Hiking Mt. Bandai: Fatherhood and Who to Feed

My kids were staring at their grandma’s TV for the fifth night in a row. Not that there's much else to do after dark out here in the sticks, unless you want to stay up and keep watch for the wild boars and black bears that have recently been coming around.

A shortened summer vacation and a resurgent coronavirus had nixed our plans to visit the oft-overlooked, quietly intriguing island of Shikoku. To compensate we opted for a relaxing week at my wife’s parents’ peach farm in Fukushima, north of home but just as hot and three times as humid.

I’d spent most mornings helping my mother-in-law pick and pack peaches. As a family we’d done little else, remaining distant from the people and places that normally take up our time here. The days had passed sluggishly, slipping unremarkably by until suddenly it was Wednesday and we had a mere thirty-six hours before we'd have to return to Nagano. Tomorrow, then, was my last chance to carry on a nascent personal Fukushima tradition: going off for a day to climb one of the region's innumerable mountains.

It's a rather selfish endeavor, but we all need to feed our souls. And walking up really big hills then walking back down them is how I feed mine.

To this point it had been a private affair - just me and a mountain - so I was surprised at the words that were now falling out of my mouth.

“Any of you guys want to go hiking with me tomorrow?”

I confess I had mixed feelings when, to my surprise, my oldest son looked up at me and said he'd go. His brother seemed to be tossing the idea around in his head, though I think this was deliberate. He didn’t want to go, but too quick an answer might be taken as too easy and outright a rejection of dad. He’s ten, but this is how he thinks.

Their little sister tossed out a cheery and utterly empty “Okay!”

Okay? Something wasn’t right. “You do? You want to go hiking tomorrow?”

She turned to me. “What?”

Nope. She hadn’t even heard the question. She just heard something that sounded like dad or maybe it was someone on TV or hey do we have any more cookies?

I asked her again. She laughed – “Oh! No.” – and got back to staring at a shampoo commercial.

It wasn't me that was asking them to go. It was my ruinous sense of fatherly obligation. A responsible father doesn't let his kids melt the plasma right out of grandma's TV. But more than this, a decent dad, I'd come to believe, always puts his desires last, to be attended to only after everyone else's have been fulfilled.

I still believe it. But after years of adhering in self-flagellation to this right and noble Way of the Father, I've also come to the realization that such extreme pragmatism can destroy one's soul.

At times I feel like I'm actually figuring out this crazy balancing act. And I guess I should admit that I like it when one of my kids thinks I'm more interesting than a shampoo commercial.

Bandai-san in March, viewed from the southwest.

July 15, 1888 – Mt. Bandai erupts in the worst volcanic disaster in recent Japanese history. In the preceding days and hours several earthquakes had shaken this Aizu region. Unbeknownst to the inhabitants of the area, who were accustomed to the occasional tremor, these quakes gave rise to magma so hot it would turn the groundwater beneath Bandai to steam instantaneously, creating an intense amount of pressure that could quite literally move mountains.

On the 15th, at 7:45 am, in the midst of an earthquake lasting more than a minute, the magma beneath Bandai was forced upwards into the groundwater. the resulting and immediate phreatic reaction bringing a thunderous noise and a massive explosion that rocked the Aizu highlands.

Each passing minute brought another explosion. Columns of black smoke billowed thousands of meters into the air. Ten minutes after the initial explosion the northern peak of Mt. Bandai, known as Ko-bandai ('small Bandai'), collapsed with an earth-shaking roar as 1.5 cubic kilometers of earth and rock - equal to one thousand Roman Colosseums, with seven hundred pyramids of Giza thrown in for good measure - created an avalanche of debris reaching speeds, according to eyewitness accounts, of 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour. Several villages and over 450 people disappeared as the landslide buried thirty-four square kilometers of land (New York's Central Park times ten, or about 77 Vatican Cities), laying waste to an area that, over time, would become beautiful once again.

My son was just four days shy of becoming a teenager. I should be pleasantly surprised he’d want anything at all to do with his old man. Watching him snoozing in the passenger seat on the way up to Aizu I wondered if he agreed to come along on this expedition not for him so much but for me. I can be a terribly impatient and sarcastic father, and my son, too often on the receiving end of my failures, was still willing to spend time with me. Perhaps he saw my invitation as an effort to make up for my foolish and frequent shortcomings. Maybe he just thought it would be fun to go on a hike with me.

Either way, I couldn't escape the sense that he was giving me more than I was giving him. More than I deserved. The idea that I likely was not the first dad in history to feel this way might have helped mitigate my middle-age angst if I were the type to compare myself with others. But I am not.

He woke up as we wound along a narrow forested road called the Lake Line, one of the area's several scenic diversions that used to require tolls. In the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake the toll system was suspended before being permanently abolished. This may or may not have helped the survival of the tourism industry around Bandai-Asahi National Park. These days it’s hard to tell with the coronavirus situation keeping most people away.

“Check it out!” I said as we came to a stretch of road overlooking Lake Akimoto, one of the major changes in the landscape brought about by Bandai's eruption. Looming over the forest in the distance were the soft triangles of Bandai's peaks.

“Cool,” he said, with genuine or maybe feigned interest. Likely a mix of the two. My instinct was to pull over and snap a couple of photos. But I’d barely begun to take my foot off the gas when my son had already turned away from the window.

We passed the turn for the boulder-rich playground of Nakatsugawa Gorge. We’d gone to see it a bunch of years ago as a family, and I described the place as best as I could to my blank-faced son. "We all went down and put our feet in the river," I said though I wasn’t really sure we had. After a moment his eyes brightened, accentuating a smile as he seemed to suddenly recall the place. This time I was sure his reaction was real.

We cruised along the south shore of Lake Hibara, where a sprawling parking lot played host to a total of three cars. Another quarter mile west along Route 459 we turned down the side road that would lead to the trail head. First, though, it would lead to a small roadside parking lot of grass and dirt that was already full of cars.

Fifty yards up we could see that the paved road gave way to gravel. There was a sign, but from that distance, it was unreadable. Not really thinking, I turned around and we went back to that parking lot next to Lake Hibara.

The Yomiuri Shimbun was founded in 1874. Originally a modest daily newspaper, through the 1880s and 1890s it was largely known as a literary arts publication. It was during this period, however, that the paper printed its first news photograph – an image of post-eruption Bandai. The Japanese Red Cross, established just ten months prior, found itself facing its first big challenge.

The massive flow of earth and debris into the Ura-Bandai area north of the mountain blocked the flow of the Nagasegawa River and its tributaries. This lead to the formation of Akimoto-ko, Hibara-ko, and several other lakes, along with a series of marshland ponds known collectively as Go-shiki-numa, which means either Five Colored Ponds or Five-Colored Ponds. Neither of these names makes perfect sense as there are way more than five ponds, and together throughout the year – or even throughout the day – they appear as more than just five different colors.

As the largest and, subjectively, the most beautifully colored of the ponds, Bishamon-numa is the main attraction at Go-shiki-numa. Tour buses growl and cough up exhaust as they roll into the long, crowded parking lot to spit out streams of tourists visiting this, the easternmost of the Five Ponds. The visitor center, comprised mainly of souvenirs and food, is a two-story affair. Most people never get past the western reaches of Bishamon-numa though the walking path extends for four more kilometers, ending at a gelato shop across the street from Lake Hibara’s sprawling lot.

Lake Hibara, and the greater expanse of the Ura-Bandai region, is a popular yet understated destination for outdoor recreation which, as far as I could tell, is presently fighting for its very survival.

The two-toned stone marker with Bandai-Asahi National Park and Lake Hibara inscribed in two languages reminded me of my first trip here, in the Fall of 2001. I was a brand new English teacher at the time, still wide-eyed at every turn here in these novel surroundings, and had made the trip up from the city of Fukushima with another, only slightly more experienced foreign teacher. I don’t remember what we actually did that day besides take a few pictures at this stone marker and, at 2pm, toy with the possibility of scrambling up to the top of Bandai and back down before dark.

“I think we can make it,” my fellow ignoramus said in a classic case of blind leading the blind. I think he was hoping I’d be the pansy and decline – which I did.

My second trip up here, the following year, was with my girlfriend at the time. All I remember of this episode is a series of fragmented moments of our climb up Bandai together. One of those moments was the sight of a long flying insect that, as it sat sunning itself on a rock, seemed to be smiling. In a long, drawn-out burst of inspiration that would make Stephen King proud (or make him barf, I'm not sure) I would, from the sight of this one bug, write an entire book of fictitious stories about people climbing a mountain.

Twenty years later, neither wide-eyed nor blinded by testosterone, I was sure I'd remember a lot more of this trip - as I tend to do now, attributable to the recent and profound realization that my mountain-climbing days are numbered.

After having our picture taken next to that stone marker by a nice man with little idea how to take a decent picture, my son and I headed for the sidewalk along 459. We turned up the side road and walked past that small, packed lot and up the gravel access road. Another thirty minutes and we came upon the wide grassy parking lot at the foot of the Ura-Bandai ski slopes.

A rather boring walk, and a waste of time not to mention energy. Two miles of walking for nothing. I felt a familiar lump of anger rising up from my gut. It's normal for me to get pissed at myself for being an idiot. But walking next to me was my son, exuding a silent, palpable calm, compelling me to do the same.

In Japan there's a saying: The parents don’t raise the children, the children raise the parents. Somehow I don’t think this is quite what they mean.

He chuckled at my comment about parking here next time. He wondered aloud which of the peaks visible beyond the forest-lined ski slopes we’d be climbing. I had to be honest and tell him I wasn’t sure, which made me think that maybe one of the reasons I like to hike alone is that no one else suffers if I don't know where I’m going - or can’t find the right parking lot.

That lump in my gut lingered, waiting, like it was expecting to be let out in a rumbling stream of bad words. Meanwhile my kid, whether intentionally or not, was the one keeping that lump down - and my spirits up.

As we climbed the steepening path, up the grassy and desolate ski runs, the sun getting hotter by the minute, I sparred with a familiar thought: my kids deserve better than me.

There are several trails leading to the top of Bandai, originating at various points around the mountain. The route leading up from the Ura-Bandai ski slopes goes past Aka-numa, which means Copper Pond. Formed in the eruption of 1888, it gives off a burnt orange hue thanks to the iron hydroxide-rich mud sitting below the clear shallow water. Reflected in the surface and standing tall in the near distance are the two most obvious peaks of Bandai-san, with the scarred, rocky earth clearly visible in between, marked by swaths of rock face colored yellow from the sulfur, a stark contrast to the lush green slopes on the south side of the mountain.

This is not to say Bandai’s volcanic history is limited to the north. Two pyroclastic flows, one 90,000 years ago and another 50,000 years ago, scattered earth and debris across the land to the south, damming the river flowing through the Inawashiro Basin and creating, over time, Lake Inawashiro, Japan’s fourth largest lake. These relatively recent events only occurred after periodic eruptions spanning the previous two hundred thousand years (or, according to another source, six hundred thousand years).

Even at six hundred thousand years Bandai is the new kid on the block. Just to the west stands Mt. Nekoma, which began wreaking geologic havoc on the area around 1.1 million years ago, finishing up 750,000 years later. Further west, and in every other direction, more volcanoes sleep, for now or for eternity.

Beyond Akanuma the path leads across a sunny marsh where I saw a dragonfly like no other I’d ever laid eyes on. Dragonflies swarm all over the mountains (and rice fields) of Japan, and I’d seen a variety of colors. This one, though, was positively alien. It was huge and black with big bright green polka dots all over its body. It looked hungry – or maybe that was just me.

I remarked out loud my surprise at the sight of it, then again my delight when it shot erratically toward us again. I pointed it out to my son like I’d just discovered a set of dinosaur bones. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen a few like that before,” he said easily.

So much for dad’s great discovery. As consolation I could write a book about it.

From the edge of Alien Dragonfly Marsh the path tossed us into the blessed cool shade of the woods. I let my son walk ahead, with a little space between us, thinking this might amount to some kind of exercise in nurturing his independence. At the same time I wanted to maintain some fragmented semblance of conversation, something that, as a father, I find strangely difficult at times.

Recently both my boys have shown a developing self-sufficiency in everyday life. As a middle school student my older son can now bike to school, something that, after asking me for a ride practically every god damn day of elementary school, is a welcome change. His brother, meanwhile, walks fiercely to the beat of his own drum. Though for a time he loved to play soccer he never showed any enthusiasm for playing on a team. While his siblings take piano and swimming and violin and calligraphy lessons he stubbornly refuses to anything but his own thing, which used to mean Legos and toy cars though he’s transitioned to running off to play with his friends after school and playing computer games before and after dinner, on his mom’s smartphone or on my laptop.

I’m delighted at their growing independence. It certainly beats having to feed them and bathe them and brush their teeth for them every night. I just hope that their development and eventual contentment with their identity will, in some small positive way, stem from their involvement with their dad.

Despite my eruptions I hope that they will, like this place, grow into something beautiful. I guess that's where my ruinous sense of responsibility comes from. I have to remind them - and prove to myself - that I am not just one never-ending phreatic explosion.

The path rose gradually – too gradually, I thought as we plodded along streams and through mud patches. I wondered aloud if there was going to be a rope ladder at the end. Some chains bolted to a rocky cliff. An elevator perhaps. My son let out a quick chuckle, the kind usually reserved for his friends.

Yet the occasional glimpse of Bandai-san through the trees told us we were inching higher and closer. Behind us, to the north, we could see Lake Hibara, incongruously distant, pressed flat under the weight of the haze hanging over the land. Today, it seemed, would be as humid as every other day of our week here in Fukushima. Not that that should come as a surprise. I’d heard once that Kyoto and Fukushima were the two most humid areas in all of Japan. My experiences can serve to back that up, though after biking around Kyushu in August, 2004 I’d say Nagasaki is a close third.

Bandai-san's highest peaks practically disappear behind the rim of a geologically-infant crater.

Hibara-ko (upper left), the ski slopes (middle), and Akanuma Pond (lower center-right) 

Life and cool water where once was ash and desolation.

At 3.5 kilometers, the Happohdai Route is the second shortest of the half dozen trails up Bandai. Only the 3-kilometer Okinajima Route is shorter - albeit much steeper as this path involves a full 1,000 meters of vertical climbing. The Happohdai trail head sits up near the pass over the ridge between Bandai and Nekoma, cutting the vertical to a mere six hundred. Consequently the Happohdai Route involves a relatively gradual ascent, opening up Bandai to more hikers at both ends of the age spectrum.

The Urabandai Route, from the base of the ski slopes we had walked up, would rise 900 meters over a six-kilometer stretch. From the top, the Kawakami Route runs east along the upper edge of the 1.5 cubic kilometer hole in Bandai’s side, then drops down to a place called ‘Kako-hara’, or maybe ‘Kako-bara’, where the trail then splits. The Kawakami Route heads right, leading down to the hot spring village of Kawakami Onsen, seven kilometers away from – and 1,100 meters below – the top of Bandai-san. The trail running left from Kako-hara/bara loops back to join the Urabandai trail. This was my hope at least.

Like that trip around Kyushu in 2004, and like most of my travels – and like most of my life come to think of it – for this hike up Bandai I didn’t have much of a map. I was leading my son around using a smartphone photo of the barely-detailed map in the guidebook I got from the library. Again, if it were just me...

The trail had turned steep when we passed two women, decked out with all the accouterments of mountaineering and sweating like crazy underneath it all. They were, I think, from Germany. We exchanged greetings and bounded on ahead of them.

Abruptly our upward path merged with the Happoudai trail. From here it was one mile to Kobo-Shimizu, the landing spot just below the final climb to the peak. My son and I were both mildly excited to know we were now most of the way there.

I find it strange that even as we voluntarily undertake an endeavor like climbing a mountain we feel relief in knowing our destination – a.k.a. the end – is near. Conversely, finding out the remainder of our path is longer than we thought or hoped brings a vague sense of disappointment. Why, then, are we even out here?

Another question arose as I pored over the details on my photo-map. Apparently there was an onsen somewhere near here, a place called Naka-no-yu, meaning either 'hot spring in the center' (of what we are not told) or 'hot spring in the middle of nowhere' (more apropos a name I'd say). My map was from a book published in 2001. At that time the onsen was closed. I had no idea if it had reopened - or where it even was - but either way, sitting in a tub of scalding hot water in the middle of the day in the middle of the Fukushima summer is not my idea of fun.

Past the junction the trail up to Kobo-Shimizu brought stretches of steep and rocky staircases – and, for us, two more German women. Another sign, posted at another junction, told us we had a mere 300 meters to go. We passed through more woods, then stepped out into a clearing and the flat-ish expanse of rocks and dirt and bare-bones amenities that make up the Kobo-Shimizu experience.

There's shelter, from the summer sun or, in winter, from the wind and snow. Food and drink, including cold beer, can be had for a price. Three bucks gets you use of the toilet. The views to the north are stunning and satisfying.

Lunch with a view and we tackled the final (and steep) 200 meter vertical climb. Through thick groves of short trees then some thick bush we emerged onto the rocky summit. It was just after high noon. Less than three hours had passed since we started up Route 459.

We bounced around that pile of rocks, taking in the view, wide and vast in every direction. And as I watched my son's face, as I listened to his quiet exclamations of wonder and affirmation, it became crystal clear: This is why we are here. This is why I invited my son to do this with me.

We asked someone nearby to take our picture, standing together next to the small stone shrine that sits atop Bandai-san. In my son’s smile, in his face, in his eyes, I saw a happiness that, at least today, had something to do with his old man.

My fifty-year-old eyes are still good enough to pass the vision part of the driver's license renewal process, but they are no match for the fine print on a one-page map of an entire mountain, no matter the language. Fortunately I knew the name of the path we wanted: the Kawakami Trail. Unfortunately the only sign anywhere with that name was back at the place with the beer and instant noodles. The arrow pointed toward Vladivostok for all I knew.

We headed down a path through a place called 'Flower Field' and before long found ourselves stepping back onto the trail we'd come up on. While this would get us home, it wasn't the Kawakami Route. And there was no way I was going to abandon our original plan. If I did, any lesson I'd be teaching my kid wouldn't be the right one.

We backtracked until we found a split in the trail. Right led back up to the sign for Vladivostok. Left ran north, towards an outcropping that I was sure would prove to be a dead end.

Before reaching the outcropping the trail would veer right, bringing us to an overhead view of the hole where part of the mountain used to be.

From this vantage point it didn't seem like one thousand Roman Colosseums and seven hundred Giza Pyramids would even come close to filling this place up.

Further along the edge of eternity we came upon this sign, noticeably lacking the word Kawakami.

One side pointed right, toward trail heads on Bandai's eastern and southeastern sides. Continuing along the rim of this sort-of crater would apparently take us to Urabandai and, somehow, Happohdai, which was, I could have sworn, somewhere far behind us.

Any time I hike I prefer a loop over an out-and-back. Not only is circumnavigating an area naturally more exploratory than merely walking up and down a single path, the chances of seeing the area in a completely new way, from an entirely different vantage point, vastly increases. And this brand new angle of Bandai-san's north face made for delicious vindication of dad's momentary directional snafu.

Much like the lower part of the trail we climbed earlier, the upper portion of this path seemed to run too flat for too long. I wouldn't have been completely surprised to come to a dead end out here, at a point overlooking the changes a hundred and thirty years of Nature can bring - and the ways in which the Earth has remained since the terrible, awesome eruption of 1888.

But the trail suddenly fell off, taking us sharply down into the forests now thriving this once-ravaged land. We crossed a river of boulders and dove into another forest, the path winding and undulating and giving no indication whether we were going where we hoped. The trail and the land were so beautiful I wasn't sure I really cared. The few words my son let out told me he wasn't too concerned either. Though that may have just been his eternally calm, kind spirit.

Then suddenly we fell out of the trees, into the clearing at the top of the ski slopes and this sign we'd seen however many hours ago.

As we walked down the grassy slopes, toward that gravel road and Route 459 and Lake Hibara and our car, my son remarked that this was definitely the farthest he'd ever walked. In his voice I could tell he was tired, but mixed in was the sense that he was happy he had done it. Not a hint of regret. Not a word about the extra miles we had to walk thanks to dad's parking skills.

We ended up covering eighteen kilometers in all - a shade over eleven miles, with an additional 1,000 meters (almost 3,300 feet) of climbing, all in about six hours.

We got ice cream at the shop by the lake. My son fell asleep in his seat on the way home.

"I'm glad we did that," I'd told him before he dozed off.

"Me too," he said. "That was cool."

Driving in silence back toward Lake Akimoto and home, I thought about his siblings. Maybe they'd enjoy tackling the Happohdai Trail with me on our next trip to Fukushima.