We all read blogs for various reasons. I like to check out all types of them, humorous ones, ones that display great writing, and ones with awesome photos or videos. But there are few that just leave me in awe whenever I check them out. i, cjw ~.::.~ hiking and climbing in Japan is one of them and definitely one of my top three favorite blogs on Japan. Sure, the name doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it doesn’t have to; check out the stunning photos and wonderful writing at i, cjw and you’ll see why.

A couple of my favorite posts are:
In search of civilisation, and
Fishing for mountains

The author, Chris, is a guy who seriously loves mountaineering. For most of us that think we’re truly experiencing Japan by living here and going out on a regular basis to do things like have cook-it-yourself okonomiyaki, get piss-drunk in a seedy part of town, or visit a famous temple, Chris’s Japan life puts into perspective just how much one can experience this great country to the fullest. Don’t get me wrong, cook-it-yourself okonomiyaki is fucking fantastic, but for a guy like Chris, it’s likely just a way to celebrate a good outing. For too many of us, myself included, the okonomiyaki is the outing. It’s lucky for all of us that read his blog that Chris is such a talented photographer and writer who can do an amazing job of bringing us along on his mountain adventures.

Anyway, Chris was gracious enough to let me interview him and without further ado, here’s how it went:

BW: Do you have a passion for anything else that comes close to the one you have for climbing?

Chris: Good question, but honestly I think the answer is no. To quote Reinhold Messner, the first person to scale the 14 highest mountains on earth without supplementary oxygen, “If you look at my life, then one thing is clear. I did one activity at a time, with all my willpower, all my money and all my time. Complete commitment”. I’m no Messner, but I do have the kind of addictive, competitive personality that lends itself to single-minded (simple-minded, as my wife would put it) pursuits like mountaineering. I also like the fact that the mountains are so brutally honest. You can’t fool them, or paper over your mistakes like you can in everyday life; if you screw up, especially in the winter on a 10,000 footer, then you have to accept that very bad things will happen to you. And that keeps you honest with yourself. Of course the payoffs are enormous, too. Watching the sun come over the horizon from an utterly deserted peak is one of the greatest things in the world.

BW: Fair enough. What’s the closest you’ve come to the final chapter of your story while climbing?

Chris: The closest I’ve come to biting it is getting avalanched on the Daisekkei glacier below Shiro-uma-dake in Nagano. It was the culmination of a set of extremely stupid mistakes I made that day. It’s true that everything goes into slow motion. I had plenty of time to study the snow as it curled over me again and again, and to think about the fact that between me and my companions there were four sets of razor sharp crampons and eight ice axes swirling around in the mix as well. But I also had time to think about all the things I’d learned about avalanche survival. When I finally came to a halt, I saw a patch of light in the snow above me and punched through it, just managing to get my head and arm out before the snow settled with the density of concrete. Apart from that one arm though, I couldn’t move a muscle, it was that compacted. Once I dug myself out I remember being very lucid and calm. I checked my pulse, my eyesight, checked for any broken bones and then went to help my companions. In retrospect it could have been a lot worse.

BW: That’s a hell of an experience. What’s the most interesting, exciting, or strange thing that has happened to you in Japan, not climbing-related?

Chris: I was an eye-witness to a yakuza assassination a few years ago, outside the Yaesu Hotel in broad daylight. My office at the time was around there, and I’d stepped out to go to the convenience store. Suddenly a guy runs past me, into the forecourt of the hotel and calmly proceeds to gun down an older man who was coming out of the hotel entrance. The bodyguards jumped on him, but too late. The surreal part of the story is that, a few days later, I received a bouquet of flowers at the office with an apology for any inconvenience caused *from the gang* whose boss had been shot. Given that I had only told the police my office address, it makes me suspicious to this day how much the yakuza and police collaborate.

BW: Pretty intense. Ok, let’s go with something lighter…
What I love most about Tokyo is…

Chris: ..the transport system. It sounds like a terribly mundane thing to say, but the ability to get out of Tokyo so easily, so quickly and to so many places, is one of the things I love about it. And when the highway tolls drop to just Y1000 flat from this April (as it is rumored to do), then it’s just going to be even better. That said, I love the city itself for what it is as well. It’s given me a career, a life, a wife (!), the food is fantastic and it’s one of the few places on the planet that I really feel at home. Slipping back into the city after a few days in Japan’s wilder places is just great.

BW: Which mountain do you dream of scaling most in the world?

Chris: That’s a difficult one. You’re supposed to say “Everest!” or name some exotic peak where few men have gone before, but I really don’t have those sorts of ambitions. To quote another great mountaineer, Mark Twight, “I learned that the summit is of little relevance to me. I value the experience and the changes in my character that each experience imposes”. I just focus on one mountain at a time, and given the conditions I sometimes go out in, it may take a few attempts to get to the summit. And that’s fine by me. Sometimes I’ve made summits but felt like I’d failed because I hadn’t done it “right”, and other times I’ve backed off halfway and felt like a roaring success. At the moment though I’m quite focused on Kiso-koma-ga-take in the Chuo Alps, as I gave it a few shots in December, and would like to try again in February. I also have a deep longing to climb Tsurugi-dake in the North Alps in winter again, like a did a couple of years ago, so I guess that’s as close to a dream as I have!

BW: A very down-to-earth perspective from a guy who likes being at some of its higher points. Thank you, Chris!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the interview as much as I did and that you’ll check out i, cjw ~.::.~ hiking and climbing in Japan. It’s guaranteed to go up on your blog reading list if you do.

Note: Photos included in this post are not from i, cjw ~.::.~ hiking and climbing in Japan; the photos at i, cjw are much more impressive.

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