While casually thumbing through a monthly community newsletter, I stumbled across an outdoor cooking event to be held at none other than mystical Castle Mountain.
I did eventually and successfully navigate the inner roads of Castle Mountain once, although like beating Super Mario Bros. the first time, I wasn’t sure if I could do it again.
This time, the Kochi Youth Association offered to drive twenty 15- to 30-year-olds up the mountain on a Sunday morning in October for a short hike and a lunch consisting of mountain cuisine.
The day arrived, and with it torrential rains. I called up the fellow at KYA and he said that there was a Plan B and to come on down.
I invited Noodles, an English teacher from Massachusetts who lives to the east of Kochi City and who once consumed 159 bowls of soba noodles in succession.
About 15 folks our age showed up, and we piled into two vans and headed up the crooked road that wraps around Castle Mountain. The rain was practically coming up from the ground, it was falling so hard.
We arrived at a small building on the main road of a tiny town perched on a hillside. Across the street was a post office, a fire station, and an elementary school, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all in the same building. Sheets of rain prevented me from taking a closer look.
It was at this community center that we met Mountain Main, a swarthy, wiry Japanese man in his fifties who had grown up deep in the Shikoku Mountain Range and knew everything there was to know about…well, the Shikoku Mountain Range.
Tough as a hunk of beef jerky yet gentle and grandfatherly, Mountain Man shook our hands and told us to get back into the vans - we couldn’t hike in the rain, but dammit, we could drive!
We hopped out at a familiar place to me, it was one of those devilish crossroads that had given me fits in Quest for Castle Mountain. Mountain Man scrambled up the glistening black cliff, and for the first time, I realized that it was a rather unique rock formation with sparse vegetation compared to the rest of the scene.
He told us that it was rock from deep within the Earth, jarred loose and thrust into the Kochi landscape by periodic earthquakes. It was of the right quality for a certain kind of concrete and was beneficial to a few specific types of plants, the names, functions, and even tastes of which he knew by heart.
There was a story for every plant, and I was overwhelmed by the breadth of his knowledge. I blurred my focus and looked at the cliff, and at the dirt hillsides surrounding it - just hills with plants, I thought. If I had had to guess, I would have said that all of the plants were the same.
Not so for Mountain Man. He knew which plants to eat, which not to even touch, and which to strip the bark off of and sell to Japanese paper makers. He was like Willy Wonka and Castle Mountain and the Shikoku Range were his chocolate factory.
His eyes danced and he spoke at a rapid pace, and it was evident that his mind was moving faster than his mouth allowed. I detected traces of a mountain accent and would have loved the chance to hear him and a farmer go at it, though I probably wouldn’t have understood a single word.
We squeezed back into the vans, all of us dripping wet by that time, and the vans strained to carry us up to the peak. We encountered a fallen tree blocking the road, and none of the guys in the group had to be told twice to jump out of the vans and push it away.
Finally, we reached the “parking lot” close to the top, which barely had room for the two vans and called for some creative parking. On the small summit, we looked down at nothing but bright, gray rainclouds.
It was a shame, because Mountain Man knew about the centuries-old castle ruins and abandoned prison visible from the peak. He also told us about fault lines and old city and town boundaries that he could have shown us on a better day.
The geography geek in me really wants to go back and scale Castle Mountain for a look at these things, but I’ve made it up there myself and didn’t see them before, so the budding cyclist in me is refusing.
Mountain Man found some mushrooms and began to explain the ways he could tell if they were tasty or even edible. I was taken with the way he handled them, the pale, white caps flailing about in his brown hands as he raved about the risks and rewards of mushroom hunting.
I’m not sure if I only imagined him taking a bite of one and continuing to educate with probably-poisonous-but-maybe-not-let’s-see mushroom spilling out of his mouth.
It was a great chance to hear a Japanese person speak about a subject other than baseball with real expertise. Rare is the opportunity to take on the challenge of deciphering alien words and concepts in addition to processing information that is new regardless of language or culture.
Since Mountain Man was schooling us all on rocks and plants and using terminology that none of us knew, the foreigner/Japanese lines melted away as much as they ever will. We were all students becoming enlightened and that was what mattered most. I enjoyed that situation very much and should seek out opportunities like it more often.
Noodles and I kept the ball rolling once we returned to the community center and set up the tarps and cooking equipment. Everyone was in a great mood despite the pouring rain, and we were determined to enjoy a cooking lesson from Mountain Man. That made it easy to maintain the flow of conversation and make sure that everyone was a part of it.
At a few times it became necessary for me to say something to Noodles or vice versa, and we surprised ourselves by keeping it in Japanese. That allowed us to be courteous to everyone else without disturbing the speed and momentum of the conversation.
We’ve talked with each other about how much we dislike hearing non-native Japanese speakers speak Japanese. I can’t stand it because very few people pronounce things correctly or attempt to make it sound Japanese. Noodles has an extensive vocabulary and impeccable command of grammar, and he doesn’t like wading in the kiddie pool.
Yet this is the second time that we’ve hit the override button on speaking to each other in Japanese, and each time it made sense as we were in front of other Japanese. If we’re willing to beat our swords into plowshares over this, we actually make a pretty good team - he always knows the word that I’m looking for, and when his textbook-perfect Japanese and quirky delivery is met with quizzical looks, I’m there to help him package it better.
Noodles seems to be the right guy with which to try and let go of another piece of Marco Polo Syndrome. I’m sure that non-Japanese Japanese will always grate on my ears (even my own does, on occasion), but I must admit that I am quick to judge and compare whenever I hear a fellow barbarian speaking in tongues. Life will be better the more I simply smile and move on.
In any event, it was fantastic to meet a whole bunch of young Japanese people. One point on the negative side for Kochi is that, due to its remote location and poor economic performance compared with the rest of the country, it lacks the job opportunities and the night life that attract young people.
Many of them flee to Osaka and Tokyo right out of college, if not high school, and stay there until they have a family to raise or elderly parents to care for. I am always a bit blown away by the seeming explosion of youth that I see when I step off a train in the big cities (even Nagoya). There just aren’t that many twenty-somethings in Kochi.
Most of the participants did not know each other prior to the outdoor event, and so we all spent time telling our stories and the dearth of youth in Kochi came up several times. Many of them said that upon returning they feared they wouldn’t be able to find jobs in Kochi and that all of their other friends were long gone.
I suppose that’s why they showed up on a Sunday morning to mess around in the mountains with a bunch of people they didn’t know. After we made baskets by hand out of kudzu vine, the day ended with us sending each other our cell phone information via amazing laser technology (okay, it’s just infrared rays).
All in all, it was a very fulfilling day. Geology and botany lecture for starters, a huge pot of deer meat stew for the main dish, and a sense of belonging and fellowship on the side.
