Mountain hiking and trekking have been popular in Japan in the recent years. The fad has been widespread over a wide age range due to a rising interest in fitness, improvement of local road maintenance, and product development and PR activities in sports, apparel, and leisure industries.
I’ve been maintaining a certain fitness program mostly indoors for 20 years, but recently, when one of my friends asked me to go on a mountain hike, I thought, “Why not?”
As a city person, I thought going on a mountain hike would be a big deal. However, my friend said, “Let’s take a morning train, and you can be home by evening.” Furthermore, if you travel through areas around Tokyo by JR trains on weekends, public holidays, and during the holiday seasons in summer and winter, you can purchase a holiday pass to travel at discounted fares. This special pass costs 2,600 yen for adults and allows you unlimited rides within a fixed zone in the Kanto area on that day. The farther you travel the more you can save on fares. FYI, for those who are from abroad, JR and other train companies offer many more convenient tickets and passes.
For details on JR tickets and passes, please visit: http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/index.html
In addition, I was advised that during the hike, we would have opportunities to view Mount Fuji like in the picture above! Looking at “holy” Mount Fuji is always a spiritual experience for the Japanese. Coincidentally, it has been announced recently that Mount Fuji will be registered as a World Cultural Heritage site. Therefore, in the future many more people will try to climb the mountain. I think seeing Fuji is more fantastic than climbing it though.
So eventually, I was able to debut as a climber on a sunny holiday. I climbed Mount Kukisan, a small mountain 970m above sea level located in Otsuki City, Yamanashi prefecture. Mount Kukisan is one of the 12 mountain sites the city has designated for its tourism promotion and nature conservation purposes, from which viewing beautiful Mount Fuji is possible. Depending on the day’s weather and if you are lucky, you can see the beautiful figure of Mount Fuji while you are walking on the trail.
We walked for 15 minutes from the local station to the starting point of the climb. From this point, we took 2 hours to get to the mountaintop, where we had a lunch break. Then we went down the mountain on another route. We spent about four hours total on the trek. You may think climbing small mountains is easy for beginners, but it is not. Compared to big mountains, the trails of small mountains are certainly simpler and clearer, but narrower. Since the mountain is compact in size, you have to go up and down the steep slopes. Thanks to my friend’s consistent leadership, I was able to complete the trek. I learned that mountain climbing is confronting nature. I fully enjoyed the hours of trekking and learned that pleasure is the source of pain and pain the source of pleasure.
These days we tend to think convenience is a matter of course, but while you are climbing a mountain, you have only yourself to rely on. Using all five senses – hands, feet, eyes, ears and so on – you should walk while controlling your energy. I barely remember how I walked all the way, as I was so desperate to move forward, but I think I was tensed while on steep and rough trails. However, when the road was smooth, I found that I was in the middle of a green world with sunbeams streaming through leaves. There were smells of living trees and grasses. When I looked down at my feet, I saw tiny and pretty wild flowers in bloom.
Since my friend had arranged the trekking schedule so that we could take short breaks from time to time to have water, sugar, and amino acids, amazingly I felt no muscle pain the following day. On the mountaintop, you feel cold after sweating a lot. At lunchtime we boiled water and had instant noodles and hot coffee, which tasted especially good. I guess there must be a knack in having a good time on mountain hikes.
Beyond my mentioned experience, there are many places around Tokyo where you can enjoy one-day mountain hikes. As for myself, my first taste of trekking captured my heart. Walking in nature puts your strength to the test, but I’m sure you will have much to gain, and I recommend you go for a trek.
Next, I will write about the benefits of trekking and equipment for beginners.
Reported by Yukari Aoike, Sugahara Institute