Kaimon-dake: Up Close & Passable

Kaimon-dake had been high on my to-hike list since I first cycled the Satsuma Peninsula in 2017. Under sapphire skies this conical peak rose like a perfect Mt. Fuji, floating on the edge of the ocean at the southwest tip of Japan, calling me in that silent language to come see things that exist beyond words.

Now, two weeks into 2021, circumstances had brought me back to this quiet, scarcely-traveled place. I’d just finished up a three-week working vacation down on the island of Yakushima, a mountainous place of monkeys and deer, spidery Banyan trees and gnarled, thousand-year-old cedars, and daily rainbows that naturally occur with daily rains. As with hiking Kaimon, I had fantastic expectations for this random opportunity to travel. In Yakushima, it can be hard to take three steps without having your breath taken away yet again.

Sadly, my working vacation came with little vacation. But in some places you can see a year’s worth of beauty in a day.

Back on the mainland but not ready to go home, I booked a hotel in Kagoshima and made a date with Kaimon. My visions of what was to come were stark and fantastic: I’d stand on the summit, the land and the sea stretching into eternity before me; I'd gaze down on royal blue Ikeda Lake to the north, then turn to take in the scattered gray-green islands swimming in the distant pelagic south. The beauty would be encompassing.

I had no mind to consider whether reality could actually measure up.

Kaimon-dake is one of Japan’s Hyakumeizan, the accepted but debatable list of the country’s one hundred most famous mountains. Some people make it a mission to climb all one hundred of them simply because they’re famous. I wanted to climb Kaimon because it was beautiful.

How many of Japan’s Hyakumeizan are an easy thirty-minute walk from the nearest train station? I have no idea, but Kaimon is one of them. It is also one of the very few summits on the short side of 1,000 meters. It may be the only one whose slopes rise right out of the ocean. It is also a rarity in that you can hike it with little trouble and no special gear all year round. If you happen to find yourself in this out-of-the-way area it’s well worth it to at least pass by.

Look for the big cone-shaped hill. Very instagrammable.

Reality Comes Into View

The train pulled away, and it was just me and my puffy steamy breath on the Kaimon Station platform. Dirty white clouds drifted high in the silent morning, far above Kaimon-dake’s 924-meter reach. Though thick and opaque, they showed signs of breaking. It was 8am. Wednesday. There wouldn’t be another train coming through this way for another seven hours.

A massive sign hung over Route 226 like a bilingual billboard. Ikeda Lake to the left. Straight ahead, the hot spring town of Ibusuki. And to the right, the Kaimon-dake trailhead (as if the mountain itself weren’t a clue). That road led past a decrepit guesthouse, a junior high school, and not much else as it ran south, toward the ocean yet rising slowly, the initial ascent of a mountain that seemed to be getting shorter the closer I got.

“Last restroom before the trail” read a hand-painted sign, listing next to a short set of concrete steps. I don't have any issues with whizzing in the woods. Then again I wouldn't be completely surprised if the bears in Japan used the restroom too.

On a damp wooden bench next to another low-budget sign, this one pointing into the woods, I switched my sneakers for boots and started off. The all-encompassing beauty of Kaimon awaited.

Reality soon set in.

The first part of the trail is interesting in that it looks not so much like a trail as a long snaking trench. The walls of this overgrown ditch reached as high as my elbows, or even my shoulders in some places. The exposed earth was black and rocky and wet. I could scarcely imagine the need for digging such an unsightly and massive gash in the dirt unless they were planning on putting in a water slide.

Though if there was ever a mountain that needed a water slide to liven things up, this was it.

For forty minutes I saw nothing but trees and wet rocky dirt. Then came a wooden observation deck that gave the impression it was made from the trees that were cut down to create this view of the southern end of the Satsuma Peninsula.

On a brighter, bluer day the sight would be stunning. Not that I didn't appreciate the scenery, but if views were comedians, this one would be Steven Wright here:

I walked on. The trees closed in again. The ditch disappeared.

As the trail winds in a slow spiral around the south side of Kaimon the hike becomes a game of rocks and ladders. (In winter you get to play the icy version,) Near the top, patches of tall brush start nudging the trees aside, and the world to the west comes into view.

On a clear day you might be able to pick out the smoke wafting right through the rooftops of the large wooden structures along the Makurazaki coast where skipjack tuna are dried, fermented, and shaved into the flaky and ubiquitous Japanese curiosity known as katsuo-bushi. I searched the coast for signs of that smoke, but while Makurazaki was visible, there was no sign of the town’s core economic endeavor.

The clouds above still persisted, thick enough to mute the colors of the world but high enough to allow for far-reaching if fuzzy views. The one thing I couldn’t see at all, besides another human being, was Yakushima. Not surprising considering the island manages to pull in every rain cloud passing over the East China Sea. At times you can actually be standing on Yakushima and not be able to see Yakushima.

Ikeda Lake was gray and sullen. The rounded hills and low-lying ranges bubbling up across the Satsuma landscape; the shoreline running off and disappearing in the mist; that unmoving ocean of slate; none of it looked like the Japanese Eden of my dreams.

But nor was it raining. And it occurred to me that all throughout my modest hiking career I’ve never once been caught in a storm while at altitude. Much of my climbs have been blessed with near-perfect skies. Even my venture up Fukushima’s Adatara-yama, on a day when they’d been calling for a typhoon, would end in clear blue paradise.

I guess I'm just spoiled.

Kaimon Down

I was about halfway down the mountain when a sudden shower of speckled sunshine lit up the forest. I paused. It was still only noon. And Kaimon isn’t that high. It would be easy enough to head back to the top and try to see Ikeda-ko in all its romantic cobalt glory; to take in a more colorful version of Satsuma and the sea; to maybe catch a glimpse of Yakushima this time.

The spotted sunshine faded and returned and faded again as I wrestled with my indecision. Five minutes before this I’d passed two people on their way up – a guy with ski poles huffing and puffing and a girl wearing jeans and sneakers and jewelry. Come on, I was the one who’d boarded a train before dawn to get here, and here were these late birds appropriating my blue-sky dreams.

As a tour guide I’d likely (hopefully) be cycling through here again before long. But when would I have another chance to hike up this water slide in the making to maybe see a much bluer Ikeda and my beloved Yakushima from afar?

Through the treetops the sky was still overwhelmingly gray.

Scheduled maintenance along the train line between Kaimon and Ibusuki that day meant there were no trains going toward Kagoshima until later in the afternoon. So what point was there in rushing back down the mountain? Why not return to the top? Answer: it might be cool to go check out Ikeda Lake up close. Head to the north side and see Kaimon’s conical silhouette from across the water.

Get in one more failed fantasy.

Bringing sneakers for before and after the hike was my best move of the day. My feet felt light as I walked down the road, away from Kaimon. Outside the entrance to the junior high school a guy who looked like the gym teacher was finishing up his cigarette. Among the trees crowding a bend in the road was an unusual roadside shrine. The guesthouse was silent and still decrepit.

I turned right on Route 226 and spent a half hour looking foolishly for a place where I could rent a bicycle. I should have been looking for a bus stop. It takes a while to walk to Ikeda-ko.

Farmland dominates the flatlands of Satsuma, and the area along the road to Ikeda-ko is no exception. For a time this region was ruled by the Shimazu clan, major players in the 19th Century overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the return to Imperial rule. These days Satsuma is best known for its eponymously-named sweet potatoes though all kinds of vegetables are grown here, along with some of the country’s best green tea. I passed a team of workers – family, I imagined – harvesting carrots in the sun. Yes, the sun had come out, and looked now to be planning to stick around. By this time I was far enough away from Kaimon to easily do away with any thoughts of running back up her.

The walk to the edge of Ikeda Lake and around to the north side would be a doable four miles. After a four-mile round trip up and down Kaimon and a fruitless thirty minutes on 226 this bonus jaunt began to seem much longer. A bus rumbled by, heading in the direction I was going, barely slowing down as it passed the bus stop sign a couple hundred yards further up.

The schedule under the sheet of plastic pinned to the bus stop sign told me two things. One, the bus that just rumbled by was pretty much right on schedule. And two, the next one wasn’t coming for another fifty minutes – which, to be honest, was much sooner than I would have expected out here.

The road running around the northwest part of Ikeda Lake is the epitome of the expression “form follows function”. One gets the impression that, for these people, the lake is something not to enjoy but merely to get past. Even with sneakers on, I was beginning to feel the same way.

The north side of the lake was marked with a pocket of Japanese tourism and long waterfront fields of yellow flowers. Kaimon rose unmistakable from beyond the hills hemming the lake in.

Mountains are curious. Seen from afar then seen up close they can appear as completely different creatures. They are kind of like people in this respect. Throw in the weather and you can’t be sure what you’ll be getting.

At the eastern edge of this dead end of tourism twin bus stop signs stood on opposite sides of the road. The bus going the wrong way would be coming first. It was still just 2:30, but except for a couple more buses in each direction the schedule for the rest of the day was noticeably blank. With nothing left to see around here, except maybe a statue of a dinosaur named Issy, I’d jump on the next bus. I didn’t much care which way it was going – though if it turned out to be the one going past Issy that would be cool.

It wasn’t.

“We’re taking the long way to Ibusuki,” the driver said as I got on. He wasn’t kidding. From my window I got a second look at the four miles of road I’d just walked up. The bus turned right and drove in a circle in the empty lot at Kaimon Station where my hike began seven hours previous. We rumbled down Route 226, past all the bicycle rental shops that aren’t there. We rolled over miles and miles of the peninsular route I’ve ridden several times as a cycling guide.

The tea fields of Satsuma are spread out like neat, textured blankets. We passed the road that dips down to the shoreline and the torturous hot sand baths of Yamakawa. We swerved down a narrow spit of land to the tourist patch fronting the rocky Nagasakibana coast where we picked up one lone traveler. We blew past the Kagoshima Flower Park and the place that serves mango curry and little else. I kept glancing back, wanting just one more glimpse of Kaimon before her forest green face melted into gray.

It was 3:30 by the time we finally rolled up to Ibusuki Station. For the time it took I could have saved the 900 yen and walked the five miles from Ikeda Lake to Satsuma-Imaizumi Station, a few stops north of Ibusuki and just that much closer to my hotel in Kagoshima.

Here in Ibusuki I had fifteen minutes to spare. I spent it eating what food I had left while soaking my dogs in the outdoor foot bath.

Given the opportunity I’d give Kaimon another go. I want to see if that cobalt blue Ikeda-ko of my romantic visions actually exists. I want to see Yakushima and Tanegashima and all those other scattered islands, floating dark and green and clear out there in the sparkling ocean. I want to see the line of the Satsuma coast, the fishy smoke of Makurazaki, the contours of her hilly land in all the clarity that the blue heaven of a nicer day might grant.

I want to see if they’re putting in a water slide. Which they absolutely should.

I don’t think I’d say that about any other mountain. Kaimon-dake is special like that.