Anyway, a group of friends and I decided to do some camping. If you’re going to choose any time to explore the wilderness, it should be when everywhere else is crowded. Even the wilderness gets crowded in Golden Week, but it’s not so bad when you compare it to the four hour queues at Tokyo Disneyland (no, really). We booked a lodge by a lake near Mount Fuji, and boarded the ridiculously packed train bound for adventure.

This wasn’t the first time that I had been to Mount Fuji or Lake Kawaguchi. I had already been there exactly a year ago, in Golden Week 2007, with Greg, Allen, and Allen’s friend Jeremy. This time I would be going with an (almost) entirely different, and larger, group of people. Altogether, there were eight of us: Allen, Zahra, Adrian, Jami, Christophe, Rico and Karen.

Allen, coming for the second time, is an American with chiselled features and a penchant for economics. His girlfriend, Zahra, is also from America by way of Puerto Rico and Iran, but has less of a penchant for economics. Adrian hails from Australia and can play a bass guitar like the devil himself. Jami is another American, who owns a $1000 handbag and is yet a very intelligent person. Christophe is from both England and France, a strange combination that was presumably the result of an accident similar to the one in the movie ‘The Fly’. Rico is from Jamaica and a top-notch cook, beaten only by my beautiful girlfriend Karen, from Brazil.

Yes, it was an interesting assortment of people from all over the world (but, strangely, no-one from Japan). Contrary to expectations, we all got on pretty well, and barely fought at all. After arriving at Kawaguchi-ko, we went to a supermarket, bought lots of food to cook on a barbecue, and caught the bus to our campsite. We pleasantly spent the evening lighting a fire, cooking food, drinking and generally enjoying ourselves. We did make a misguided attempt to walk in the nearby “suicide forest” but couldn’t find any decent footpaths, so we slunk back to our lodge and spent the rest of the night snoring.

The “suicide forest”, named Aokigahara, is famous in Japan for, well, you can guess. Hundreds of bodies have been found there. Most are people who go there to end it all, but some are people who wander in and get lost in the sea of trees. It really is a huge forest, have a look at the satellite photos if you don’t believe me (it’s the dark, malevolent green patch). What’s worse is that compasses don’t work there due to massive iron deposits underground or something, so if you get lost there, you’re really screwed. It’s also reputed to be haunted, which was the main reason for our visit last year. We didn’t find any ghosts, but did instead encounter a rave. We were happy to accept it as a substitute. So this year we had every intention of going into the forest properly and finding something scarier that a bunch of dancing hippies. Which would certainly take some doing.

We didn’t really have a plan for the next day, so we got up late and rented some rowboats to take out onto lake Saiko (pronounced, pleasingly, like “psycho”). The weather was glorious and we had a very happy time flailing our oars and pretending it was an accident whenever we crashed into each others’ boats. The scenery was wondrous, even the looming presence of the Forest of Death seemed brighter than usual, though it seemed to be trying to pull our boats to a rocky demise at it’s edge. Damn you, Forest of Death, don’t you ever give up?

Once we were back on dry land, we spent a lot of time walking around the lake, looking for a place to eat lunch. The nearest place refused us, because “there were too many” (the place was empty) and “it might take a long time to cook the food”. But it was pretty obvious from the scowl on the owner’s face that foreigners weren’t welcome in her café. Refusing a lot of customers lunch on the busiest day of the year when your restaurant is totally empty doesn’t seem like a good business idea to me. You won’t find me sympathising with the plights of a bigoted restaurant owner, however.

We had to walk for about twenty minutes to the next closest restaurant, by which point it was getting well into the afternoon and Rico was passing out from hunger. The food was good, but the service was ridiculously bad. It took us an hour to get served, another hour for our food to arrive (all at different times, but that seems to be the norm in Japan), and even after two hours not everyone had their food, and we had to cancel their orders to catch the next bus into town. Which we missed.

We tried to wait for the next bus at the camp site, but it never came (Golden Week traffic, I guess), so we caught taxis into town. There we walked around the much bigger lake Kawaguchi and enjoyed spectacular views of Mount Fuji. That evening was spent dining extravagantly on Indian food at a wonderful place called “Ali Ba Ba”. We mocked the rather geographically confused name at first (there’s another Indian restaurant in the same town called “Aladdin”), but the owner was so nice, and the food so delicious, that we felt guilty about it afterwards. The guy was from Nepal, and he genuinely seemed pleased to see us. He talked with us, laughed and joked with us, and served us with courtesy and punctuality. What a contrast to our lunchtime experiences. And the food was wonderful. Fantastic naan, awesome curry. I wish we could have left them a huge tip, but such things are frowned upon in Japan. Needless to say, I will definitely be going back there next time I’m in Kawaguchi-ko.

The next day, we split into two groups. Allen, Rico, Zahra, Karen and I went off to attempt to climb a small portion of Fuji, and Jami, Christophe and Adrian decided to go hiking around the woods near our campsite.

Allen had climbed Fuji with his friend Jeremy the previous year, while Greg and I had done a bit of cycling and bat cave exploring. Allen told us how they climbed up a fair way, and there was a bit of snow, then climbed down for a very long time, and were finally lucky enough to get a lift from some passing tourists. He said that there was some snow on the mountain, but it wasn’t cold at all. In fact, he had been wearing a t-shirt when he climbed up Fuji. So we were expecting it to be fairly warm up there, with a couple of patches of snow either side of a nice gravel walking path.

In fact, as we were taking the bus up the mountain, it slowly dawned on us that there was a lot more snow than we had expected. And it was getting pretty cold. But at least they had cleared the masses of snow away from road road, so there was going to be a pretty safe path up the mountain, right? Right?

When the bus dropped us off, we used the toilet (which we had to pay ¥50 into an unattended box for, but I didn’t because the toilets were so poorly kept, and should have been free anyway) and then prepared to climb the mighty Fuji. Everything Allen had told us was a lie. It was cold, the snow was the deepest I’ve ever seen in my life, and there was no real path through it. We had to trudge through the snow, every so often sinking knee deep or further in it. Well, maybe Allen might not have been to blame, we could have come after an unseasonal blizzard or something, right? No, it was in fact the same last year, but he had “forgotten” about the snowy part of the mountain. Which was to say, all of it. Even the sight of his friends wearing shorts and t-shirts as they prepared to climb the mountain didn’t jog his memory into warning them about the conditions. Not even the fact that his girlfriend doesn’t like the outdoors too much, and like most people is averse to being cold, wet and waist deep in snow. After ten minutes of wading slowly through the snow, both Zahra and Karen decided to go back. And I didn’t blame them.

However, Allen, Rico and I still had a great time. Even though my feet were numb with cold from all the snow getting in my shoes, the feeling of climbing a mountain in the snow seemed so adventurous that just doing it was enjoyable. We walked through eerie dead forests, along steep mountain paths and even jumped in the occasional snow drift. After Rico and I had stopped to wring the water from our socks for the 74^th time, we decided it was time to go back before we got frostbite. Complain as I might about how unprepared we were for it, we certainly enjoyed ourselves. Until about five minutes from the end of our trek, just as we were approaching the bus station again, when it decided to start raining freezing ice, soaking us to our skin. Which certainly made the hour long bus ride back to Kawaguchi-ko a bit less comfortable. Buying that night’s food in the supermarket with my teeth constantly chattering is also an experience I won’t forget in a hurry.

That night, the girls all spontaneously decided that they wanted to leave. It wasn’t because they weren’t having fun, but, um. I don’t know why they left, actually. But they did, which left the guys by themselves to have manly conversations and do manly things. For instance, Rico cooked the most wonderful grilled chicken, infused with a blend of aromatic spices and gently roasted in biscuit crumbs until golden. And Adrian all gave us embroidery tips that I’m sure will come in handy when we need to decorate cushions back home. We met a wonderful family who were moving to Germany the next week, and they cooked many different kinds of Japanese soba noodles for us. We were all very full, but for the sake of politeness everyone forced themselves to eat the food they had cooked just for us. All except me, who rudely went back to the lodge and fell asleep.

We got up early the next morning and said goodbye to our kindly hosts. They were so nice to us, giving us free food and just about helping us with everything we wanted. I don’t know about the other guys, but I was certainly holding back the tears as we waved goodbye to them from our taxi. It was a great weekend, and a wonderful way to spend Golden Week, but once again we had failed to explore the mysterious “suicide forest”. Once again, we’ll have to leave it for next year. One day, Forest of Death, I’ll unravel your mysteries! You mark my words!

I then spent a merry couple of hours eating, drinking and talking with the wonderfully friendly people in the restaurant. It still amazes me how, no matter where you are in Japan, there are people who treat foreigners like celebrities (or in some cases, minor deities). I felt a bit uneasy about it, like I was getting all this wonderful attention despite having done nothing to deserve it, but it’s something that’s just part of living in Japan and that you have to get used to. After we taught each other to write in our own respective languages, and once we had taken several photos of each other, everyone left. My weary body decided that it could do with some sleep, and my brain wasn’t going to argue. I slept, warm and comfortable, my belly full of food and my mind full of amazement at the generosity of my hosts.

The next day I was treated to a reasonably healthy breakfast, but I soon had to set off early. It was raining, so my kind hosts stretched the limit of credible generosity by insisting that I got a lift with their son. He was a wonderful chap, and we got on handsomely during the drive to my next destination in the mountains. About halfway there, he picked up his girlfriend, just so she too could enjoy the novelty of gawping at a foreigner. We all got on pretty well, and I was sad to say goodbye to them once they dropped me off at a train station near the hostel I had booked for that night.

I put on my extremely cheap waterproof gear (a steal at ¥1600 for a waterproof coat and trousers) and unfolded my bike. I tried to help a delightful German girl who was passing by (and happened to speak perfect English) find her way but failed pretty miserably. She was looking for a valley with white stone walls “washed smooth by the river”. I told her that I hadn’t read about any such thing in my travel guide, but agreed that it sounded enchanting. I completely failed to dispense any useful advice about how to find her destination, wished her luck, and went on my way.

It was a winding path up and down the mountains in the driving rain that eventually took me to my hostel. Well, it wasn’t really a hostel, but more of a remote lodge run by a nice young man who had the air of a buddhist monk but, I suspected, wasn’t one at all but more like a hippie. Or whatever the Japanese equivalent of a hippie would be. I arrived at his remote dwelling at about two-ish and dropped off my luggage. I had intended to explore the famed “Iya valley”, one of the “hidden valleys of Japan”, which is a bit of a misnomer since anything with a reputation for being “hidden” in Japan is almost inevitably a ghastly tourist trap full of souvenir shops and bus loads of tourists. In particular I really wanted to see an ancient vine bridge there and a cheeky statue of a cherub peeing several hundred feet into the valley below, both of which here highly recommended in my guide book. The owner of the hostel assured me that I would have time to see everything, so I set off again, back along the winding path through the mountains the way I came.

Once I got back to where I had started that day, I had to take a different path which went steeply up the side of the mountain. It was pretty miserable going, as the rain poured on and I found out to my increasing horror that, unsurprisingly, my bargain basement waterproofs weren’t actually waterproof at all. Neither were my boots.

At the top of the mountain was a tunnel. It was clearly designed by someone who loves cars and trucks, but hates pedestrians, and especially cyclists, with all the passion of a religious fanatic. The tunnel was two kilometres long, with a walkway that was no more than two feet wide. Barely enough space for one person, let alone someone with a bike. To make matters worse, someone had hammered nails into the wall every few metres, sticking out at shoulder height, which I ripped my coat on several times. Every time a truck came through the tunnel I had to cling to the wall, thinking I was going to die as it roared past, deafeningly, right next to me. It was a long two kilometres to walk with my bike. When I finally exited the tunnel, I swore at the tunnel as loudly as I could (in Japanese, so it could understand) and thankfully had a nice downhill slope from then on to take me into the valley.

I had to cycle pretty far from there, just to see some tiny statue of a boy peeing, but it wasn’t so bad. Though I was soaked to the skin and shivering, the view down the valley was breathtaking, with the rain covering everything in an eerie mist. The statue itself was pretty anticlimactic, but it was at least a good excuse for a pleasant bike ride along a flat part of valley. I took all the photos I needed (well, more, since one would be enough to get the gist) and went back to find the exciting-sounding “vine bridge”.

Now, this was a most peculiar sight, and yet something that tells you everything you need to know about any sightseeing spot in Japan. Shikoku has relatively few of these, so it seemed when they have something even as unremarkable as an old bridge, everyone flocks to it since there’s nothing else to see in the area. The bridge itself is, of course, not original, but reconstructed with steel cables cunningly hidden amongst the vines, so that it’s safe to cross. That, in itself, is understandable. I certainly appreciated not plunging to my death as I crossed it. The thing that surprised me was the entrance to the bridge. Someone in the local council has decided that it would be a great idea to build a massive, ugly souvenir shop as a “gateway” to the vine bridge. You are actually supposed to go through this monstrosity in order to get to it. The most offensive thing is that it obstructs any views of the bridge that you might get if you were going along the valley. It was with extreme reluctance that I handed over my ¥500 bridge toll, knowing that it was both a rip-off and that it would go towards financing the hideous building I had just walked through.

Crossing the bridge was actually surprisingly more exciting than I had anticipated. It was very slippery from all the rain, and the slats going across the bridge were spaced very far apart, even for my feet, so I had to proceed slowly to avoid slipping between them. Once I had crossed, I looked back to see some primary school children running back and forth across the bridge, jumping up and down. I have never felt so old in my life. Not only that, but there was no-one guarding the other side of the bridge, so I could have crossed it from that end and walked back for free. I felt cheated.

I cycled back up the mountain, very tired and very wet by that time, back through the Tunnel of Doom (I swore to myself there and then that if I ever met the designer, I would kill him) and all the way back to the lodge, very much looking forward to a change of clothes and a nice hot bath.

I met a charming university student back at the lodge, who didn’t speak much English at all, but we still got on pretty well. He was travelling Shikoku on his own, on a break from his studies in Osaka. The owner of the lodge gave us a lift to get some groceries and take a dip in a Japanese onsen (a kind of public bath that’s very popular in Japan, and uses water from volcanic hot springs). I am a big fan of onsen. The first time I visited one, it was very strange to be naked in a room full of other naked men, all bathing together in the same, huge bath. A bath which is so hot that you feel like a lobster that’s being boiled alive. But after a couple of visits, you get used to people staring at you, trying to confirm if various racial stereotypes are true, and somehow manage to relax and enjoy the experience. There are few things more calming yet refreshing than a good onsen.

Back at the lodge, I met a lovely Dutch couple who were themselves travelling around Japan. I thought they were both American, or maybe Canadian at first. Neither of them had a trace of a Dutch accent. And their English was native level. I asked them what ages they started learning English from, and they told me they started at eleven. The same age I started learning German (all but forgotten now), and no less that five years later than the age that Japanese kids start learning English. Their education systems must be a marvel. Everyone I have met from Scandinavia seems to speak English perfectly, and yet they don’t seem to begin learning at a very early age, like the kids here in Japan do, where the English is, generally, appalling.

We all cooked various things and shared meals and conversation. The Dutch couple were playing a puzzle game on their Nintendo DS (Professor Layton and the Curious Village), one which I had recently finished, so I was glad to spoil the puzzles and plot for them. The university student was being lectured at length by the lodge owner about some aspect of Japanese society (probably the rampant consumerism) that he didn’t agree with. Every time I looked over at them, the student was giving an occasional nod of agreement, while at the same time looking like he wanted to escape. I was feeling very tired after the days exertions, so I made my excuses and went to bed early.

So, faced with some free time on my hands in the shape of the spring holidays, I began to plan wallet-friendly ways of acquainting myself with some unfamiliar parts of Japan. Hitch-hiking? Well, maybe, but I only had a week, and I wanted to go to one of the islands really far from where I lived. It’ll be best to save that particular adventure for when I have more time. Plus I had just watched “Jay and silent Bob strike back” and was a little nervous about having to follow “The book of the road” if I got picked up by any truckers. I suspect that the ways of lorry drivers are universal, and there’s probably some kind of trucker UN where all the countries’ truckers get together and think of sinister new ways for hitch-hikers to return the favour of giving them a ride.

With hitch-hiking put aside for the time being, I looked for a new way of getting to my destination. Then I found it: a ferry. For only ten thousand yen (fifty pounds, one hundred dollars, ninety two baby teeth on the Thai black market) I could travel in the time-honoured way of centuries of explorers before me: by sea. The ocean-worthy vessel would take me from Tokyo to the easternmost port of Shikoku. So it was settled: Shikoku was my destination.

But what to do when I arrived there? It seems I had found myself in a pickle. For the train prices in Shikoku were somehow even more expensive. It was unimaginable. It was like someone had taken the Bee Gees and found a way to make their voices even higher^*, and their songs even more irritating. What could I do about this problem? Without thinking, I rushed to the nearest shopping centre and purchased a folding bike. Why? Well, I like cycling. And they accept folding bikes on the ferry. Was it cheaper than going around Shikoku by train? Well, no, but by that time I had justified it to myself. In my mind.

I set out on a rainy Friday afternoon with high hopes and a spirit for adventure. Toting two huge bags and a barely-portable behemoth of a bike bag, I certainly looked the part. The part of Hagrid in the upcoming “Harry Potter: the musical”. Well, no, not quite, but at least the part of a hopelessly inept tourist who has packed far too much for himself to carry. The reason I had brought so much with me is that I had planned to cut down on accommodation costs by doing a bit of the old “wilderness camping”. With this in mind, I brought a tent, sleeping bag and other assorted bulky pieces of camping gear, all advertised as being “lightweight” and “durable” but were really just the cheapest pieces of tat I could find. People scrambled out of my way as I boarded the ferry, no doubt terrified of being bulldozed under the enormous weight of my possessions.

But once I boarded the ferry and safely stowed my bike and possessions away, I was free to walk the decks, like a captain who really should be manning the ship, but really is a bit of a poser and likes to be seen walking around with a pipe in his mouth. As I sat in the ferry restaurant, watching Tokyo move away and eating a nice beef and potato stew, I thought to myself “This really is the way to travel.”. OK, it took 18 hours, but at least I could lie down on the floor and sleep (a carpeted floor, mind you, and they even give you blankets!”. There’s nothing quite like reading a nice book with a lovely sea view and a cold can of beer. Indeed, many of the other passengers didn’t even need a book to enjoy the trip. Or the view of the sea. Although I can’t blame them for hitting the alcohol vending machines a little hard, I know it helped me sleep.

I arrived in the busy port town of Tokushima at around noon the next day. To call the place an unsightly concrete jungle would be a bit unfair, since at least the “jungle” part of that description sounds interesting and exotic, whereas the city itself had neither of these qualities. I spent the afternoon putting as many miles as possible between that town and myself, on my trusty folding bike. Let’s call it “Tonto”. After an hour or so I had left the aesthetic nightmare of Tokushima and was finally cycling through the kind of countryside that Shikoku is famous for. Cycling along a river and surrounded by beautiful mountains, I made my way serenely towards my first camp site. I had phoned ahead at one of the camp sites in the area, only to be told that it was full, so my plan was to check out a free camp site nearby. The only problem was that it didn’t exist. And I spent most of the evening cycling up a mountain to find it. By that time it had got dark, and I was hungry, so I cycled back down the mountain and scouted out a place to eat. A sign for a Japanese omelette (okonimiyaki) restaurant named “nande yanen” caught my eye. It was a phrase that a student of mine had once tried to teach me, but I had long since forgotten it’s meaning. I locked up my bike and went in.

*Helium? Doppler shift, maybe?