A watched tent never blows over.

The many lessons I have learned while camping in Japan:

1.    Cats are heartless creatures who will steal your last chicken drumstick while giving you a look of pure disdain, or even cat-burgle your potato salad purely because it can.   

2.    Just as a watched kettle never boils so an almost blown over tent will not tumble into the sea no matter how hard my friend Josie stares at it.

3.    No matter how idiot proof Roland makes the instructions, I will still put a tent together to look like an abandoned witch hovel that bergies would be too ashamed to sleep in until he comes to fix it.  

4.    Metal pegs and a plastic hammer do not work as well as one might think.

5.    Whenever we are in a crowd or an onsen I will embarrassingly speak Japanese to my Korean friend, every friggin time.

6.    When David says he will get some fire wood he means he is about to deforest half of Japan.

7.    Camping in Japan is ridiculously fun.

I think it was when we felt the second vibrating tremor under our feet as we hammered in our first peg, that Roland, Lauren and I realized that we had chosen to erect our tent on an old meteor crash site. However, Roland was not going to let a little granite and diamond stop him and his plastic hammer and so after a few muscle spasms and manly grunts he Germaned his way into the ground.

The Nagasaki based campsite was beautiful, with a grassy Frisbee field and an ocean filled with sharp rocks, jellyfish, sea urchins and some weird muscles that one of our party members thought we would eat if he cooked it. He was wrong. David and Minyoung were the second couple to arrive along with their adorable baby who gave me nothing but suspicious looks the entire weekend. Well that is not strictly true as he did flash me a big smile when he saw that I was heading home. Damn kids and their ability to tell who is scheming to kidnap them.

The second couple thought they would take the scenic route past our campsite to the other side of Nagasaki prefecture, because who doesn’t like an extra hour of driving before putting your tent up in the dark. Luckily Josie and Mark made it in time for our first meal of eat whatever comes off the grill, immediately. I think we ended up having chicken for starters and garlic bread for dessert.      

The next day dawned with a cup of stolen coffee and a trip to the nearby onsen to wash some of the smoke out of our hair and some of the bacon and egg grease from our hands. I know I say this all the time but man I love to onsen! There is just something weirdly fun about being naked outside, in a gorgeous stone hot-spring while talking to your girlfriends about how boys can`t close a cupboard or find an object just slightly left of their field of vision.

As the other campers went back to chill, Roland, Lauren and I headed to the nearby Huis-ten-bosch theme park. Not only does this perfect replica of a city found in the Netherlands appeal to my Dutch sensibilities of eating chocolate and cheese, at this time of year it plays host to the gardening world cup and a Van Gogh exhibit showing off fifty of his works. 

While I enjoyed looking at the amazing little blocks of art that was the sculpted gardens, getting to see the actual paint strokes of the artist I admire most in the world was one of those moments that just gives my soul a good shake. I was biting back the tears as I stared into that man`s eyes as he saw them and felt him wring every drop of emotion out of me with a few well placed patches of colour. I bought a little overpriced fridge magnet at the gift shop depicting one of his self-portraits so that every now and then when I grab a block of cheese or put back the milk I get to have that little chill of Goosebumps up my arms as I remember how it felt to see so much genius a few inches from my face.   

   

My intellectual introspection was very short lived however as not five minutes after viewing this amazing exhibition I found myself barefoot in an exact replica of the Royal palace of Amsterdam. You see, Lauren had worn some pretty high heels to the park, not knowing that the place is huge and so after many a kilometer her feet finally said no! She was also wearing tights and so would have looked like even more of a crazy person if she had no shoes on so after much protesting on her part I handed her my slip on shoes and walked the fancy pants palace grounds, street urchin style.       

Our last night once again saw the grills lit and the meat marinating as all of us attempted a game called Geek challenge, sponsored by the lovely Ducky that is currently living it up back in SA. Now I don`t want to say that Josie and Mark cheated to beat team Froland but they did, a lot! Our imminent defeat even made Roland brave enough to cry, `Noooooo woman` when I hastily shouted out the wrong answer relating to the X-men.      

Other than losing our ETC ticket for 10 minutes as we hit the toll booth while searching up a storm, the trip back was all Belgian ice-cream and magic dumplings filled with curry and a soft boiled egg. It really was a fantastic weekend and I am already looking for the next campsite to be lucky enough to get a little visit from a few foreigners and one suspicious little kid.

For Fuji`s sake.

I love the jokes people tell when they are nervous or scared. Not only do they come with an extra kick of honesty but that lifeline of a giggle is great when you are desperately trying to shut your mind up about how old tennis shoes is probably not going to cut it on crumbling volcanic rock. Nothing like some self-deprecating humour to convince every other passenger on the Tomas the tank engine bus heading to mount Fuji, that at least they are better off than those four South Africans. Sure Roland and I had only gone to bed at around 2am the previous night due to our replacement bus needing a replacement bus and our plane being delayed to the point of missing the last train from the airport. I have it on good authority that cup noodles, coke and kitkats are an extremely good way to carbo-load the night before climbing a mountain and the best way to rest up the morning before is to run around Tokyo trying to renew your passport. Oh yeah, we were in fine shape.

The frosty wind that rushed through my hair had nothing on the stare I directed at Roland as we fondly remembered him saying, `oh why bother with beenies and down jackets, it`s shorts wearing weather on Fuji at the moment`. Luckily I was beaten with the stubborn stick and packed semi decent ways to keep warm but Roland grabbed a light jacket, sweat pants and a superhero shirt. I will treasure the photo I have of me wearing the extra pair of pants I took along, as a hat/scarf combo until the day Roland regains feeling in his fingers and toes. 

We paid our R5 to pee, adjusted our backpacks full of energy drinks, oatmeal cookies and downed the last of our starbucks coffee as we confidently headed in the wrong direction for the first five minutes of our climb. Cornelia and I celebrated getting to what we thought was the next base camp (after about 30 minutes of walking) with a little sit down, until the nice man handed us a map and said welcome to the start of your climb. We decided to climb at night because having a nice warm sun and being able to see where we are going is way too mainstream for us extreme climbing types.

As all good horror stories start, our first few hours were all fun and games. We happily skipped up the loose gravel stairs, yes stairs of the yoshida route and bought bananas and cocoa at the 6^th station. We took photos of the moon light bouncing off the clouds so far below our feet and said things like `Wow guys, just think about how amazing this is for a moment`. And then somebody lost an eye, well metaphorically at least. The fun started morphing into taking deep breaths due to the lack of oxygen and the games quickly turned into trying to rub the volcanic dust out of our eyes and ears. Our dialogue became less `can you believe we are here` to `what were those people talking about when they said Fuji is challenging but not so bad` and `nobody said anything about proper climbing with boulders and hands and knees`. If someone has told you that climbing Fuji is easy, they are either in good shape or lying, trust someone whose only exercise is asking Roland to pass her the remote control.   

By the time we reached the second last station even a zombie would be all ` it’s not you it’s me` but even here Roland still managed to be charming as he told me that the mud caked around my eyes kind of looked like mascara and that I was totally working the pants/hat/scarf combo. An insanely icy wind was blasting us from every angle and there was nothing more in the world I wanted after 7 hours of solid climbing than another hour and a half of the same. It is strange to think of that final push now, I just zoned out and put one foot in front of the other as I stepped in the little puddle of light my R10 torch provided.    

However, when we stumbled through the tori gate emphasizing our arrival and Roland squeezed my hand as we looked out over all the world covered in soft clouds my breath caught and not from the thin air. As the light of the rising sun colored the sky in shades of my little pony pink, the other climbers started to sing the national anthem. Sure I was tired and sure I just paid R40 (400 yen) for a cup of tea and sure I had a 5 hour climb down the mountain ahead of me but there I was, standing on mount friggin Fuji, hearing such pride on the voices beside me and it was perfect.  

That childlike wonder lasted all of until I put my 1^st foot down on the way back. Oh the torturous horror that is the decent of that bastard mountain! Fuji`s exit is one, unending line of bulldozed zigzags made up of crumbling stones forged in the fires of mount doom and placed there with the sole purpose of making you slide, fall and stumble your way down. Cornelia and Andrew locked arms and in so doing managed to keep the other from tumbling down and breaking crowns, whereas I just clung onto Roland like a limpid as I tried to break the world record for complaining. I could not even fake a smile for the poor, hopeful day-climbers we met at the end and I was happily dreaming and drooling by the time the bus driver closed the doors.

I have not even gotten rid of all the dust in my ears or shaken off my old-lady limp yet and Roland is already throwing words like Kilimanjaro and base camp of Everest around, so instead of writing my next entry I am just going to copy and paste the inevitable article of that South African tourist who tragically succumbed to hypothermia while trying to sport some shorts on his way up the Himalayas.     

A suitcase stuffed with groceries

There I was, lying ever so awkwardly on my ziggurat of sofa cushions, provided by the good people of Haneda airport, struck down by the grandmother of all flues, while three little Japanese kids chased each other around and around my pyramid of leather pillows. The children were playing Zombies versus the-as-of-yet-unaffected, totally unaware of the fact that they were a few feet away from someone actually turning into the un-dead. This was my last day in Tokyo and thankfully only the second day of suffering from the plague.

The rest of my family holiday was pretty damn perfect. On the 18th of December 24 little bottles of Amarula, 8 peppermint-crisps, 2 travel worn parents and one beautiful bottle of Mrs Balls chutney landed at Oita Airport. Roland and I posed for the 1st of fifty million photos and then it was off to show the folks our new hometown. It was fun impressing them with our ATM drawing, Petrol pumping and food ordering skills while they surprised us by eating everything interesting we put in front of them. My dad complained every time he had to put down R50 for a beer but not even this stopped him from ordering two at every restaurant anyway. I was informed by my mom that the one night they slept in Tokyo alone on route to Oita my dad was sent on a food foraging mission and came back with a bread roll (with nothing on it) and a milk beer which he chucked down the drain a moment after tasting it.

Our 1st out-of-town-overnight was the moving city of Hiroshima which we reached via the light fantastic. I have heard the odd I’m-so-over-it foreigner tell me how the shinkansen is really not that exciting but let me tell you as a 1st time flyer, that the Japanese bullet train is a gorgeous piece of engineering that you need to ride at least once in your life.

It sounds cliché, but I really could feel a beautiful duality to Hiroshima the entire time we were there. The city has a way of rushing you through a spectrum of emotions and yet it is so wonderfully balanced that by the end of the day you still feel calm and weirdly filled with hope. In the morning we made our way to the atomic dome and peace park and if there is ever a place that will leave you despondent at human cruelty, this is it. God, it was sad. We can debate all the sides and everyone can put forth their propaganda and argue all they want, at the end of the day so many people had their one chance at life stolen so heartlessly that it gets to you and it really should. And then slowly Hiroshima leaves all that sadness behind and starts turning on the charm. Before you know it you are sitting in a warm, atmospheric okonomiyaki restaurant or walking deserted winter streets lit by thousands of Christmas lights and realising that you are already addicted to the uneasy magic that this city has in spades.

The next pin I could prick into my map of Japan was Kyoto. Sadly my dad caught a bad case of “shrine sickness” that only shopping could cure so Roland, my thankfully more cultured mother and myself headed to 4 or 5 world heritage sites. The day started silver at ginkakugi where my OCD approved of every raked pebble and perfectly placed square of moss and turned gold that afternoon as we admired the spectacular kinkakugi, one of the most famous sites in all of Japan. While my mom had been a trooper all day, the December chill finally got the best of her and so Roland and I took the train to Fushimi Inari shrine, alone. This is the site of the thousand tori gates (those red beams you always see in postcards of Japan) and Roland and I were lucky enough to see it with almost no one else in sight. Sure we lost a bit of toe due to frostbite and the metal in my leg just blatantly refused to bend to my will but even having to manually swing my left leg onto the following step did not make this shrine any less striking. Everywhere the stone fox messengers of the gods sat protecting graves or snacking on the fried tofu left out for them and walking through those thousands of arches covered in Kanji was pretty special. I am never going to give you a good enough picture of this place so feel free to click on this video to see what I am on about. Kyoto Rising Dawn

 And now a little detour, designed entirely to shame my father, who deserves every letter of it. You see Japan’s marketing department will have believe that seeing a Geisha is as easy as strolling into a teahouse, requesting your favourite shamisen tune and getting one of these lovely ladies to flutter over with a cup of green tea. This dear sir is not the case. Still today you need an invitation (usually a pricey one from a Japanese person) or you need to be in Kyoto for the Gion festival where these creatures of culture dance and perform in the streets. The only other way to see a Geisha is if you are lucky enough to catch one shuffling gracefully to or from work. Now imagine if you will how excited the German and I were to spot not only a Geisha but a Maiko (Geisha in training) as well on their way to their 9 to 5 as it were. Now imagine if you will how sad we were to discover that we had left our camera at the hotel. But lo, what silver lining is this? My dad has his new camera and after taking a few photos at a not so annoying distance we happily headed back for a good night’s rest. But lo, what not so silver lining is this? While showing my mom the photos that night my dad deleted every photo and so our Kyoto trip ended, Geisha photo free.

Our last stop over before hitting all the bright lights of Tokyo was Nara, where gangster deer extort rice crackers from you with more than light nudging and where a huge Buddha and pagoda blow a sizable hole in your mind and I think this is a good place to stop. I will talk about Tokyo in a later blog I intend to write about Roland’s parents visit. So I will end off by saying thanks mom and dad for an amazing holiday and that I think of you every time I sip some rooibos tea, spread some chutney on my cottage pie or look at those beautiful photos we took of the Geisha……oh wait, maybe not the last one.