Most of all, I worried about my visa. I had no assurance that immigration would grant me another tourist visa, even if I left the country and returned when the initial 90 days ran out, and Oobie could not leave and return at all. Unless I resolved the visa issue fast, my hyakumeizan plan was doomed to fail.
A friend and fellow author named Claire Youmans, who was living in Japan on a writer’s visa, put me in touch with her immigration lawyer. I exchanged emails with him when I arrived in Tokyo, but his schedule made it hard to arrange a meeting.
With worries closing in from every side, I did what any mature adult would do:
I ran off to the mountains.
At 4:30 a.m. on May 20, 2018, as dawn bleached the Tokyo sky from black to gray, I filled the water reservoir in my brand-new, bright blue day pack, laced up my hiking boots, and caught an early train to Gunma.
Mount Akagi (赤城山) rises 1,828 meters above the northern end of the Kantō Plain—the largest agricultural area in Japan. The mountain sits about an hour by bus from Maebashi, the capital city of Gunma Prefecture, which also bears the distinction of sitting farther inland than any other prefectural capital in Japan. Although Maebashi is only an hour from Tokyo by shinkansen (the high-speed rail system also known as the “bullet train”), I made the stingier choice to take a local train, which made the journey three times as long (but at less than half the price).
On the train, an elderly woman sitting across the aisle opened a pale pink bakery bag and withdrew a trio of puffy, bite-sized rolls filled with a sweet bean paste called an. I had skipped breakfast, on the theory that I could find a local specialty to eat in Maebashi before the climb. Like so many other bad decisions I would make in the months to come, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I looked out the window as my stomach growled.
By the time I reached Maebashi, I was so hungry that my standards had fallen from “find the most exciting regional delicacy available” to “I’ll eat anything that isn’t poisonous.” The tiny station had only a single shop that offered food, and the shop had only a single tandoori chicken sandwich on the shelf. I grabbed the sandwich, along with a tiny raspberry Danish.
I devoured the pastry on the two-minute walk to the bus stop near the station, and barely resisted eating the sandwich too.
Five minutes before the bus was due to leave, a crowd of people in colorful hiking gear emerged from the station and queued up behind me in groups of two and three. Their floppy sun hats made me remember I didn’t have one of my own. I’d also forgotten sunscreen and a sweater.
You are not prepared for this, my anxiety said. Go home. Come back another day.
Just then, the bus arrived. I climbed aboard before my fears could change my mind.
The forecast called for sun in Maebara, but as the bus drove toward the mountain, threatening clouds blocked out the sky. By the time we reached the visitor center at the base of Mount Akagi, the sky had grown so dark that I considered turning back. If it got any colder, if it rained, or if I failed to complete the hike before the last bus left for Maebara that afternoon, I could end up in serious trouble.
What made you think you could climb a mountain anyway?
As the Japanese hikers trooped past me off the bus, I almost gave in to fear, but I reminded myself that I’d come to break that cycle.
I forced myself to heft my pack and follow them out the door.
After studying the colorful trail map at the visitor center, I hiked down the asphalt road in the direction of the trailhead. Ten minutes later, I reached a wooden sign with an arrow pointing to an earthen path that did lead upward into the forest, but didn’t look anything like my mental image of a hiking trail. It looked more like a steep embankment covered in rocks that someone labeled “hiking course” as a cruel joke.
I saw no trace of other hikers. Somehow, the crowd from the bus had completely vanished.
Forget this. Let’s go climb an ice cream sundae back in Maebara instead.
Just then, three college-aged Japanese girls appeared around a bend in the road, approached, and—after asking me to take their picture standing by the trailhead—started up the rock-strewn trail.
I screwed my courage to the sticking point and followed.
The miles I’d walked during chemo didn’t pay quite the dividends I expected. I puffed for breath and my thighs began to burn, even though I moved at roughly the speed of a garden slug.
After cutting several switchback turns across the mountainside, the trail ended at the base of a huge metal staircase that zig-zagged upward like Picasso’s version of a giant zipper. The steep, narrow stairs disappeared into the trees above, and I wondered if they went all the way to the summit. I hoped they did. A staircase seemed much easier, and more familiar, than the rocky trail I’d been ascending.
It took less than a minute for those stairs to change my mind. The freezing metal railing burned my hands. My thighs and calves ached even worse than they had before. When the clang of boots on metal announced the approach of descending hikers, I froze in fear. The staircase wasn’t wide enough for anyone to pass, and its narrow railings offered scant protection against the 15-meter drop on either side.
I closed my eyes and clung to the railing as the other hikers passed. They didn’t even slow their pace, and—to my shock—our bodies didn’t touch.
Afterward, I opened my eyes in more ways than one. Chemotherapy had dropped my weight to its lowest point in 30 years, but I still saw myself as the overweight woman I had been two years before. The realization that I was a stranger in my body made me eager to learn what other surprises this year would have in store.
At the top of the metal stairs (which, mercifully, ended after a rise of only 100 meters), I unhooked the drinking tube from the strap of my pack, feeling smug that I didn’t have to stop to hydrate, and sucked up a mouthful of water that tasted like melted plastic.
In addition to overlooking my sweater, hat, and sunscreen, I’d forgotten to wash the silicone reservoir in my pack before I filled it up for its initial use.
I spit the foul-tasting liquid on the ground, pulled out my mobile phone, and quickly searched the connection between unwashed plastic reservoirs, chemical poisoning, and cancer.
The search revealed that, on the internet, everything causes cancer.
I reminded myself that millions of people across the world drink far more dangerous water than what comes out of an unwashed plastic reservoir.
They die of horrible diseases too, my inner voice replied.
My plan to climb a hundred mountains was a fool’s errand for which I was not prepared.
And yet, I had spent my entire life using fear as a reason not to try.
In second grade, as I stood in line for the inflatable bounce house at the Franklin Elementary School carnival, I saw a sign beside the entrance that read “Enter At Your Own Risk.” I stepped out of line immediately, frightened and confused. What risk would I take if I went inside? Would the house collapse? Would I suffocate? Would it pop, or possibly explode?
I walked away from the bounce house. To this day I’ve never been inside one. By the time I understood the sign was a standard warning, and that bounce houses were not deathtraps waiting to murder unsuspecting children, I was too big to jump around inside them.
That morning on Mount Akagi, I knew—with absolute clarity—that if I let the tainted water in my pack excuse my turning back, I would not climb a hundred mountains.
Fear