I’m a fairly introverted person. I like doing things and seeing people, but there are days when I would rather stay at home with a book and my Netflix account. And it’s for this reason that I felt living alone would be no problem prior to coming here. I like hanging out with myself. She just gets me, you know?
But being an introvert and living alone has its own insidious implications. Moving away from home (again) felt like being the new kid in school: I worried about what the other JETs would think if I wore the wrong outfit, did something ungraceful, or said something stupid. But ironically, the part I have found myself struggling with the most is actually getting outside of my comfort zone and making myself do things and see people when I’m not sure I want to do the things and see the people. I’m my own biggest obstacle to social interaction; if left unchecked, I could probably spend days at a time locked in my apartment, with no one but Walter White for company.
Enter Silver Week. This year, Japan was lucky enough to have two public holidays overlap, resulting in a five-day weekend. I hadn’t planned anything, and my Silver Week was looking pretty boring, until I was invited to climb Mt. Ishizuchi.
I love mountains — as a Colorado native, it’s pretty much impossible not to — so I’m almost always down for some hiking. When I first arrived, many Japanese people recommended I climb Ishizuchi (the highest peak in Western Japan) and I filed it away on my ever-growing, mental Japan Bucket List. Ishizuchi stands 1,982 m (6,503 ft) high — just slightly higher in elevation than Denver. Almost every hike I’ve done has been at a higher elevation than that, so I was feeling pretty confident that Ishizuchi would be no problem.
Then I heard about the chains. An older JET mentioned that the route involved free-climbing, and my desire to tackle the mountain bottomed out. I had never free-climbed in my life, and I am terrified of heights. Like, terrified as in have-a-mental-breakdown-at-the-top-of-a-roller-coaster terrified. The thought of pulling myself 68 meters in the air on iron chains seemed pretty unappealing, to say the least.
I told myself when I came here that I would do things that were scary and unfamiliar, (and I mean, hey, moving halfway across the world to a country where you don’t speak the language is ballsy enough to count in my book). Yet, despite my conviction I would challenge myself, I still spent a ridiculously long time wrestling with whether or not I would climb Ishizuchi. Had I compiled a physical list of pros and cons, it might have looked something like this:
Reasons Not To Go:
1. Heights are scary as hell. The chains are scary as hell. YOU DO NOT WANT TO CLIMB THE CHAINS!
a. What if you cry/panic/freeze up and can’t finish the climb?? Everyone will think you’re a n00b and a terrible Coloradan and a pansy.
b. On the other hand, if you go and don’t climb the chains, everyone will still think you’re a pansy.
2. You could actually fall and die.
3. It will probably suck and you will be in pain.
4. You have to wake up really early. Are pain and possible death really worth losing sleep?
Reasons To Go:
1. You told almost everyone you want to, so now, even if you don’t do it, they will think you’re a pansy. Way to go, Anna.
2. You also actually want to do it.
3. You’re not doing anything else with your life during Silver Week.
In the end I decided to go. If I can’t handle the chains, I can always wimp out and take the stairs, I told myself.
The closer the day of the climb got, the less sure I became about my decision. And because I’m a masochist and love nothing more than working myself into a panic, I spent hours reading blogs about other people’s experiences on Ishizuchi. I concluded that the chains were going to be scary and awful and if I tried to do them I would probably be sobbing the entire way up.
But I still bought the climbing gloves. And, despite brief fantasies about coming down with a sudden stomach flu and bailing on the group, I still showed up at the Iyo-Saijo train station at 7:15 a.m. Monday.
It was a promising day to climb a mountain — warm, but not hot, with clear skies. And, joking with the rest of our group, I was feeling pretty good. The first leg of the hike was straightforward; it involved a fairly rapid gain in elevation as we climbed set after set of wooden stairs, but that was nothing I hadn’t seen on a hike before.
We reached the first set of chains, an extra set mostly designed to give people a taste of what’s in store if they continue. Looking at the snaking, metal links, I was pretty convinced that I would skip this set. I’ll try the next one, I told myself, knowing full well that if I didn’t try this set, it would be really easy to simply not try the next set, and the next one, until I reached the summit without actually touching a single chain.
But, seeing almost everyone else in the group head for the chains, something — whether sudden bravery or just peer pressure — switched. I pulled on my gloves and walked up to cliff face.
The climb was much easier than I expected. There were a few times when I abandoned the chains in favor of scrambling up the cliff itself, and a couple times I had to ask for help to find the best route, but I made it to the top in one piece. I did not have a panic-induced meltdown. I did not fall and die. I did not chicken out. And, perhaps most importantly, no one called me a pansy.
The way down was scarier than the way up, as the internet had promised. But somehow I still made it back to solid ground. And then I made it up the next two sets of chains as well. None of the chains were half as scary as I’d anticipated. After worrying myself sick about them, it was almost a letdown. But the last set of chains had been billed as the meanest, and I was pretty resolute that when we got there, I would duck out and take the stairs the rest of the way up.
When we reached the last set, my friend pulled on her gloves, looked at me, and asked, “Are you gonna do it?” I relented and pulled out my gloves too, feeling a lot less confident than I had for the previous three sets.
The last set of chains was, in fact, the hardest. Unlike the other three sections, there were meters-long stretches where the cliff-face dropped away, leaving me no choice but to keep both feet in the rungs of the chains. I took the chains one link at a time, trying to keep my eyes off the ground. I banged my knees on the cliff-face, straddled tree trunks, and got a little too familiar with the other climbers’ backsides. But despite all that, I made it, just like I had with the other chains. I stood on the summit and looked out, at the rest of the Ishizuchi range, chest heaving but feeling pretty bad-ass. I looked down on the puckered mountains I was used to looking up at. I watched the clouds’ shadows skim across their surface. And, on top of that peak, it was easy to forget how worried I was at the bottom.
You made it to the end! Have a photo!
(Pictured: Ishizuchi summit)
