, where even if they're closed, they're still washrooms, you know, there's signs everywhere and stuff. I think this is a perfect example of a place I should not go without bear spray or bells or proper equipment. It's literally just a path up into the woods. It's fucking cool that it's here, but that is not for me. That is not what I'm here to do. As you passed an older guy on the way here when I went across the first bridge, leave in the city, leave in the proper city, who had like the two hiking poles and everything.

That's what this is. That's the, get a backpack with supplies, have your two hiking poles, do a real mountain hike.

I am a, I'm a poser. I'm a pretender to the throne. And I think that's a fine thing to be, as long as you know, that's what you are. You know, I always think of that guy Christopher McCandless. They did that movie into the wild about him. And it's a very exciting story. This guy who just kept living in the woods more and more until eventually up in Alaska, he went and lived in an old abandoned bus for the winter.

But the, I mean, it just keeps getting more and more severe. I read the book also after, and it gets into more detail, that rather than getting kind of better at preparation, it seemed like he was getting worse. Like the last guy who saw him, who dropped him off before he trekked out into the Alaskan woods, said he just was like not properly dressed. It's like winter is coming guy. What are you wearing? This is all you have, you know, and the guy tried to convince him, like, come on, let me drive you back to town.

Like, this is not a good idea. It's like that dude, McCandless, he just wanted to keep pushing things. He wanted to prove how little he needed, how much, how well he could survive with nothing.

And then he starved to death, and then when they found him, he wasn't even really that far. It was just that the route he had originally taken flooded out, so he couldn't come back the original way he'd come. 45:00 And with that one route blocked off, he didn't know how to escape. But he wasn't actually that far from civilization, you know, if he had a better understanding of the terrain, and if he had been better prepared, it probably wouldn't have been that hard for him to get out of there and survive. But he was like pushing it, you know, that was what made him excited. He was like, wait, and I got like nothing, and I'm foraging off the land and I'm living and surviving. So as exciting of a story as it was, I always very much keep that lesson in mind of know your fucking limits, know who you are.