Lies of Omission

While living in Japan, I was invited to hike Mt. Fuji with my host mother's friend. Having never done so before, and being of a somewhat adventurous mind, I agreed. In the week before, the topic came up in conversation regularly since my fellow teachers often asked what my plans were for the weekend. I asked people if they had ever hiked it before and what they knew about it. Most everyone had never hiked it themselves, but they said things like

"I hear the view is very beautiful."
"I understand the hike can be difficult. Maybe you should wear good boots."
"I have never gone myself, but I think you will have a good time."

Or even more informative things like

"Isn't it in Yamanashi prefecture?"
"You can see a beautiful lake from the top."
"You can see Fuji-san from Chiba on a nice day."

Thank you, Encyclopedia Britannica. 

With a pack on my back and new hiking boots strapped to my feet, I joined my party for the ride to Fuji-san. I was just as excited as everyone else at the outset, and even two hours in when a third of the party fell ill to altitude sickness, I was still having a marvelous time. I grew up in a canyon and loved hiking as a young adult. Tokyo had afforded me little opportunity to climb anything more than stairs, though there were lots of those. So hiking Fuji-san was a remarkable opportunity and I treated it as such. 

The first two hours of the hike are through what one considers normal mountain terrain. There are scrubby trees, rocks, birds, and insects. It was a beautiful, peaceful retreat from the never-ending life and noise of Japan's capital. If I had been with my childhood friend, I'd have thought I was home. 

In the second two hours, the terrain suddenly dropped away and you are surrounded by almost nothing. No vegetation. No birds. No insects. Just the rocks and topsoil, the hikers above you, the hikers around you, and a diminishing view of the trees below. And it didn't take long for that view to disappear. 

We halted for the day at an inn where we would overnight before ascending the rest of the mountain. I didn't know it at the time, but would soon realize that the inn was strategically located on one of the last bits of firm rock available to stand on. The last two hours of the hike are a seemingly interminable set of short switchbacks in straight volcanic topsoil. No more rocks. I've never missed rocks so much in my life as I did in the last two hours of that hike. Without them to stand on and hold dirt in place, it's a wonder we made progress at all. I would take one step, my feet would get sucked into the earth, and I'd fight to make forward movement. It was about a hundred times worse than trying to run on dry sand.

There is one thing to be said for what I was told about hiking Fuji-san. The view is exquisite. I won't ruin it with words. I tried to take pictures, but even those don't do it justice. If you ever want to feel close to heaven, hike Mt. Fuji. But I won't lie to you: It's hard and it ends with a public bath.

Yup. You read that right. Nobody told me, but it's standard operating procedure for everyone to hike Fuji-san and then go to a public bath together. The bath part, by the way, is not worth the view. Who knew that just two years after my first (and I had thought my last) communal shower, I'd be surprised into another naked social with a bunch of Asians. And this one was worse. I didn't think it could be worse, but it was so much worse. 

See, in China, with all those random cousins and nobody speaking English, we'd been left to take up a couple of stalls on the far side of the room and just silently acknowledge that this was clearly awkward for us. But that's not how it goes in Japan. No, no. In Japan, it's a public bath, not a communal shower.

The Japanese are so much more polite and organized about everything. From the moment you walk in, the attendant bows to you and asks, Please may I take your shoes? then bows again to give you slippers, a stool, a hand towel, and a robe. A robe! There's something China needs to learn about. But just because they're polite about it, doesn't mean this is an activity I ought to be participating in! 

For the second time in my life, there I was, standing, shoeless, in a locker room while an entire party of Asians awaited my nude arrival. Again, thankfully, this was not a coed experience, but that was very, very small comfort. Once again, everyone was undressed and through to the bath room while I was still staring at an open locker contemplating an escape. Only this time, there was just me, no Bath House Buddy. 

I went through with it. If I hadn't been so annoyed at being somehow tricked into it, I would have thought it rather nice. I stepped into a wonderfully aesthetically designed room where an artistically shaped deep pool took up the right hand side of the room while several spigots positioned at five-feet intervals lined the C shaped section to the left. The faucets were set about three feet off the ground. Now I knew what the stool was for. You sat below the shower head and washed yourself thoroughly before joining your party in a long heart-to-heart in the bath. 

I tried to take as long as possible cleaning myself and pondering ways to get out of the sitting and talking portion. Nothing feasible came to mind. After half an hour, I resigned myself to my fate and joined the ladies who were eagerly waiting to practice their English with me. So not the place to do this, ladies. So much worse. And for the record, buying me lunch afterwards does not make it better.

When I returned to work on Monday, everyone was so curious to ask me about Fuji-san, only this time they all seemed remarkably better informed about the subject. They all had things like this to say now

"You made it to the top? Are your legs ok? Well they won't be tomorrow."
"It's a volcano, you know. It's supposed to erupt any day now. I wouldn't hike it myself . . . "
"The terrain is really difficult. Not really fit for normal hiking. You must be in really good shape."
"A man who hikes Fuji-san once is an adventurer; a man who hikes Fuji-san twice is a fool."
"That must have been so difficult! But at least you enjoyed the onsen (public bath) after, right?"

I hate you all, you friggin' liars.