Excuse my aloofness in the past few weeks. My weekdays are now full with both elementary and junior high school visits for English class; the initial phase of giving my self-introduction has just come to a close. I feel situated now, driving the winding the country roads to and from school. In a way I am blessed with a busy schedule that takes me to eleven schools in Akune and the smaller peripheral towns. It hasn’t even been three months and I feel more than confident on my commutes throughout the week. Who wouldn’t in a miniscule white Mazda. I have even gone as far as taking the occasional short cut, finding the more interesting nooks and crannies of the city.
I have also branched out in the area a bit in the past couple of weeks and visited places in Kagoshima I have yet to explore. This has all been possible due to the help of friends at the Big Up Non-profit Organization. Big Up has a small, quaint office adjacent to Akune Station, home of the Hisatsu Orange Railway. The office is the hub for numerous volunteer opportunities in Akune as well as a very unique hostel. The hostel is unique in that the rooms advertised are actually old train cars, hence the name, Big Up STAY-tion (get it, station, as in train), a very cool concept in my opinion. Since making the acquaintance of the head managers of the office on separate days at two different bars, the Big Up office has become a spot that I look forward to visiting at least once a week, either for drop in volunteer work, dinner or the occasional adventure.
Last week I visited Big Up and sat in on a meeting that covered the upcoming events in October. Since the meeting I have already made chairs out of bamboo for the office and incoming quests and fired up a barbeque multiple times for road tripping families and Harley-Davidson riding he-men, and that is only the beginning. After the meeting that night, however, I was invited on an adventure. One the guys at Big Up, Mami-san, asked me if I liked hiking and if I wanted to come climb a mountain in with a couple of friends this coming weekend. I was humbled, happy and took no time to hop on the opportunity. I went home that night with my imagination running wild about what the weekend might bring, except I forgot to ask Mami-san where exactly we were going, all I knew was that it was going to be chilly and that I needed hiking shoes or shoes with plenty of grip.
It’s hard to work any job with a mountain climbing adventure looming just a few days ahead. This is what I thought to myself as entered class on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and finally, at last Friday. I paid a visit to Big Up on Saturday, the night before the hike. Since I was on my way home from grocery shopping, I couldn’t say I was upset by the fact that I had walked in on a sukiyaki (beef, vegetable, amazing hotplate family style feast) party. As I kicked back on the tatami mats and drank in the warm atmosphere of new friends, newer acquaintances and, of course, my fair share of sukiyaki, I had another one of those, ‘man am I in the right place at the right time, again,’ kind of moments. Despite the slight sukiyaki daze that, I needed to keep my eye on the prize, the hike the following day. By the end of the night I learned from Mami-san that our hiking destination was well far away from Akune and that we all needed no gather at the Big Up office early in the morning, 0700 hours sharp. We were heading to 高千穂峰 (Takachihonomine) in Kirishima.
Whether it was my usual morning daze or my slight sukiyaki hangover, I am not quite sure, but what ever helped me survive the two hour car ride cramped in the back of an old Toyota sure did the trick. I started to come to when the landscape changed from flat rolling country hills to switchbacks and mountain roads. The smell of the air was different, rotten eggs. Sulfur, of course. We were getting close. Kirishima is known for it’s volcanic mountains and thus famous for it’s spectacular onsen (hot spring) getaways. Looking out the window through that arching branches of the vibrant red pine (赤松、aka-matsu) I could see natural spouts of steam emerging from the forest, filling the air with fast-disappearing clouds of white and that recognizable, pungent stench of sulfur.
It seemed as though we were never going to clear the tree line until we turned the corner right into the parking lot from where we would depart on our hike. There were five men in the group that day and five tired men made it back safely at the end of the day (sorry to ruin the potential for excitement). As we embarked on the hike I found myself shoulder to shoulder with Mami-san, receiving an historical lesson in thick Akune dialect about the site of the day’s hike. From what I gathered Takachihonomine is a very notable destination in Japan for many reasons: the very first honey moon in Japan occurred on this mountain; there used to be a shrine at the base of the mountain that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption a thousand years or more ago; and it is a beautiful and friendly hike. The most interesting aspect of Takachihonomine, however, Mami-san saved for last. Takachihonomine was where Japan all started, the point from which the land of the rising sun came to be. Thousands and thousands of years ago the sun goddess and a principal Shinto deity, Amaterasu Omikami, descended from…well…the sun. It is said then that with the force that only a sun goddess can truly posses Amaterasu Omikami thrust a sword into the Earth and from that point Japan emerged. And if you go up to the summit of what is now know as Takachihonomine, you can see for yourself the sword, but no matter what strength you may come with, it is impossible to remove the sword from the grips of the Earth. I guess Amatersau Omikami never met King Arthur.
Takachihonomine Ridge
With that extremely motivational historical lesson still lingering fresh in my mind, I steadily scaled Takachihonomine’s volcanic slopes, taking extra time to look at the deep red, brown and black colours of the rocks beneath my feet. I glanced behind my shoulder ever ten paces or so to check out the scenery. The immediate view was a vast forest of red pine in every direction over surrounding hills, mountains and winding in between villages. In the distance the faint silhouette of Sakurajima helped maintain my sense of direction, however much it distracted me from my actual progress up the mountain.
In a little over an hour I caught the first sight of the Japanese flag waving in the wind, the one I had seen all the way from the parking lot, with strong binoculars. And as I rounded the last boulder I could finally make out the faint shape of a sword, sticking right out of the very top of the mountain. It was a thrilling summit. After the whole team reached the top we all took a walk around the peak and found a nice spot to break open our bento and dine in the clear, crisp air; it was chilly that day; and I decided to wear shorts.
I never felt more satisfied from a convenient store-bought bento and as I looked around and surveyed my hiking team, I had a feeling they might have been thinking the same thing. Before starting our descent, we all gathered in front of the sword in the stone to take a commemorative picture. As always there is bound to be someone left out of the picture so I volunteered to take the follow up shot of the group. When I turned my back to the beautiful view to take the picture of my crew I heard something that nearly took my breath away:
“Asher!” in perfect, native English.
I turned around and saw Eli, a fellow JET participant from the Minami-Satsuma city. We had a brief exchange at the top of Takachihonomine, it even feels weird writing about it now. It is needless to say, but seeing Eli was a great way to start my descent, the beginning of the end of my trip to Japan’s earliest beginning.
I could have heard Mami-san’s story of Takachihonomine any number of times and only wonder at what awaited meat the top of that mountain. For all I knew, mami-san could have been tugging my chain. After all, though, as soon as I laid eyes on that sword, extremely weathered, yet still straight and steadfast in rock, I understood quite well how magnificent beginnings can truly be and how humbly we look back upon them:
百聞は一見に如かず (hyakubun wa ikken ni shikazu)
Hearing something one hundred times can never compare to seeing it even once.
Until next time.
Dinner:
Salmon
Eggplant
Chipotle chicken
