When the ALT allows himself to get cramped in his little village in Toyama prefecture, wrapped-up in the social intricacies of the gaijin community or, conversely, sinks deep into the meditative recesses of youtube surfing, he is bound to forget that Toyama, Japan is famous throughout the whole of the nation for its nature. For this Wednesday's holiday my buddy James and I decided to remind ourselves of this fact.10 kilometers out from our section of town along the banks of the Jinzu river brought us face to face with the endless expanse of the Sea of Japan. Stretching for as far as the eyes could see, Toyama's quiet, sandy beaches, interspersed with giant, concrete spikes (to break the waves) and the occasional city, had the modernist in me eagerly clicking his pen. For the next 12 kilometers, we would ride along this great body of water, feeling ourselves transition between worlds; the quiet suburbs, the abandoned factory districts, the isolated off-road, and the bustling urban centers. I soon got the sense of being a kind of bystander, an observer to man's drive to progress against his desire to preserve places for the masses to connect with their wild origins (which was subtly encouraged by the soft summer breeze and heat of the sun). As these two forces battled it out, every so often, the great mediator would appear from behind the trees to remind me of the eternal, the unconquerable: the great Tateyama.
Toyama prefecture's majestic Hida mountain range isn't refered to as "the Japanese Alps" for nothing. With snow covered peaks as high as 3,015 lightly outlined by tall, green hills, the range gives one the sense he has landed in Bavaria or Geneva. Tateyama is tallest of the mountains, an active volcano, and along with Fuji and Haku one of the three holy mountains of Japan. There is no mistaking the echos of Japan's mythical gods and monsters, long since banished to these mystical, far-out territories by a modern human society, exacting their revenge on trespassers who brave their most perilous passages. Indeed this disconnect from all things societal gave me a calming feeling on my midweek holiday and reminded me what a privilege it was to live in this beautiful countryside.
5 kilometers from a remote combini, we worked our way up a one of Hida's green hills; a tanuki flashed before our eyes and was gone in the thick labyrinth of flora and fauna (see my March post "Letting it All Hang Out"). With sweat drenching our entire body and sunburn slowly making its home on the back of our necks, we arrived at Tofukuju park; here's a nice place to relax and have a bite to eat I thought. We took a short walk around and enjoyed a game of Japanese park golf (a hairy, awkward love child of regular and mini golf) before the park abruptly closed, and we sped down the hill back towards home; the ride down, which was over an hour going up, took all of seven minutes.
A few hours on the road and I was back in my apartment. The soreness in my legs reminded me of the challenge of biking more than 40miles, and the rewards of all I had done and seen. I'm not certain what it is about natural beauty that connects with us so deeply; perhaps no matter how comfortably we build our little homes, we can never fully divorce ourselves from the grass and the dirt and the water from which our kind came to exist and to which we return after death. I played the day out over and over again in my head, falling asleep in the tiny block of concrete that I pay a monthly fee to call my own, carved into a vast metropolis of thousands just like it, remembering the exponentially more vast and wonderful world, which belongs to all of us.
