Sendai to Tokyo

Ito-san's family. An amazing experience! The old couple are in their eighties, overwhelmingly hospitable, and liable to talk the ears off anyone who'll listen for as long as they're present.

We'd barely got past introductions before we'd heard about their research on and conservation activities regarding fireflies.
He had spent endless nights searching for the elusive bugs, and had jet black photos with near-invisible dots circled and highlighted to show for it. After he had completed his research on areas such as their breeding habits, life-cycle, preferred habitats and why their numbers had been declining they had managed to change many of the local activities that had led to the decline in population - grass cutting techniques and timing, water and waste management, etc. Two to three years later (?) he had predicted, to the day, when they would take flight in renewed numbers and led a team of oldsters to photograph the event.

This led, without pause, to photos of and discussions of mushroom hunting in the mountains, his cycling exploits, how they had kickstarted a grassroots movement to get a safer footpath built to the nearby islands, and how construction was now underway, and on and on and on...

Only when Ito-san interrupted the second time to take us out for dinner did the torrent stop long enough for us to excuse ourselves.




We stayed in his apartment, while he stayed in his parent's house. The next day we were treated to a tasty breakfast prepared by his mum, and eventually escaped a good 3 hours later to visit the nearby Matsushima (islands, above) and a peninsula whose name neither Hozumi nor I can read.


Upon our return we found that our washing had been taken in from his balcony (to avoid the evening moisture) and that we were to be treated to a feast prepared by his mum along with a crate of beer bought for the occasion. Topics were as varied and entertaining as before, skipping seamlessly from one to the next even as we all got progressively drunker.


The next morning we were again treated to breakfast and narrowly avoided some awkwardness when Ito-san's mum started talking politics and religion. It turns out they are somewhat fanatical campaigners for the Komeito party, widely regarded as bit cult-ish, and she believes that atheism is not really a healthy or valid way of thinking. Not the time to start a debate, though.



While making our farewells, we couldn't get away without receiving one last gift - a fragile, ugly little handmade clay cat thing, which surely won't survive the trip. We tried to turn it down, but to no avail.



Oh, I forgot to mention the weird older brother! He made brief appearances to snatch a newspaper or drink, and only twice did he speak more than a grunt or two. The first time was when his father stopped him before he could retreat upstairs and asked him to explain about the history of the Ryuukyuu kingdom, which he did at great length in a very professorial manner. The second time was just before we left, when he exclaimed with some surprise upon noticing that I was a foreigner, and greeted me with warmth, awkward enthusiasm and embarrassment, in a rather unexpected display of life.



From Sendai we travelled to Zao. First impressions were poor, as we drove up through the cloud cover, cold, wet and unable to see more than a few metres ahead. When we broke through, though, we were treated to stunning vistas and warm sunshine. As we approached the campsite we passed dozens of cyclists, some walking, some sprawled at waypoints and all looking thoroughly exhausted - no surprise given the 1700m+ elevation and non-stop climb!



At the campsite we somehow strayed from the gravel path looking for a nice place to pitch our tent. My bike threw off it's chain on a treacherous rocky trail, and Hozumi's got stuck on a narrow downhill path blocked by a tree trunk from which you could only reverse. Getting both 150kg bikes back on the open trails took about an hour of brute force and a river of sweat. Overjoyed at having got out of the awkward situation and driving back toward the camp entrance, we were quite shocked when the camp attendant came screaming at us like a hyperactive red-faced oni, waving his arms and shouting phrases like ダメ！禁止！出って行け！ Turns out we had strayed onto an Olympic training course, and there was a real risk of hitting athletes running round the course.



The mountain crater of Okama made up for all this, though, with views like the one pictured below:

The nearby hot-spring resort was very pleasant too. A local bar owner told Hozumi to take care in removing all accessories and rings before going to the baths, as he showed us some thoroughly blackened coins and plug sockets. He explained that those items had never been near any baths, but any and all metal items tended to end up that way during the occasional mists. Regular 3-year electrical goods warranties got automatically cut to one year if he wrote his real address on the application forms!

Travelling South we spent a pleasant two days near Nikko. Historically very important, surrounded by waterfalls and beautiful scenery, and only accessible from a limited number of really crowded roads.

We managed to avoid the 3 hour+ immobile traffic jam on the way back to our camp-site by taking a 2 hour detour through some tiny narrow mountain roads. We'll have to be more careful on weekends, as such detours won't always be possible.

On to the obscure and hard-to-find 埼玉県青少年野外活動センター, which has to be the most tightly-regulated camp-site we've ever visited. Reservations required, gates locked down at 5pm and opened at 9am, lots of forms to fill, tickets to be issued and displayed and a full-time staff of dozens. As the name implies it's more of an educational facility than a camp site, run by the government and consequently very cheap. The free showers were a bonus, but being unable to drive out for supplies meant we had to make do with instant ramen and water for dinner.

It was around this time that I decided to stop asking Japanese people for directions. Looking back there was: The old car-park attendant who adamantly declared that route 35 didn't exist and caused us to waste an hour driving in circles (it was about 200m behind the car-park); The petrol-station staff who had never heard of the camp-site 1km away and tried to direct us to a place ten times more expensive 20km down the road; The guy seemingly assigned to keep people from driving down a specific mountain path who gave us dangerous and incorrect directions that I was able to ignore since he did so while pointing at a map from which I planned my own route.

We're now staying at Hozumi's brother's place in SE Tokyo that he shares with another artist and his Taiwanese girlfriend. Rock-climbing on a stunning artificial indoor pinnacle, beer and kim-chi made for a welcome change of pace.


Parking in Tokyo sucks.