Showa Day

Yesterday was Showa Day, a national holiday that commemorates the birthday of the Emperor during the Showa period. Traditionally Japan tracks years according to periods, rather than the standard B.C. - A.D. method. So I was born in the 62nd year of Showa, rather than 1987. According to Wikipedia, "the purpose of the holiday is to encourage public reflection on the turbulent 63 years of Hirohito's reign," but everyone I asked had no clue what the holiday was for (besides a welcome break from work).

Robyn, a fellow ALT, asked if I would like to go on a walk with her for the holiday. She said we'd have a long walk which would end at an onsen (hot spring) and have dinner and then go home. It sounded better than lurking in the apartment all day so I immediately agreed.

The walk started off very pleasantly; there were about 60 people, including elderly folk and small children. We all trotted in a line across the rice fields, enjoying the warm weather and the early signs of spring. It was all like the plot of a children's film, right down to the man who played "Hey, Let's Go" from My Neighbor Totoro on an ocarina.



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Pretty soon we left civilization and started hiking up into the base of the mountains. I hadn't expected that, but I'd worn good shoes and if there's one form of exercise I've done fairly regularly in Utah, it's hiking. In fact, I was looking forward to it. It would be nice to stretch my legs and see the Japanese mountains up close.

Little did I know that I would be seeing several of them up close.

After we'd been hiking for a while--I estimated  2 hours or so--and had reached the top of the mountain, I asked Robyn how much farther we were planning to go.

"Oh, we've still got about 10-15 miles," she replied.

Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone. This is not what I signed up for. It's one thing to go on a long walk; it's quite another to embark on a quest into Mordor. And what the heck were the young kids and old people doing here? Didn't they know you should only exercise this much if you're escaping a Siberian work camp? But it was far too late to turn back, so I kept plodging.  Soon it started to rain and everyone whipped out umbrellas so we looked like a train of bobbing mushrooms. We stopped for lunch  and sat on plastic shopping bags on the gooshy mud while huddling under the umbrellas, but by then I was too fatigued to be hungry. I settled for sucking on an orange. I laboriously dug off the peel--my fingers were too cold to be much use--and finally prised off a section and crammed the whole thing into my mouth.

*munch much* "This orange is disgusting." *munch munch*

Robyn looked over, momentarily indulging my misery. "That's because it's a grapefruit," she said. So I gave it to her.

The rain continued for the rest of the trek and by the end at least one of the kids was in tears. We had crossed four mountains and two baby mountains over approximately 20 miles, in approximately 8 hours of constant motion, sustained along the way by communal snacks like mayonnaise-flavored seaweed and lemon salt drops. By the time we reached our destination, Nanyo, I was incapable of lifting my knees and was forced to progress in a zombie-like stagger. My legs had long ago given up protesting through pain and had settled into a dull ache of resignation. I was sure that soon the muscles would give up entirely and I would be forced to lift and place my feet with my hands. But I was wrong; we all made it to the onsen in the hotel and got to soak for a while before going downstairs for a drinking party to celebrate our fortitude (I drank orange juice. A LOT of orange juice.).

Mercifully, we managed to catch a train home. Most of our number were drunk by then but they kept drinking, sharing whiskey and sake on the train itself. They called the conductor the "superman" and demanded that he take pictures with them. They giggled like little girls when I told them I didn't drink and dropped their paper cups of alcohol all over the train seats and slurred out nonsensical sentences while grasping my hands like I was the source of all their fondest hopes. Finally we reached our stop and we all fell out of the train--whether due to drunkenness or sore muscles--and went our separate ways. I spent the next few hours in a scalding bath and curled up beside a space heater before falling into a blessed sleep, vowing to never accept any invitation to go on a "walk" again.