Heading south from Matsumoto, this time not by rickshaw, but by what they called a basha – a noisy horse drawn carriage that came with its own driver and young boy to run ahead of the carriage and blow a metal horn to warn other on the road that a dangerous vehicle was to follow, despite the noise made by the carriage, the pre-warning was evidently still needed. Japan has always been the home of highly undesirable and utterly pointless jobs to warn people of clearly not-dangerous situations. I like Japan’s oddities more now than in the past.
For 6 hours and 22 miles they suffered the uncomfortable basha and al the time accompanied by their big nosed inn keeper friend from Matsumoto who felt it only right to again accompany the foreigners on their departure from his town. This unique friendly helpfulness also still exists today in Japan, so its not all jokes about silly jobs, old and new.
When I very first arrived in Japan in 2000 it had been arranged for me to be met by a young Japanese couple who were friends of my friend. I had never met them before. They had sent good instructions for me get from the airport by train to their local trainstation in Tokyo. Unknown to me, they were delayed in reaching the trainstation and had called ahead to instruct a 40 year old lady working in a chemist shop at the station. I was also late and she had kept a vigilant eye out for me the hole time as a Tokyo volume of train passengers streamed constantly through the ticket gates. “Keep an eye out for a gaijin with suitcases”. Some how she saw me and took me into the small shop where I was given a few little energy drinks to help me recover from my flight and some tablets to help me if the local food upset my stomach, an impossibility given the mildness of Japanese cuisine. I sat there for 30 minutes unable to speak Japanese nor her speak English. I killed the time counting the number of western males that walked out of the ticket gates and wondered if she ran out to greet all of them in case one was me. Tokyo has 30 million inhabitants and she had the time of day for a foreigner. On several other visits to the trainstation - which is by no means small - she saw me and waved.
The mountaineers were on their way to [Mount] Ontake, a sacred 3067m stratovolcano peak which according to wikipedia was last active in 1979. Arriving in a small village they notice most inns have a number of coloured streamers attached to their eaves. These are apparently records left behind by previous pilgrims who travelled there to ascend nearby Ontake. The colour of the streamer denotes the ‘club’ from which the previous climbers hailed and also that the ascent was a success and a particular inn worth the patronage of future club members passing through the village.
Ontake is a frequently hiked mountain and the ascent undertaken by Weston is somewhat uneventful, although its a long haul of over 30 miles and 2300m of up and the same back down the other side of the peak, so they chose to travel as fast as possible by going light. Ontake is a very popular mountain for spiritual pilgrims, who are sort of the original Japanese alpinists and all members of various alpine clubs. Such clubs were set up such that at the start of each year all members had to pay a fee to their club. A lottery was then drawn to see which club members would be sent on a pilgrimage to climb what mountain. These official club journeys were then funded from the annual pool of membership dues. Other members could offer to join a trip to a certain peak but had to pay for themselves. Official clothing consisted of white robes and leggings huge wide brimmed hats and hexagonal alpine stocks. Along the journey and certainly at the destination alpine shrine the stocks and white robes of the pilgrims are stamped by the attendant priest at the shrine. This culture of Buddhist travel has been practiced for a long time in a Japan and certainly for much longer in China and India before the religion arrived in Japan.
Weston and Belcher were heading for Kyoto by going over Ontake. Their belongings had been sent by courier to Kyoto the day before. This left them without much baggage and once they descended the other side of the mountain (taking 12 hours up and over) they enjoyed an onsen and rested for the night. Early the next morning their journey continued for 90 miles on the Tenryugawa [river]. The boats were narrow flexible wooden crafts designed for shallow white water travel and by Weston’s account the journey was full fast smooth moving water punctuated with shooting rapids through deep tight deep gorges with the sides and base of the long wooden kayak being banged and scrapped past rocks. For the 1890’s it sounds pretty exciting stuff. When they arrive in Kobe it is stinking hot and humid, only to be cooled that night by an enormous typhoon.
In the next Chapter they climb Norikura dake, 3026m.