Kinunuma: In Search of a Mountaintop Marsh

Brief respite in the fog covering Kinunuma Marsh.

One day to get there, to the onsen yamagoya Nikkosawa, an offroad wooden throwback to past eras. A place that doesn't whore itself for tourists. A place purely and simply for hikers going up to the marsh. No car will get you there. You have to go on foot.

A storm during the night, sheet lightning and the countdown for thunder. North Kanto taking a blasting from the tsuyu. All night the sound of rain battering down on the wooden roof, crowds of insects pattering outside the window, wanting in.

The intercom wakes us at 5.50 am for breakfast. Best be on the trail by seven the owner warns. Breakfast inedible, even for the adventurous eater I've become. Raw eggs, or half raw eggs, and natto.

Reading the maps, watching the storm through the window, and deciding to go anyway. It is, after all, our second time to try find this marsh. The last time we were thwarted by snow and a toothache-induced fever.

The hike itself less difficult than expected, done in sloppy conditions that remind us of Rishiri last summer. Nice to be back on the trail, breathing real air and forgetting the lives we lead in Tokyo.

Just under two hours to the top, and the first sight of Kinunuma, the mountaintop plateau marsh. It's disappointing. On a clear day it must be beautiful. A very Oze kind of place. Today it's as eerie and threatening as the Yorkshire moors. I think of Myra Hindley and look around for bears. A thick layer of fog at 2,000 metres so low it covers even the 40 marshes. Cold setting in when we sit down to eat our rice balls. A perfunctory walk around the planks, one photograph and back down into the boiling-hot mixed onsen at Nikkosawa again.

A lazy day in a log cabin with the kind of high ceiling you only dream of in Tokyo. Reading Tom Humphries on the 2002 World Cup. In Oku-Kinu, reliving the Keane/McCarthey affair. Humphries annoyingly targeting his audience, never letting himself go to far.

Into the rain early the next morning and home. A three-day washed-out weekend in North Kanto marking a return to blogging and the trail.

Posted by Setsunai at July 17, 2006 9:34 PM