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Published: July 19th 2006
Ishizuchi Mountain was my second mountain climb in Japan. It is the tallest mountain in Shikoku (the central-south main island of Japan), at 1982 meters. It is a holy mountain, as climbed by many Japanese as a religious pilgramage. Our group of 20 people spent 24 hours together...we climbed, we got wet, we prayed and we partied.
The invitation for the climb came from my iaido (martial art) teacher. He and his friends were doing the climb, and asked our class to join them. Dana, Daniel and I tagged along, and I'm really happy that we did. We met at 10:30p.m. on Friday night. We drove on a bus until about 3a.m., when we arrived at the bottom of the mountain. We took a ropeway at 3:30a.m. about half way up, where we also got dressed in our climbing outfits. The gate to the mountain opened at 4a.m. We were all lined up to wait for the Buddhist monks to the opening prayers and then started the climb. It took about 3 and a half hours to get to the top. It rained lightly for the first part which I was thankful for because it was pitch black. It would
have been difficult with the heavy rain that came for the rest of the hike. The stairs were steep, uneven and slippery so I really had to concentrate. The heat and humidity attracted so many bugs to our heads, we eventually just had to come to terms with them swarming us and also swallowing many.
We arrived at the peak and the fog was so thick we could barely see a few feet in front of us. Many people gathered at the top, resting, praying and visiting the small shrine. For a brief moment, the clouds cleared to give us a look at the view of surrounding mountains. It was great! As the main purpose for most of the people in our group was religious, we brought offerings for the gods of Ishizuchi-san and waited for a blessing from the priest. Probably the coolest experience for me was visiting the shrine. A part of praying procession is to have your back hit by the statues of the kings of the mountains. Because my back has been really sore since I hurt it, I asked for my back not to be hit. The priest them asked where it was sore.
I told him, he asked me to put my hands behind my head, he said a prayer and then cracked my back with his knee several times. He then told me to hold the statues tightly and ask for a healthy recovery. So far it has worked! We were blessed as a group, and the priest accepted our offer of fish for the shrine. It was an amazing experience. I feel very priveledged to have been a part of it.
The climb down was very wet and slippery. There were a ton of people climing up and down then because it was around 10a.m. A tradition of the mountain was to address all the people that you pass going the other direction. To every person going up, I had to say ''Onobori-san'', which means person going up. It was a constant stream of onobori-san, onobori-san, onobori-san...it was actually really fun! Most people were surprised to see three foreigners passing them by so we got a lot of enthusiastic responses!
To finish the day we went to an
onsen. An onsen is a Japanese public bath. Essentially it's a room full of hot tubs and pools for you to
some of the stairs
these were not easy to handle...especially because they were super slimy and slippery after hours of rainsoak and relax in. It was exactly what we needed after that climb! One man in our group owns a restaurant in Setoda, so this is where we ended up. We were all surprisingly awake for the group dinner and beers. I had been awake since 6a.m. on Friday since I had to work. 41 hours later, Dana and I headed home to crashed.
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