Sometimes the language barrier turns out to be a good thing. Son Jes wrote this in 2005 when he was teaching in Japan. I thought you would enjoy it.
Filed under: Thoughts
Mt. Hongu or Hongusan as we call it (no -san in this case isn’t like Mr. or Ms. it actually means mountain)
In my last few days of freedom - don’t worry ladies, I meant freedom from work - I decided to take a short ride on my bike. Now, if you asked me a few months ago how long a “short” ride was, I would probably have a dramatically different answer. In this ride, I start from my house dodging semi’s and senior citizen drivers and ride to the top of Mt Hongu and then I ride back. I’ve got the ride calculated at just under 80km (50 miles).
I realized today if you take out all the lousy diesel snorting trucks (I’m now a big fan of biodiesel and/or large rickshaws to move goods 
) and nincompoop drivers who apparently can’t see a 6 foot tall white guy with a brightly colored jersey riding 40km/hr, Japan can be quite a nice place to ride. Imagine yourself riding in rural Japan.
Away from the from the hustle AND bustle and on into a more rural area you find that dragonflies amuse themselves by performing aerial maneuvers around your head, followed by more senior citizen dodging - but this time they smile as you nearly careen into them. You continue riding down the narrow 2-lane road and see road workers hunkered down in the shade on lunch break eating their convenience store lunches consisting of no-crust white bread egg and ham sandwiches or rice balls. Other workers make sure traffic flow is safe. With a cigarette in one hand and a white flag in the young road worker waves you through, but there really isn’t much need since there isn’t much traffic.
You keep riding and are quite ready to find a shady place to sit and eat your own “crummy” convenience store sandwich and suck down a refreshing can of Coke. Then finally, you reach the base of Mt. Hongu. You used to be really tired at this point, but not really anymore. It’s time to sit down before you climb the mountain, it’s not a big mountain but it’s a little steep. After a few minutes of down time you start the climb up Mt. Hongu. It always seems to take quite awhile to climb up Mt. Hongu, but then at 3 miles per hour everything takes a long time. A car passes by and a women yells “Gambatte” which means “You can do it!” or “Good luck!” and you take that advice and continue up the mountain. Once you finish climbing the mountain you’re pretty happy that you can still move and you remember the first time you climbed that same mountain.
At the top of the mountain, you ride (rather quickly) to the nearest coffee shop/hangout for cyclists or motorcyclists and again take a little break. And then you ride back. You descend the mountain and marvel at the beauty of gravity, but unfortunately with all the hairpin turns you can’t ride very fast. You ride back on the same road and salute the road workers, dodge senior citizens and watch dragonflies. You reach some train tracks and wait for a train to pass and suddenly an old women with bottom teeth only taps you on the shoulder and starts talking to you. “It’s hot isn’t it?” she says, and you agree. She asks how far you have ridden and you reply and then she says something like “Do the impossible” or maybe “You have done the impossible” but with your Japanese you don’t quite know. You think that’s kind of cool if not eerie and also wonder about Japan’s overall dental health. Then, before you know it, you’re “sharing” the road with semi’s again.
Update: Well just when I thought I almost knew what people were talking about here I found out I was wrong. The old woman actually said something more like “don’t work too hard!” which makes more sense, but sounds a lot less cool and Yoda-ish/Sportsdrink marketing campaign-like I thought she said with “Do the impossible”. Ahh well.
Enjoyed reading this Bobbi. Thank you.
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