#78 The Amazing Ome Hills Hiking Course, Tokyo

Transcript

Well, it seems like having a backup plan in West Tokyo has been serving me well. Maybe that's a little less useful if you're in the center of the city, because who needs a backup plan, you'd just walk around, you know, and just whatever. There's a million things. But out here, it's been good that if I have some kind of plan that's not fully working out, have a backup. So my original plan today was to go to because there was a sign there when I was there the other day of like whatever their local peak is. I'd forget the name right on the top of my head. But that it was about an hour and a half to get to the top. And then another 40 minutes if you wanted to go to the second peak. And I was like, that sounds alright. Maybe I'll try that. And I was looking it up a bit yesterday, and it's a little tricky because if you search for anything around Mittake Station, Mount Mittake is all that comes up. It's all Google wants to tell you about. And that one sounds much more like a Mount Takaio situation, not not that severe maybe. But definitely not what I'm looking for where it's like a tram part way up. And then the first half of the hike is like a paved road. You know, some of the people commenting on it were like, am I even at the right place? Like I'm just walking up a paved fucking road. What is this?

A paved path. So it does connect to other peaks as part of a great big day long super trek seems fine. But as a place to go on its own, that's definitely not what I want to do. But then this other mountain whose name I don't recall. And I'm looking around on the map and it's not coming up yet. It's like if it's not one of the huge mountains, it's a little tough to figure out the names of these things.

But I did look it up and basically it seemed like it was one of these cases where you're walking up a mountain, but you're not necessarily aware so much that it's a mountain. It just feels like walking through a path in a park because it's so forested and wooded over, which is fine. That's generally how it is in Fukuoka. And that's kind of how I like it because when I was in Okutama the other day, and I was on this really small, extremely steep mountain. And it was very scary feeling. It felt like I was just in the sky. Not a good feeling. I like to be in a mountain that's a little more gradual. So this all seemed pretty decent, but then they were saying like, when you do get to the top, there's a view. It's all right. I don't know. I guess it's like weird to read reviews in some ways because it's like a little, people seem a little non-plussed. And I guess the idea of it being a there and back hike is also usually I just tend to walk around in a big loop, but obviously that's a little tough with mountains. That's not always possible. Again, good old Fukuoka, man. Fukuoka is the best. It's almost always possible in Fukuoka. The mountains are just the way they are. They're not that huge and there's the city on the other side of them, and you can just keep going.

In this case, though, it would have been at least 90 minutes, possibly a little over two hours. Both ways. Just go up, then come down. Which even that, just the idea of doubling back. There's a lot of little things that I'm like, I'm not necessarily excited about this plan. I just kind of want to try going up one of these millions of mountains near Okotama, but it's just like not important if I do or not. It doesn't really matter. It's just like maybe. This one seems okay, so we'll see.

But then today it was very overcast. It's kind of how I expected the weather to be every day during the winter. I thought that's what I was signing up for by coming here in the late fall. And it's been amazingly beautiful and clear almost every single day. Today, though, pretty overcast. The weather said there was definitely a chance of rain. Yet another reason to maybe not want to be an hour and a half into a hike where the only escape route is an hour and a half back.

But I woke up relatively early. The snoring guy was still snoring, but like at a normal degree. I don't know what happened a couple of days ago. It's like he was fucking possessed by a demon. That slept pretty well. Got up relatively early, by which I mean like 9 to 30. It's hard for me to get up real early. And it wasn't trying to be fair. I was like, I'll just see what happens. Let's see when I wake up.

Yeah, all the little points of the day, just everything takes longer than you think. Getting ready in the morning, then walking to Kita Hajiogi, then waiting for the train, then going to Hijima, transferring to Ome. And then when I got to Ome, it was a little after 11 by that point. And it was like a half an hour wait for the Okutama train because it's still on holiday hours.

And I was like, dude, that's like, man, just half an hour of sitting here. I felt like that was maybe enough little pieces of just a little nudging away from this plan that I was like, maybe I shouldn't do this plan. By the time I get there, it's going to be almost noon. It starts getting pretty dark with all the mountains around here. I mean, by four o'clock, it's noticeably getting dark. By five, it might as well be like the sun has never existed for an ounce of time ever in history. So I mean, it would be still like cutting this a little close. And that's just not comfortable. I just don't want to do that. I don't want to have to rush. I don't want to have that in the back of my mind. It's like even this quite easy mountain hike. I think I just really, if I want to do this, this is the sign that maybe I just won't. I think I really do need to just get up really early, like real early, and just get fucking going.

And I don't know if I'm going to do that. I might not. However, as I was searching around an alternate possible plan revealed itself that seems like it's more my speed anyway of wanting to just traverse through a place to go from point A to point B and not have to go back to point A.

So when I was at Ome originally, and I had a bit of a hard time getting to the trail system that south of Ome, I had to kind of brute force my way through a bit of the forest because the path I like lost, the path lost integrity. And I had to bushwack my way through for a bit. But then I got onto this trail system that was pretty extensive. And there was people up there and there were all kinds of different ways you could go and whatnot. And I still haven't figured out how you're supposed to properly enter that, but it looks like it's called a trail course. And it's just kind of for all purpose hiking or jogging or whatever. There's a couple of specific monuments like landmarks that people have pointed out. It's like there's one enormous rock, nothing too major, but just some stuff. But it turns out there's not just that one to the south, there's one to the north as well that goes from Ome to the station two stops from Ome where I was the other day.

Hina Tawada, which also has a mountain somewhere around it. Maybe I'll do a little more research when I get there. But yeah, the right up I found about that was starting from Hina Tawada coming back to Ome, but that would still require me to wait half an hour for the train. So it's like, I think I can do it in reverse. This one seemed a lot easier to find to pinpoint.

I checked on Google Maps and just north of Ome Station is Nagayama Park, N-A-G-A-Y-A-M-A Park, which I've just entered right now. And then it's got the good old green dotted line, Ome Hills Hiking Course. And who knows once I'm in this thing, it could have also many different trails and paths, but there's certainly one major one. Oh, there's even a toilet on there. Look at that. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, it goes away. It looks like I could keep following it for a while and still get to a road that's quite easy to follow back to Akusa Bata, which is the station where the terrain really turns into the mountains. So anyway, yeah, this one is quite easy to get to, not easier than the one to the south. And yeah, I mean, it's just, instead of a up the mountain and back, this one is just a across the mountain. But it's still going to take me all afternoon. And it's just nearer to everything. And apparently there's a toilet on it. It's everything that I like.

And as soon as I decided on this plan, as soon as I was like, yeah, you know what? Let's just do that. I just don't want to wait half an hour for this train. That's a long wait.

As soon as I left home a station and started walking toward this park, the sky opened up and the sunlight came through. And right now it's a little 50-50. A couple little raindrops that have fallen on me, but it's still quite clear. There's quite a bit of blue sky. So it could go either way right now. But I just thought it was funny that the moment I started moving this way, the sun came out and started shining. And I was like, all right. All right. I think we made the right plan. I think this is the plan for today.

Man, I think this is kind of perfect. This really worked out well. I didn't realize until I put in my headphones here that I could... I can hear traffic from up here. I didn't realize until I turned up my recorder. But that makes sense because this is very close to civilization on both sides. Basically, it's a ridge line that you can walk along. It starts out paved, then it becomes just a dirt path. And now at this point it's covered in leaves. So not a lot of people have been through this particular part. I'm heading towards some kind of building. Maybe it's a shrine. Actually, I might be at a dead end. I think I might have to go back. But basically, there's city on both sides. There's pretty much continuous views on either side. I can see city on both sides of me. And there's lots of trails down. You can pretty much escape from here anytime you want and just go down to the city on either side. Very casual, but very nice because there's lots of openings in the trees and lots of beautiful views. And already I've been impressed and I've only been up here like 15-20 minutes. Yeah, I am at a shrine. Here is the gate that came in the back way.

At this particular shrine, we've got empty Santori whiskey, some coins, a 50 cent coin, a big spender.

The actual shrine is closed, closed up. And it looks like a Yuzu, but it's huge. Like a great big Yuzu left as an offering. So yeah, this is kind of neat too because yeah, this shrine for example would have been an entry point. There's like all kinds of ways into this thing. And the hiking course on the other side was nice too, but it was way more forested, way more in the woods, which if you're looking for that, I mean that's what that is. This one's kind of cool for the opposite reason that it's way more open to the air. Yeah, I'm just like looking down these steep ass stairs. I'm definitely not going down there.

But this looks like it's the Biganji Temple, B-A-I-G-A-N-J-I.

But yeah, I'm going to head back and get back on the main course, but yeah, I can see Ome down below me, see the cars driving by. Yeah, this is nice because I was thinking how, yeah, I don't know, I just might not. I don't have that many days left out here. I might not get around to a proper mountain ascent because I think really I'm just not a mountain climbing guy in the sense of straight up and straight down. Because one thing about this little trip is I've been learning a lot about myself and I've definitely been learning that the destination is never the point. Like my famous waterfall rants or whatnot. Just getting to a place for the sake of the place doesn't fire up my brain. Heading through a place is what I like. So I feel like ascending a mountain would be very similar. To get to the peak just to say that you got to the peak, you know, just to put that check mark. I did it. I've been to the peak of this mountain and that mountain and whatever. I just, I really don't, I don't care about that at all. You know, I care about the experience of traversing. Getting there doesn't matter. Don't mean nothing. And it seems that these straight up and straight back mountain trails, I mean they are just going to be. One guy, for example, he described the, the other hike I was looking to do today as monotonous, which was kind of one of those things when you get the translated reviews that are translated from Japanese English. There's some weird terminology that I feel like is probably not quite right. Like monotonous is probably not quite what he meant to imply. But sometimes those translations, they really kind of slap you in the face with how direct they are. You know, like I bet that's kind of true. 90 minutes on a continuous uphill path where all you can see around you is woods. I mean that kind of is monotonous. Where this is like ups and downs and left and right, different ways you can go, different shrines I've passed, different people I've seen, and just views. There's all kinds of, there's so many views up here that I've already seen like three different placards explaining what you're seeing in the distance. Like here's this mountain and here's this temple. A little person with binoculars, like check it out. This is very cool. I like this a lot.

There was also what I was ranting about at that scary mountain in Hirokutama, how there was a little cartoon mom with her kid. I saw the same cartoon mom with her kid. That's just a standard graphic for the maps of the area. So they weren't implying at all that a mom and their kid should go up those terrifying nightmare stairs to death's own. 15:00 They just, that's just a common piece of clip art that they use. So that's good. They're not insane and they're just not fully mindful of where they're putting the happy family.

Man, that was one serious issue with Google Translate when you use the Google Lens thing to do real-time translation, because this has happened to me a bunch. And today, I was finally like, why? This is actually kind of fucking me right now. Why does it keep doing this? Is that obviously a lot of Japanese writing goes vertically rather than horizontally. And there was a sign with a bear on it, which I mean, I guess, there you go. Information passed on. There's bears around potentially. I mean, again, because I can see a city on either side of me, I don't think that's actually a thing I got to worry about, but good to know that, you know, it's possible, you know, it's good to be aware of, I guess, because like that happened one time when I was in my hometown, or Fredericton, New Brunswick, during COVID, one time a family of bears managed to cross a couple of different highways and get into the big park, in the middle of the city. You know, it only happened once, but it is good to be aware that you never know. Once in a blue moon, it's possible a bear could find their way to these places even when they're really close to civilization. So it's good to know. But I wouldn't like to read it, you know, just in case there's any additional information. And yeah, of course, I could learn Japanese, but the problem is like the way this Google Translate thing works is it did translate it, but then it spits it back at me in a horizontal format. And the lettering is so small, that if I zoom in all the way, I still can't hope to read it. It's just a serious design flaw. It's completely ridiculous that it does that. There should be some way to change the layout, or just a copy, all the text and paste it somewhere else, and to just a text document so I can just read this, please. It's kind of cool that it translates stuff directly on the image. the first time I ever saw it, it was like a little magical special effect, I was like oh really cool but it's not practical, you don't need to do that, you don't need to make sure that the writing, the translated writing is at the exact right point on the sign that the original lettering was, if you're going to present it in the wrong format and make it literally unreadable, that's fucking annoying man, and I can't be the only one that's having this problem, I assume this is one of these things that will be changed in the future but for now, thanks a lot Google, I can't read this shit, you're not helping, you're so close to helping, here we go back on the main trail, yeah there's a little bridge that I'm crossing over this gorge and it looks like of the main peaks, so yeah there's this little like train yard museum thing that I think was closed right now, so peak one and peak two I have passed, I'm in here, so there's one, two, three more for this segment, and then the trail definitely loops down to the train line, should I want to do that, yeah and this is just kind of neat because there's so many ways to, you know when I was at that temple a minute ago, that went down off the side of the mountain on the omay side, but now there's a path that goes down on the other side, which what even, like what is over here, I don't know it's just like a little neighborhood, I don't know that it even has a specific name, maybe it's also just part of omay, yet to park, to sheet a clinic, health food store, children's playground, so yeah it's just just some civilization on either side, man what the heck is this, there's like just a bunch of ram shackle old sort of dilapidated little sheds around here, these little metal boxes and a backhoe, so maybe this place is still kind of in construction, but there's a big monument here, and of course it's like some kind of weird Buddhism shrine, so here we go from the front, it's got a statue that looks quite new, like a golden statue presumably of the Buddha of course, but then it's like this big monument that does not look like anything I've ever seen before, it looks like a mantle post, it's like got a big ball on the top 20:00 and then it tapers down into this building, this is weird, it's not on the map, but yeah I mean this statue, I mean the place doesn't look especially new, it's kind of run down in general, but the statue is still very golden, and it's not weathered at all, so maybe this place just isn't quite on the maps yet, it is weird though how I've kind of gotten to this point where at first all the shrines and temples, it's so like magical, as are many things in Japan, it's just like wow I can't believe this is here, it's so beautiful and it's just right here, I was just walking along and I found this cool amazing neat place, but then after you see literally hundreds of them, they're just everywhere, there's a strange genericness to it where it's like man, there's like a lack of creativity, it's just another temple, it's just another shrine over and over and over and over and over and each one has its own little style, but it's all kind of the same thing, yeah it's a little disappointing, when you're not into it in a religious way I guess, where it's just like, it's like god I don't know, we don't really have any particular ideas for what to do here, let's just put up another temple, just put up a shrine, whatever, you know, I apologize for my blast for me, but yeah it's just the definition of, it's really cool because it's so unique and different, I mean this is a weird thing to relate it to, to relate these religious areas to anime, but it's very much how I felt about anime, I saw some anime as a little kid but it was all just the translated stuff that they throw on TV, I didn't really get to watch proper anime until I was a teenager and back then it was hard to get official translations so fan translations were a big deal and I just remember every show seems so awesome, you know, I'm like, and I cannot believe how good cartoons from Japan are, they're all amazing, but I did start to realize after two or three years, the reason they initially seemed amazing is because it's a new set of cultural cliche, it's a new set of assumptions, you know, Japan just is like okay here's how a story goes, here's how a character acts, here's how all these things should be, and it's different from how we approach those things, so it seemed to me like every single show and every single manga and every single story of any kind from Japan was like incredibly creative and vibrant, but then after a while you start to realize oh, they're all vibrant in the same way, they're all doing this strange unexpected unique thing, but they're all doing the same strange unexpected unique thing and then I realized I go it's just that it's a different culture, it's just coming from a different place, it just has different assumptions about character motivations and how plot should work than North America, so it seemed exciting at first and I kind of feel that way about these shrines and temples, at first it's like this is fucking great, I can't believe someone made this and put it here and maintains it, it's so cool, it's beautiful, but then you realize they're just everywhere, it's like oh yeah well, so yeah I guess I don't feel that the spark of joy anymore from the temples and the shrines, but I suppose the least I can do is at least not fucking harp on about it, so I won't, but the last weird thing that happened yesterday which ties into the weather, which it looks like it's basically cleared up, although the clouds are a little bit back, I don't think I'm going to get rained on though, so I can't complain, and I especially can't complain because there was a chance that the weather was going to be way worse today, because I got back home at like I don't know eight o'clock or something, I hadn't had internet all day, and I got an Instagram message, novel pod on Instagram if you want to see pictures from Japan, and one of my kind listeners messaged me like hey I heard about the earthquake in Japan, I just want to make sure you're all right, and I was like what the heck that's the first time here in of it, so it turns out there was actually quite a bad earthquake, this was January 1st 2024, because I put out these episodes much much later than when they're happening in reality, I just walked past a hiker, I've kind of hit the point now where there's not very many other people that were dog walkers and stuff at first, and yeah I'm looking down at the city and I'm quite high 25:00 up here, but yeah this is not at all the scary kind of high up, this is a very wide road, you could usually drive a car on here, and even the edge of this it's not like when I was at Mount Takao the other day and I was losing my shit, this is one of those ones where if I fell down, you know, break a wrist, spray in an ankle, I'd be fine though, really high up, really amazing view, not scary, so yeah there was this earthquake that from what I was reading was like one of the worst ones since like 2011, and the coastline, the northwestern coast was just getting getting fucked, they had to evacuate a bunch of people, sounded like a very bad scene, but in Tokyo apparently it wasn't a big deal because I have no idea where I was when that happened, I didn't notice it at all, and just doing some Twitter type research, I did see other people in Tokyo saying that they felt it, but they didn't mostly realize it was an earthquake, it was very very slight in Tokyo, so that's lucky, not lucky for the affected people of course, but lucky for me that Tokyo seemed fine, and then they were saying potential for tsunami today, and I'm like well, holy fuck, well I guess I'm staying inside, but even within by that evening, by later that night, they'd already removed the tsunami warning, so like okay no, it's not, you're all right, you're all right, so yeah this overcastness today is not surprising, but definitely nothing I could complain about, it could be a lot worse, and there's some more hikers, and a random path up into the woods, let's try this, and there's a whole bunch more behind me, so this is definitely quite a people, quite a people drought, quite a few people, but not in like a, a crush of humanity way, just like a nice comfortable, yeah, well I wouldn't you be up here, this is awesome, it's very easy to

get to, all right this route up just went to a nice little observation any platform with a seat, and yeah there's a rooftop here too, good to know, just in case it rains, but up here is a bear sign that I can actually read, so that's good, it's laid out so that Google Translate doesn't fuck me, and it says bears beware, a bear appeared on the Nagiyama hiking course, be careful when entering the mountain, so yeah good to know, it's one of those things though, this sign is definitely old, it's definitely been here a while, and I remember there was a similar sign out at Kamene Park about a kid who got a bit by a snake, but the sign with the year was 2008, you know, kids grown ass man now, I guess this did happen too, not just in Fredrogens, but on the other coast, in Vancouver once, what is the name of that park? I should have like downloaded maps where all the cities I've lived just so I can look up the names of things because I keep forgetting, but there's a big park up on the hill, not far from Port Moody, and I remember I was walking through their ones and some people were like hey did you hear there was a bear up there, and I was like oh crap no I did not know, so I never came anywhere near that bear, but apparently there was a bear in there too, it just it can happen for sure, definite bear potential, but yeah I guess I don't quite know what to do about that, except to continue to beware, continue beingware.

You know, I was just thinking because this side of this mountain, I mean, it is steep, but it's not, like I say, it's not death steep. I was thinking, like, in the unlikely event that I did meet a bear. I bet I could use my monkey powers because this is a steep, but not deadly steep mountain with lots of trees growing out of it. I bet I could monkey my way down the side of this mountain. Yeah, totally. It's just really not that bad. However, it would be that bad if you're a bear. If you're a giant-ass bear and you tried to come down there, you would tumble to your doom for sure. My biggest worry then would be a bear falling on me. I think I could and now again, this is not a test to the gods of fate or whatever. I'm not asking for this to happen.

I do not ever want to have to test my metal against a bear. Hello. But yeah, I bet, I bet. I feel like I could slide down the side of this mountain very successfully 30:00 without hurting myself and I don't think a bear could at all, though I could be wildly underestimating bears. What is that sound? Oh my goodness, am I being rained on?

Yeah, wow, how weird. I just didn't even notice. It's actually been warm enough that I took one of my layers off. Well, I do have my little umbrella with the broken sprocket tucked away in my pocket.

I guess this is the time. Compared to a tsunami, I sure can't complain about this.

Hmm, is it even worth it? This is really light-rate and it could stop anytime. I'm going to hold off.

I got a water-resistant coat. Not waterproof, not big-time Gore-Tex, but good enough.

And I can see still patches of sun in the distance. I'm going to bet on this passing. The other weird that I thought I had, and this is such pretentious nonsense, what a fucking. I bought one of these bags a few days ago of a sorted Japanese sweets from 7-11.

Oh, yeah, this Airbnb guy. He's real nice, by the way. In the little mini fridge in my room, he left me a piece of New Year's cake, which I then saw at the loss in yesterday. It's like five bucks. Pretty fancy-ass little cake, very delicious.

And I was like, oh, thank you. Thank you very much. New Year's cake, can't say no to that. But yeah, I had this bag of the Japanese, a sort of Japanese sweets, and I just hadn't really been eating them.

So when I thought I might be heading up the mountain today, I just cram my daybag full of them, from like, all right. I don't know how long I'll be up there. I should prepare. And then I think probably wisely. I'm not up there at all.

Oh, and here's a little shelter next to a pretty view of the city. Let's just hang out here for a few minutes. Maybe the rain will end while I'm here. But yeah, I was eating these as I walk along. Oh, Jesus, even an umbrella here at this shelter. But it's just the one. I will leave it because I have an umbrella. And yeah, that's my umbrella philosophy. Even if it's kind of a communal umbrella, I feel like, unless you really need it, you shouldn't take it unless there's a whole bunch, unless there's enough that you can leave some behind. But one of these little Japanese candies I was just eating as I went, or like weird little bakery things, it's like a little, like a little breadball, but it's probably not bread. I'm not really sure what it's made of. But with bean paste inside, but it's kind of designed to look like a chestnut.

And I mean, I know I'm eating the mass produced 7.11, probably the worst possible version of this thing. But to me, it's delicious and cool and neat. And just as I was eating it, I just had this little thought. I mean, I'm walking through, walking through the Japanese mountains, eating Japanese candy. And then just had this little thought of like imagining I was like a, a Japanese grandmother way back in the day, making this stuff and your kids eat it. And they're like, yeah, it's so delicious. It's just this weird little, weird little daydream that is probably not at all related to reality. I'm just taking my image of a Japanese grandmother, my image of an old timey Japanese house. This candy that I'm eating that I don't really know what it is or even how to make it. And just combining them all together into a little imaginary memory for a moment. But I just like that because that kind of crap happens so much when I'm here. Just just, you know, my little movie, video game, anime, manga, idea of what's going on around here or how the past felt around here that I really don't know anything about. Why not? It's just fun. Make it up. It doesn't matter if everything's not quite accurate. It doesn't matter if you don't have all the facts. And I don't know. It's just a stupid little thought. But that kind of thing happens to me a lot here. Or I'll just be walking by an apartment like in central Tokyo and just imagining the person who lives there. It's just like, you can have these little, you live these little lives in a few moments and it's just neat. Yeah, geez, this is the rain already stopped. I'm holding my hand out and I don't feel anything on my skin because it's weirdly hard to see it. It's hard to see the rain. Yeah, I think that's it. I think it passed. Nice. Okay, no, there's a bench out here with a bunch of rain drops. So I just stopped to stare at it and I can see like little splotches of rain still popping up. They had so light. I really can't, if I can't really tell that it's raining, I think it's safe to continue on. It's functionally the same as though we're not raining. This would happen to me a lot in Vancouver. I don't know, maybe it's because 35:00 I wear glasses. Can other people see rain drops? I can't. Anyway, because Vancouver has like constant, misty, annoying little piddly rain all the time. I have to look at puddles to tell if it's raining sometimes because it's overcast all winter, so that doesn't help. But yeah, just like look down at a puddle and see the little drip drops of rain and it's like, uh, so it is raining after all. Oh man, this view is crazy. This is really good. I'm at a point where I think in the spring or in the summer, this view would not be this good, but I'm above the evergreen tree line and the trees around me, all the leaves fell off them. So it would make a terrible picture because there's all these like branches in the way that detract from what's going on. But with a human eye, it's just very easy to just mentally not focus on the branches and it's like, wow. I can see a crap ton of Ome, which because there's that other forest and that other mountain right on the other side, it's kind of not that much to see. It's pretty small, but it's kind of cool to see the whole thing. Man, this ridge is a little bit ridiculous. Like you just go from one really sweet view to just a little ways farther. There's another higher up, even sweeter view. This is like ridiculous. The sun just came out too. So it's making a double good. Oh, this is on the map, actually. This is labeled in Japanese, so I don't know what, but it's just past the purple toilet, which that was an extremely rustic toilet, but hey, technically it was a toilet, but it wasn't one of these like amazing, you know, you find a toilet in the middle of the woods or in the mountains, that's just the craziest best thing ever. It was not that, but I'm just to north of Miyunahara Station, and there's a very distinct path heading that way, so I could bail out now for sure, but it's only 120 in the afternoon. That's the nice thing is like I didn't start early enough in the day for maybe for climbing a for real mountain, but even that, I mean, I'm really high up. I wonder how high up I am. There is a topographical version of Google maps if you have internet. Sadly, the downloaded version doesn't include that, but I'm pretty fucking high up, man. I mean, I'm looking at the mountains around me, and they don't seem that much higher than here, and this has the view. This is really good. Like, I could see doing this in reverse. This is a very good path. So yeah, I'm going to keep continuing on, because I guess Hina Tawada is the other place this goes to. I'm just going to see where this takes me, but I'm going to, since I, it's still early in the day, you know, for this type of journey, I got started extremely early. I got all the time in the world, so I'm going to try to avoid the train line and see if I can stay up here on the mountain ridge, because theoretically, this will go all the way to Iku Sabata.

So if I can pull that off, I'm going to try to stay up here in the mountain. But yeah, dude, this is, this is, I'm going to say amazing. I'm giving it a full amazing. This is really fucking great. What a just insane, like so many, so many viewpoints, although I do think that I guess this time of year is helping. I'm just realizing now all of these trees around me would have leaves on them, although that'd be beautiful in its own way. But at this time of year, man, I can see everything. Yeah, at this point, I'm so high up actually, where before I was saying I got a view of all of Ome, and I could kind of peek through the mountains to the east and see a bit of a ways, but now I can see over the mountains. I can see really far east.

I don't see any particular landmarks, but I can just see a shit ton of Tokyo.

And then on the other side, a shit ton of mountains. Fuck me, man. It's so good. What the fuck? Japan is the fucking best. It's the fucking best. Like what the hell is this? This is insane. And again, like this, this feels very Fukuokaish, where all the mountains are so accessible. This is so accessible. I mean, I've just walked by a bunch of people. Some guy went by me early, just listening to his radio. This is nuts, man. It's fucking awesome.

You know, I wonder from an exercise perspective, just from a pure burn in calories going up and down perspective. I mean, it seems like 90 minutes up a mountain is pretty severe, 40:00 but I'm doing a lot of up and down here too. I wonder how they compare, because I just had to go back down the hill to backtrack and then back up a very steep part.

But anyway, the reason I went back, time for our classic segment, Toiletalk. The sun is fully out now, by the way. The sun always shines on a pooper. It's fucking beautiful. But I realized, if I'm going to try to go the entire way on this trail, as far as I can get it to go, before it is forced to connect up to the train line, because of all the mountains, like that for real, crazy mountains starting. The fact that they labeled the washroom I had just passed suggests that if there were other washrooms, they would also be labeled and they are not. That might be the only one. So I was like, you know, I better head back down the hill, backtrack to that washroom. And I had only used the urinal attachment on my first time passed. I opened the door and it was a squat toilet. So I'm like, well, all right. Here's a new layer of difficulty, a new expert mode. I've never tried a out-in-the-woods porta-potty version of a squat toilet. Surely this is going to be bad. But what I was surprised about, now hear me out. In this case, where it is just like total campground style holding the ground toilet, I think the squat toilet might be better, because it's awkward at first. It's a little bit of a tight squeeze in there. I wish it was a little bigger, you know, with my gangly legs. I've got to pull my fucking jeans all the way down to my ankles. So my stuff doesn't fall out of my pockets, which speaking of, I've got to be careful that my bottle of water and my bottle of coffee don't fall out of my jacket pockets. Just, you know, all that type of edgmin before you can prepare for the process. And then it is just squatting stuff on the legs. Always surprising to me, because I guess saying, I mean, I'm going up and down and up and down, tons of mountain climbing shit. I'm way up in the air right now. But squatting is just a different beast. It's hard on the legs. However, the great part about it, I still run into tons of squat toilets all around Tokyo, and I always avoid them. You know, it's almost always quite easy to avoid them. But in this case, it seems like a pretty big bonus that you're not touching anything. It reminded me of like when women say they hover, like, I don't want to sit on a public toilet, so I hover. And I never really knew what that meant, because if it hurts my legs, just squat. How do you hover? It's like that thing people do where they just sit against a wall. You know, you sit with your legs 90 degrees against a wall. You see an ease bet 90 degrees. And it's like a serious test of like, how long can you do this for? How do you do that over a toilet? How is that possible? Like, that's magic. I honestly don't quite know what they mean by hover.

How do you do that? I don't know. But here, you don't need to. Like, what I'm trying to say is, if that were a Western toilet, I wouldn't want to sit on it. I've never been to a portapoddy that I wanted to sit on. It's gross. We're here. The fucking hole in the ground was certainly not pretty. But I wasn't touching it. I didn't have to come near it. I was just squatting. I'm like, I think this is actually better. This might be the one case where you just really don't want to sit on this thing. A squat toilet is, I mean, it's basically the equivalent of just digging a hole and squatting over it in the woods. Hey, I don't know. It's just a surprising realization that I'm like, this isn't bad. This is good. And I also have tucked away my little day bag. I've got my little 7-11 tissues and some fucking wet wipes and whatnot just for situations such as this. But they had toilet paper. A nice big full roll of toilet paper. And then I noticed, as I was finishing up, there's like a tin box in the corner. And I was like, you know what? I bet there's toilet paper in there. I bet there's backup extra rolls of toilet paper. And I opened it up and not only was there an extra roll of toilet paper, there was like a little first aid kit. It's like, fuck yeah, Japan. Fuck yeah. For like terrible shitty washrooms in the fucking sky, it's the best terrible shitty washroom I've ever seen. So once again, 10 thumbs up for Japan's 45:00 handling of toilet culture. God damn it. You nailed it. So good. Oh, here's a crossroads. Which way do I go? I mean, I guess just generally speaking, probably to the right, probably just away from the city. But let's see what these signs have to say about that.