#80 Hiking up Mount Mimuro, Ome, Japan

Transcript

All right, I'm doing a little exploration of Ome today, or just past Ome. This is the only downside. This neighborhood is pretty cool because it's the land of backup plants, you know. I had vague ideas for hiking up a mountain today. That's definitely not going to happen. I'm just going to explore and see if I can sort out how to possibly make it happen in the near future, but there's so many other things you can do. The only downside is at Ome itself. This is where you've got to transfer to go further toward Okutama.

And it is the shame this train doesn't just continue straight through. You do have to transfer, and it's a bit of a weight. But I guess this must just be because this is the point where the train just, uh, the rate of trains just slows way down, you know. It can't just pass through because that would be way too many trains going to Okutama. I found out too, by the way, the five o'clock song. I don't remember the actual name of the song. I was written in like 1919. I remember that much, but uh, this is kind of neat, but another reason for it, how I'm always shocked when that song starts playing. And it is supposed to be five o'clock, but it plays earlier. It is normally five o'clock that it plays, but it's been playing a little earlier around here because by five o'clock it's too late. You know, by five o'clock it's already nighttime, so they just have to play it 430 or whatever. But part of it where I'm always surprised when I hear that song play, and I'm like, where did that come from? Where are all these hidden speakers that I can't see? They just pop up out of nowhere. But it turns out one reason why they play that every day is not just as a way to tell kids to go the heck home. It's to test the speakers to test the emergency system in case there is something, you know, evacuation type stuff that has to happen. It's a good way to make sure things are always working if you play it every day. And it's like, yeah, that's actually pretty cool. And definitely just something that would only happen in an island nation like this where there's way more chance of that kind of weather happening. It's like a little bit eerie in a way, I guess, that constant reminder of like, you're always on the edge, you never know when something terrible is going to happen.

Today, though, man, beautiful day, beautiful blue sky, super clear, super sunny, a little bit windy. Pretty damn nice.

I'm surprised, actually, I'm really wiped today because the snoring guy who was next to me in my Airbnb is gone. Thank fucking God. Literally unbelievable. Like snoring, it's so crazy. What a crazy phenomenon that a person in the room next to me can fuck up my sleep schedule. I've heard snoring can hit the decibel levels of traffic. And I've heard people say chainsaws, but I don't know, is that true? I mean, I believe it. It's fucking unbelievable. It's out of control how loud snoring can get. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Why am I talking about that? He's gone. He's gone. A man never meet a single other snoring person in my life. I'm sure that's a realistic wish.

But I was up kind of late. At least not because I couldn't sleep this time. It was my own doing. It was like, instead it was like the joy of like, yeah, I'll just stay up and then I'll sleep in and everything will be great. Not an amazing plan. But I did sleep in. I thought I'd feel a lot better today. I think literally I got one drink. And I think I haven't quite shaken it off because last night I was doing laundry. And I really do just like laundry. It's just fun to go to the laundromat and just to have that enforced downtime. You just can't do anything but wait for the laundry. And I just like that feeling sometimes. Instead of the push, push, push, go, go, go. I've got to get to the station, got to go look for a mountain, got to go up and do whatever before it gets dark. Like I'm always kind of moving all the time. It's kind of nice to just stop. Just got to stop and do your laundry. And while the laundry was happening, I just went across the street to the 7-Eleven. Just bought some bean sprouts and some noodles and hard boiled eggs. I can just put those all together. Just whatever. Some odds and ends, some stuff. And then I bought a drink, which is pretty rare. I don't drink a lot while I'm out here. But I don't know. I just felt feeling that good vibe. And last night I guess it was raining a little bit too. I made it extra weirdly cozy. I just went across the street to the 7-Eleven, get the stuff, go back to the laundromat, chill out. That laundromat too, it has massaged chairs. I've never seen that before. It's like I didn't try one, but fancy pants. While you're waiting, you can get a nice massage in the chair. 5:00 I wonder though. I mean, I watched a YouTube video once about running laundromats in America. And just the grind of it, you know, of you're just making all these quarters out of this machine. Nowadays, I assume it's probably more charge cards than coins, but it is a real grind. It's not like anybody's getting rich. If you can, it's better to open a bunch of laundromats and they hopefully will all trickle in a little bit. What does this train say? Okay, it says Tokyo. I'm just going to make sure I'm actually on the right platform here. I think there's only two platforms at Ome, but that's one more than it makes it extra clear where to go. So I wonder, like buying massaged chairs, the initial expended chair must really be a kick in the ass. And then I wonder if it does work out. Do people get massages? How much did it cost? I don't know. Anyway, in that cozy vibe of doing laundry, I saw drinks and I'm like, yeah, you know, if I'm going to go back to the Airbnb after this and make my spicy sesame noodles with fucking bean sprouts and hard boiled egg, how about I get a nice drink? Why not? That could go with this. Could get a strong zero. I always gravitate towards strong zero, even though it's way too strong. But then I saw these like high ball whiskey, just in a cool black can. It looked really cool. And I was like, yeah, you know, the one thing with strong zero is it's really sweet. It's like a sweet sour candy drink. Let's get a real drink. Let's get a man's drink. So I got this. It's just a normal beer cansized thing. It wasn't big or anything. But this thing was brutal. It turns out it was also 8%. I didn't really look before I bought it. I think strong zero was 9%. But this thing tasted like death. I'm not totally sure how it works in Quebec, where you can buy booze and convenience stores. I think that's the only place you can in Canada. But in the States, I know the stuff you bought at the convenience store was like, malted kind of. Like with stuff like smirnovice, the kind you get at the liquor store is different. It has real vodka in it, say. And the kind you get at the convenience store. I don't quite know what malted liquor is, but it's some form of like, they use beer.

But beer that kind of has the, it stands in for the hard liquor. I don't know. Anyway, I'm quite sure in Japan it's the real deal because this thing tasted, tasted like, I mean, what it was, just soda and whiskey.

And it was really strong and it tasted really bad. And I was like, dude, I should just drink half of this and save the other half. But I ended up drinking the whole thing. And I think just that one drink, I think I just haven't shaken it off.

I think that one drink messed me up. So I guess I just shouldn't, shouldn't buy that shit. All right, what is this train? Is this what I want? Okay, here's the day. It took a minute for the side to change. to Okutama, but okay.

Sorry, I should stop Yammer into myself, but basically I had a slow start today, so I'm just going to make my way out a couple of stations past Ome and then I'll tell you what my plan is for today. What an odd day, it is like really hot, like uncomfortably hot.

I had to take off one of my layers and I was sweating earlier. But then it's also very windy. It's one of the windier days that I've been out here. So it's a strange combination. But anyway, my plan for today is when I was at Hina-Tawada station the other day, this is the station two stations west of Ome, there was a sign outside of the station with local trails and mountain stuff you can do. And one of them was Mt. Mimuriyama. It was one of the most popular places in the world. 10:00 And one of them was Mt. Mimuriyama.

That appears to be a walk past a shrine up about 650 meters and then it appears you can go back down a different way and then you'll be about another station and a half further west. So I thought this would be a cool thing because I've been finding lately that 500 meters is about as high as I can go on a mountain before I start feeling weird. So it's like, well that'd be an experiment to go a little higher and see what that's like. Because I suspect it really involves just the terrain. If I can see clearly a steep, you know, view down, I will probably feel terrible. But if I just am in the woods, I won't know I'm that high at all, right? I don't know, I'm a little curious. And I've been hesitant to do the zare and back again hikes because, you know, you just go there and you come straight back the same way. If I could find a through hike, that would just be more interesting. This appears to check both of those boxes. Easy to get to. Not that high up. And you can come down a different way than you started. And of course you can keep going. You can go across this mountain range all the way to Okutama. Probably all the way across freaking Japan if you wanted to. But you don't have to. It seems like you can easily go up this one and come right back down. But then I was trying to do searching last night on the desktop internet-enabled version of Google Maps. I'm like, well surely this is, this is the moneymell in here, right? Way better than my pre-downloaded maps I'm usually dealing with. And I could not find anything about Mimorayama. And maybe it's a bit of a problem with trying to translate from Japanese to English. Maybe that's where an issue is coming up.

I'm not sure. I mean there's a lot of mountains around here. So I did find at least similar mountains in the vicinity and just clicked on the little, the few little reviews people have left. Because again, it seems quite weird to just review a mountain. But it's a bit handy just in case there's anything very obvious you need to know. And I guess what I saw was not extremely enticing because it was like, hey ever since they started clear cutting up here, the view's actually pretty nice. Like before you would just get to the top of the peak just, you know, and you could say you made it to the peak but you couldn't really see anything or have a true awareness that you're on a peak. Now you can, but because they're clear cutting trees, I'm like, hmm, like I just haven't done a lot of getting up to the top of a mountain stuff.

Because I kind of get the sense it's not really what is interesting to me. Getting to the peak for the sake of getting to the peak, I don't know that that'll mean much to me. So going just straight up, getting to a peak with no particular view, coming straight down, you know, it's like, I don't think I want to do that necessarily. And maybe this is somewhat along those lines. You know, to me the journey is the much more interesting part.

Such as the Ome Hills hiking course they did the other day, which was just along the ridge line of the mountains, was generally pretty low. It never got higher than 500 meters and that was unusual. And it had tons of views the whole time and you're just walking across the mountains. To me that seems like that's more my speed than up and down.

But I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on. Like what I was seeing on Google Maps was just not really lining up with this. I took a picture of the map outside of the station. And I was like, I just don't quite see how this all works together. So I thought, you know, why not just go? What better way to find out than to just actually go there in person?

And just see what's happening. See if I can find a clear path. See if I can find a clear this is the hiking path up to the mountain. And then I don't have to do it, especially because it is kind of later in the day now, because I just couldn't get my shit together. The beauty of this omay to Akutama stretch is there's all kinds of other stuff I could do. I could do that omay hills course again, the reverse way. And I could do it from any one of like five different stations. You know, there's so many different ways up there. So no matter what kind of time limits I got, what kind of time crunch I got, that's always an option. Then there's also just the walk along the Tamar River from Matake station. That's pretty minor little walk. Doesn't take long, but I mean, if you're that one you could do any time. If you've got 40 minutes a daylight, you could do that one. And, you know, I might do that one in reverse at one point. I don't know, I might not, but whatever. Just that there's options. There's all these things to do in this neighborhood. So I don't necessarily need to pull the trigger on this plan. However, on the train here, 15:00 it's funny that I couldn't really sort of what was going on last night with the full-fledged Google Maps on the internet. Just on the train just now, I was just on my little pre-downloaded map. And I just had to zoom in further. And then I saw Mount Memorow. It's like, oh, there it is. It's right there. How come I couldn't find that yesterday? That was weird.

So I'm walking toward it. I'm walking past Umeino Park right now.

There's some steps going up into this park. This seems to be the beginning of the journey. It's 130, so I've got like three solid hours before it's like, hey, get off the mountain time. Oh, here's a bunch of gravestones. There's the cemetery as part of this park. But basically I'm looking at the real mountain right now. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't look that bad. There it is. One thing I learned first in Vancouver, but then over and over out here in Japan, is it's sort of shocking how little time it takes to get up a mountain. When you go straight up, when you're not meandering your way through like a forestry access road or something that needs to stay flat to allow cars to drive. If you're just hiking straight up, man, you can get up an extremely large mountain in like 40 minutes.

You know, it's really not a big deal. So now that I'm here, even though I started way later in the day, I'm meant to do this earlier. I don't know. I just haven't decided yet. I'm just going to go a little further and see.

Because I can obviously bail out whenever I want. There's plenty of other stuff to do in this neighborhood. But I guess, yeah, I just want to try to find a very distinct like, okay, you're here. This is where it begins. And then from there, I'll either keep going or I will bail out and come back earlier in the day.

And yeah, this actually isn't too far from the other day. I tried to forge my own course out here by going down the 238 highway through the mountains, because it looked like there was a trail there and then there wasn't. So that plan didn't work. So this is only just slightly north of there. And yeah, I definitely learned that day that just because something looks like it exists on Google Maps, that's really not quite enough. So this is kind of the reverse. I'm having a hard time pinning this down on Google Maps, but there's a real life map in the actual neighborhood saying, yeah, this is a thing you can go there. So I mean, it's interesting in that regard. If nothing else, Google Maps has been a great help to me in these wanderings through Japan. But let's see how the local maps do because I mean, hey, they're probably much, much better. I guess the beauty of Google Maps is you can just access them from wherever. But if you're in the actual place and you got the real map from the area, that's probably way awesome. I guess we'll see though.

Geez, that's one thing that's interesting too is the pre-downloaded map of Tokyo. It's like a gig. It's really big. It's a huge download because there's so much information that needs to be crammed in there. And the Fukuoka one is a lot smaller. I think it was 200 or 300 megs. But I decided to go grab other cities I've been in just because I've had a hard time referencing them, especially like Vancouver. I'll think of things that remind me of Vancouver, but I'm trying to reach back in my memory and remember what these neighborhoods are called. Or the park where I heard that there was a bear in Vancouver. It's Monday Park. I never would have remembered that in a million years.

So I decided to download the maps of Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam. You know, just places I've been, Montreal. Just in case I want to reference them.

And they're so tiny. Like you can download the map of the entire Vancouver area for like 70 megs. All the Canadian cities are like that. And I just think that's kind of interesting is there's just such a lack of density. You know, the Tokyo one. It's truly, it's truly wild. I mean Tokyo is a very big city anyway because it's like five fucking cities in each one of those cities as eight cities in it. But yeah, it was still a surprise. Just judging on that. Judging purely on the size of their downloadable map. Tokyo is fucking mental. It's fucking, it's a lot going on.

It's all right. I'm passing out of this neighborhood. Now I'm just walking up. Still a paved road, but just walking into the woods. And there's just like some trucks here and stuff.

This is feeling very similar to the first time I came to Ome. And I just kind of brute forced my way in through a path nobody uses anymore. This is feeling quite a bit like that, but presumably I'm heading toward Cotahira Shrine. But the road on the map is about to disappear. So I don't know. I guess let's just walk and see what happens.

Okay, so yeah, the road on the map is done, but it immediately becomes an unpaved road. There's a sign in Niyo Tokyo, Ome. I don't know what that is.

Here's a Tori Gate with some steps that go up. Mountain Ode, five kilometers, Mt. Matake, 7.6 kilometers. And a sign that just says four mountain Ode, my plan is not to go to those mountains. My plan is to go to a closer, smaller one.

But hey, all right. We got a sign pointing in the direction. Got stairs leading up into the woods. Oh, here's another map. Okay, this has times. So I am at the star. The time is going in reverse. It starts with an hour 40, hour 20, 40 minutes.

It's a little odd that the time is backwards, but if that is correct, if it's an hour and 40 minutes to the shrine, and then there is a trail leading away from the shrine back down to the J.R. lines. I don't know. I mean, it seems like actually there's one, two, there's like three different ways at least referenced on this sign to bail out and go back down to the train line.

So, yeah, I guess I'll just go a little further and see what happens.

Man, there's these beautiful forest fire signs, which is a weird thing to say, but they really aren't gorgeous. I saw these in Fukuoka a bunch where it was a deer surrounded by flames. And it's like a, it's less cartoony than most of the stuff is here. It's kind of more of a serious painting. I just found one that's a rabbit surrounded by a forest fire.

And of course, all the hate don't start forest fire stuff. It's just really gorgeous. They did a really good job on these fucking signs.

This is an extremely nice path. I'm pushing through because it's only 20 minutes and I'm halfway up this mountain already. I guess it's the thing with mountain climbing is the length that adds time way more than the height. Because I mean, I guess my clearest example is Mount Apariyama in Fukuoka, where you can walk up the spine of the mountain in like 40 minutes, 45 minutes, but to walk down the forestry access road takes two and a half hours. So, it certainly wouldn't have hurt to start earlier.

Bells and dogs. I don't know what's going on here. I have to wait for dogs to pass or are they going a different way? I don't know.

I'm a little confused about what's going on here. So I just passed three people that did not have a dog. I did see a guy with a dog and he just disappeared. Where did he go?

But I definitely hear a dog in the distance.

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like, is there someone's dog out there fighting a bear? Like, why is the dog just barking? What's happening?

Anyway, I guess I won't talk over dog barks. I don't know what's going on. So I'm just going to go a little further and see if anything becomes clear.

Alright, now that I'm higher up, I can tell that the dog is actually down at the ground level. It might just literally be somebody's dog in their yard. 25:00 Because yeah, I can see through the trees a bit here and there's the city. It's not that far. And it's just, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It just won't stop barking. But that does make sense. It's funny just how your brain works where I'm like, man, I can't believe how quickly this is going. I'm like very near the top already. And it's been like half an hour. So obviously, I'm not far from the town. But because all I can see is trees and this mountain trail, it feels like I'm deep in the woods when I'm only half an hour away.

So when you hear a dog bark, it just brings up these images of something terrible is happening in the woods. Should I be scared? Should I turn around? What's going on? Just like, no, like right behind you is the neighborhood. Nothing's going on. It's just a barking dog. And I mean, of course, it would not have killed me to start earlier just to have flexibility, just to have options. Not that there are many options. You know, I've come to one branch so far. That was the keep going up or go back down.

Which is, again, just great. Nice that those options are here. But I've passed quite a few people. Yeah, this is nice how easily this one all came together. And this is a really nice path.

So yeah, the sun is still high in the sky. I've only got two hours. So I mean, it really is going to be just this. Just up to whatever this one peak isn't out of here. But that's fine, although definitely I should have started earlier just in case. Because again, this is like the easiest pedestrian fucking citizen day pass. You know, this is exactly the kind of mountain hike for me.

There's a siren, of course. Fill in your bingo card. What would be on the bingo card?

Sirens, toilet talk, something about hair maintenance, drink machine, random esoteric thought or opinion on something that has nothing to do with anything.

But yeah, this does make me think of just stuff I haven't thought of in a while. There's this guy, Quinlan. His YouTube page is Go North Japan. And he does for real hiking in North Japan. Up big ass mountains where you need crampons and poles and preparation. And there was a story from a year or two ago. It didn't involve him directly, but it happened in his area. I think he's in a latte. Where it was basically the same thing I'm doing where everyone I've met is coming down. They probably did much bigger day long hikes that they're finishing up now. Where I'm doing a small hike at the end of the day. Where realistically nothing can go wrong. I mean, even if I just had to, if it somehow got suddenly dark. And I pulled out the fucking flashlight on my phone. Actually, I have two phones, so it would take a lot of time for both of them to die. And I could easily go down this path and it would be no biggie.

Winter time is obviously different. It was this lady who was doing this similar thing where she was just starting the hike late, starting the hike going up at the time that people were going down. And she didn't make it a storm hit when she was at the top of this whatever mountain it was. And she died of exposure. And it's like, that's creepy.

So I mean, things like that do cross my mind. Like I should have woke up at 8 a.m., not 11 a.m.

But my natural woosiness keeps me pretty safe. None of my particular adventures are really all that crazy. And here's a little tourigate. I'm at the shrine.

Let's look up its name because I forget.

Yeah, it's only quarter after two. Actually, I got a lot of time.

Yeah, this isn't so bad actually. I really didn't think this was going to happen today because as a guy, I'm just taking too long getting going.

Kotahira shrine, K-O-T-O-H-I-R-A shrine. And yeah, it appears that I'm over halfway to the peak already. So yeah, this is no problem.

But yeah, woke up late, and I'm quite close to here, but there's still various little transfers. And the half hour wait at Ome just to get two more stations is kind of a kick in the dick. But this actually ain't so bad, I still got. More time than I thought I had. I'll range through the Tori Gate, up to the Shrine. One thing I realized though, the other day on the Ome Hills Hiking course is how much I like just eating while I hike, because I mean 30:00 I'm definitely a furnace. I've always known that about myself. Like once I'm hiking uphill, my body just turns into a flaming inferno. I got to take off both of my coat and my jacket. I'm just wearing a t-shirt and I'm sweating to death. I just like burn up heat like crazy.

I'm a super metabolism machine. And I realized the other day on those Ome courses that I could just eat continuously the whole time and never stop. Burn fuel, spend the fuel all in one spelt motion. But it's like tough to actually get enough food to do that, you know, things that convenience stores in Japan are small. But I need is like one of those like Costco super economy size like 20 granola bars. So instead what I bought is just those, the bag of Japanese style sweets again. It's like four bucks. We're pretty big bag of like a dozen of these little little like little button pastries with various sugared pastes inside. So they're good, good for hiking energy. And the paste actually keeps them from getting too dry out. So that's nice. Whew, all right. So there's a little break in the trees here. There's a view. And yeah, my little test of like how do I feel at different elevations. So if this mountain is 650, I'm probably about 500 now. And yeah, I don't like it. I don't like how it feels. I'm too high up. That city is really far down. So I mean, this is an interesting discovery on my hiking journey as well. Is especially Okutama, but even around here near Ome, maybe it just is too much for me. I'm like a cross country hiker. I'm a hike across an area guy. Still hear that dog barking. Well, I mean, I like going up. I like the physical activity of going up. I don't like being high in the air, which isn't at all surprising because I've had fear of heights since, you know, started developing when I was like 17. When I was a kid, I had no fear of heights. My brother used to, our parents had this cottage and we used to tie a rope to these trees and put on work gloves and just like literally repel down the side of this rocky cliff face. Didn't think about it at all. I noticed when I was 17, we went to Disneyland for like final family trip. As me and my brother were becoming adults, I was on a roller coaster universal studios and I was like, that felt so bad. Man, I hated how that felt. And that's when I started to realize things were changing in my little inner ear. But I never really noticed this hiking. I guess why I like hiking is because the gradualness of these mountains allows me to go high up without feeling like I'm high up. And that is absolutely how it is in Fukuoka. But yeah, here in Tokyo, in the Ome region, Hojiza, I'm a little higher up. I'm at the real shrine now. It's quite a small shrine. What do we got here? Box of wine. Ball moushe. Is this also wine? I don't know. Oh, and this is kind of nice. It's like a shredded fish and just a mixture of nuts under a rock. So I'm going to leave those because that actually might be useful for a hiker if they need some quick snacky energy. And I've seen this before too. It's like a little New Year's. Is this food or is it just a toy? It's like a little, the top is definitely a toy. Like a little white chibi dragon looking thing. And then under it, it's just like two dollops circular, I don't know. And it's just like, is it just plastic? It seems like it has a New Year vibe.

I don't think it's food. I guess I got to try to translate this because I just don't know what the fuck it is. Anyway, from up here, the view is even better. But yeah, it's a little eerie. I don't like it. So I guess this is bringing into question like, why am I, what am I doing? If I don't like these views because they're too high up, what am I doing? I think just more and more, it's becoming clear that like that Ome, Ome Hill's hiking course, that is my perfect thing. I want to hike across. And the peaks and troughs can happen. You still get your exercise of going up stuff. But to just go up, but just actually up a mountain. This ain't my favorite. This weirds me out.

The decoration is made of plastic and cannot be eaten. Okay, so it's not food. I don't know what 35:00 this is. Weird. It's just weird that I've seen two of them.

Ooh, even like I'm just taking a little picture and I should really walk closer to the railing to get a better picture, but I don't want to walk closer to the railing. I'm just gonna lean, stretch my arm out because I don't like that feeling.

It is a beautiful view though. All right, let's get the fuck out of here. Fuck you beautiful view. You freaking me out.

Oh yeah, so this is something too that I've seen three of these so far. So there's a little post directing me. It's like a gas canisters. You know those plastic gas canisters that have a a cap on either side, like two caps on on each side. Kind of a long and oblong shaped. They're buried into the ground and I was like, I wonder if these are water or gas. So I opened one and I couldn't smell anything. So I guess they're just water. So I mean, that's pretty neat too. Presumably if you need some fresh water, that's in there. Pretty handy. And this already feels way better now that I'm just away from the edge. Now it's just a path through the woods. Delightful. So yeah, I think this is just the overall story of anything west of Ome. I mean, it was really severe at Okutama, but even here at this point, yeah, there's like a level of steepness to mountains that it definitely makes me uncomfortable. The area around Ome is awesome. That was like wonderful. I had never had any experiences in Fukuoka that really freaked me out. All those mountains are quite small and gradual.

But pretty much everything around here to one degree or another, I can do the physical part. I can do the hiking up. I mean, I'm even doing a podcast as I go up. I'm even getting better at that.

I just don't like the feeling of being at all near a cliff side. I ain't no cliff hanger, that's for sure. Man, do you ever see that movie? I don't remember the guy's name, but he, there's this really insanely steep mountain called El Capitan, and it's about a guy who does free climbing. He just did not use ropes and stuff, and he just climbed it by hand. That movie, scarier than any horror movie. The movie was hard to watch, very interesting though, and he did not as of this recording die, so that's good. But other people did. It's a very crazy thing to do. But yeah, when a mountain hits a certain level of steepness, because this was a question I had. Like, why not just wear a parachute? But it's because if you fall, it's not exactly 90 degrees.

Oh, here's a power, power tower. So basically, you don't fall fall. You can't open a parachute and sail away. You know, you just keep hitting the side as you go down. So there's no ability for a parachute to open. You just get really, really hurt before you die. Horrible. Oh, here we go. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, now I'm back in the nice version of a mountain that just feels like walking through a path in the forest. No biggie. See, yeah, the thing's so bad overall. But yeah, those, those parts though near the edge, yikes, that ain't for me.

All right, I'm at the top of Mount Memorow. Nice little breeze blowing, which is nice on my sweaty body. Not much of a view from up here. You can sort of see through the trees a little bit. See the city down below. But actually, I'm fine with that. I've come to learn. I don't, I don't want the view. I don't like the view. The view freaks me out. I actually prefer this where I don't feel as high up. So yeah, here's the little sign, 646.9 meters. There's not like one of these big official signposts. This is just a little sign made by people because this is definitely, I think this is why I had such a hard time searching up this peak is this is not one of the big boys. This is not one of the money peaks. This is not Mount Matake or Mount Odake. I was it called? I don't know, whatever. There's a bunch of famous peaks around here. This ain't one of them. But this is enough for me. 646.9 meters. Officially, the highest up I've ever been. I assume actually, I don't 40:00 know, the grouse grind in Vancouver. How high up is that? Anyway, that one hardly seems like it counts because that does not feel like you're on a mountain at all. It's just this giant, you know, it's like a chalet up there. That's a very gradual. There's nothing scary about that route at all. But I guess I just thought of that. I shall look that up later. But this is among the highest I've ever been. I think this is, I think I can tie a little bow on the Okutama area. And it's only 240. Nice. Nice. Yeah, that was a very, very quick did not take long to get up here. But I think yeah, I've teased out this understanding of myself that these style of mountains, these very steep mountains that are around Okutama. I mean, this is only two stations beyond Ome. This is before the severity even really hits. This is as gentle as it's going to get around here.

And it still is just like a little too much, a little too uncomfortable as I was passing that shrine even, just on the way up from there. There's just little ways where, you know, just looking down the steepness of one of the gorges, you know, that just goes down a little too far where you can't quite see the bottom or just peering out between the trees and just seeing other mountains around or sometimes city in the deep distance. You just can't help but have an awareness that you're really high up. You know, I thought maybe just being amongst the trees, it would be abstract and I wouldn't feel it. But I could. I could just always feel it a little bit. And it's just too much, so I don't like it. It's uncomfortable. So I'm not a mountain climbing man. I think that's safe to say, which is a shame because I'm so good at it. I mean, my legs are like just fucking pistons. I'm just walking up this thing and like just having no problem. I'm like, dude, it's like I'm not tired. I'm not winded. I think it helps that I'm so skinny too. I'm only 150 pounds and I've got these big fucking awesome legs from walking all the time in a very light upper body. Like the actual hiking up is just so not a problem. I'm so good at it. But I don't want to be up here. Yeah, like I said, this is as easy as it's going to get and it was just a little, a little freaky. I just didn't like it. The, yeah, again, that Ome Hills course that I went on two episodes back. I'm just going to go do that again. That is my platonic ideal. That is perfect. I want to be, you know, ideally two or 300 meters up in the air at most and just walking along a ridge just up and down and up and down for all afternoon across the mountains. Going up them is not my bag, son.

So now from here, there were signs in the crossroads and stuff, but they're unfortunately not in English and not translatable because they're not like official signs. They're just like, you know, carved into wooden stuff. I'm going to go a little farther and see if I can find like a very distinct sign of an exit. Because my original thinking was like, oh, I don't want to just go down the same way. It's so boring. Let's go a different way. But like now that I'm up here, before, well, two, three, four, yeah, I got two hours before it gets dark. That's no problem, you know, that's tons of time to get off this mountain. But again, that's the thing with starting early. I'd be a lot more willing to press forward because if I do something wrong, who cares? I got all afternoon, I can figure it out. I just don't really have that kind of time. So I'm going to go a little further ahead. And if I can find a very clear indicator of another way down, I'll take it. But if not, I am just going to go back down the way I came. I mean, it's still, it's beautiful. Beautiful fucking mountain covered in trees. What was I thinking? Why was I so hung up on like going back the same way that I came? Who cares? It's beautiful, either way. And what's the difference if I come off the mountain here or somewhere else? It's going to look the same. Like that's just pure nonsense. That's one of those things that is just like overthinking things while you're sitting in front of your laptop at home or when you're out in the actual place. It's like, none of that is true. It is even remotely relevant to anything. What a different route down. Who cares? Utterly irrelevant. So most likely, I'm going to go back down the same way that I came. But yeah, I mean, this has been kind of a neat little exploratory because I just didn't know this about myself because there's just not enough options for mountain climbing in any of the Canadian cities that I've been to. There is Vancouver, but like I said, that one is so severe. That's like a whole different feel. That's like a mountain range. That's like some big time bullshit. Where in Japan, there's all of these tongues of different little mountains. So you really can kind of like pick your own thing, you know? And I mean, really, I have to say my favorite is just Fukuoka. 45:00 Just Fukuoka anywhere. I never had a bad experience on a mountain of Fukuoka. Those are like my perfect platonic ideal of a mountain to hike across. Easy to get to. Gentle slopes. Not that high up. Beautiful. Where here, it's a little different. You know, Tokyo is just basically flat. Nothing going on in central Tokyo. And then out here at the edges, it gets fucking crazy. So fast. It gets insane. Like these are for real mountains. These are no fooling around actual mountains. But there's the Ome Hills hiking course, which is A+. That's my fucking three little bears. That's just right. That's the one. So I'll just go on that again. I've only got like less than a week still out here in Western Tokyo. So I'll definitely go on that course at least once more. Maybe twice, whatever. Fuck it.