Run Away

On Friday, I will have been in Japan a year. Like any anniversary, of marriage, of birth, of escape, the event urges me to reflect. What have I learned?

In the past, such reflections have always concluded with the thought that “I still know nothing”. I regarded the epiphany as profound and humble. That was, after all, Plato’s final conclusion after a lifetime of debating and philosophizing. Lao Tzu made a similar discovery at the end of his life, deeming nothingness as the highest form of understanding. Why shouldn’t I too arrive at the same conclusion some 365 days after leaving Colorado? Aren’t I wise enough to realize I know nothing?

If I said that this time around, that I’ve learned nothing, I’d be lying. I’ve learned a ton.

For one, Japanese. When I arrived I was but a baby and I feel now that I have grown years in the realm of language. Don’t get me wrong, years in the realm of language would still put me at about the level of a two or three year old, since I started from zero. But regardless, my three year old level Japanese can keep up with easy conversations, speak about my needs, wants, likes, dislikes, hopes and plans. I have made friends with whom I only speak Japanese, and we spend whole days together and I communicate almost everything that I want to in that time period. Though at any given time I might only understand 50% of what my friends are saying back to me, I can still keep up. I can describe vocabulary that I don’t know, ultimately getting my point across, and I can make jokes, some of which are even funny. In one year, I have to say that I am happy with what I can accomplish in Japanese.

I have also taken in endless amounts of cultural lessons. I know the difference between, shio, shouyu and miso ramen. I can distinguish whether writing is hiragana, katakana, or kanji. I am familiar with Japanese historical periods, holidays and religious traditions. I know proper etiquette when entering someone’s house, when meeting a new colleague at work, and when addressing my superiors. I know about popular manga and anime, but admittedly I don’t really care about any of it. I don’t know what to do in an earthquake, but I know what one feels like. I know how to pass the Japanese Driver’s Test first try. I know which trash goes in what bag and what day of the week to put it out on the corner for pick up. I know how to karaoke. I know how to sit formally and informally. And I know that there are things in Japanese culture that I will never understand, and I’m just fine with that.

But all of that knowledge is still mostly reliant on facts and memorizing patterns. I would hope that by now I have also gained some deeper knowledge, some discovery of self that is worth the year of time here. Have I?

When I left Colorado my mother asked me if this need to live abroad is really just my way of running away from something. The question was valid, especially for my mother, since I left for Peru after my parent’s divorce, and left again for Japan after she got remarried. It would appear that I was running away from adapting to a tumultuous and changing family.

In a sense, that might be true, but I do not believe that to be the reason for my travels. Before divorce and remarriage, I was still in love with venturing into the unknown and learning from the challenge of it. My parents told me that when I was a toddler and we went on a family trip to the mountains, I wandered off by myself and went missing for hours. When I was five or six, I remember leaving my home at night, packing up my backpack with my survival essentials (Ninja Turtle action figures, and toy cars) and riding my bicycle through the neighborhood, into streets that I had never been to before. By high school I was taking road trips to California, Arizona, and Canada with friends and, after graduation, I made my truck a permanent home and went traveling across America, climbing for a year.

My history of travel and exploring makes me wonder not what I am running away from, but what am I running towards. What do I want to get out of this? And why haven’t I found it yet?

Because happiness is elusive.

I’ve concluded (in the temporal sense of the word) the following:

I am running toward the satisfaction that comes from learning about new cultures and new languages. I am running to continually indulge in the feeling of encountering a limit, say living in Japan without knowing Japanese, and then breaking through that limit. I am running toward more self discovery, which intentional travel provides in bucketfuls. I am running towards the hope that I will know something about this world before I depart from it permanently. I am running for more interactions with new and different people, for the discovery of a new animal species in the seafood section at the grocery store, for an evening drinking tea with my girlfriend while she lay in my arms, for conversations that I’ve never had before, for ideas I’ve never considered, for the feeling of fulfillment that comes when I stop and realize “I am here. I have made it to here” before I look out at the expanse and see all the other places I wish to run to. I am running because movement makes me know that I am alive, and speed makes me know that I am strong. I am running to journey, to wander, to get lost, to find, to see and to learn. For this I am running towards, and not away; Because what lay ahead of me is the entire world and if I stay put I will know nothing of it.

There is indeed a lot to run towards.

And that which I leave behind is not something that I am running away from. It is what I carry with me to guide my running, to make sure I plant my feet deliberately and push forward consciously. I run with the arrogance of Spain, the humility of Chile. I run with the friendships I made in Peru, in Wales, in Colorado. I run with divorces, new marriages, new families and old loves. I run with my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother. With best friends and worst enemies. I run with the memories of days on rock walls in Eldorado Canyon and nights staring at the stars in Patagonia. I run knowing that the experiences I carry with me are good, and good experiences can fill a being like water fills a jar.

No, there is nothing to run away from.

As I write this, my experience in Japan is ending. I will not be here next year. I have set my sights on the next adventure, the next far away land on the horizon. I will begin running again. And this time I will take the knowledge of ramen, of earthquakes, of writing forms, bowing, reverence, patience and grace that I have learned in Japan and carry it with me as I have everything else. And despite the load, I will feel light.

But for now, Japan is wonderful and I am happy to have been here for a year of profound learning. It looks like I’ll come out of this knowing something after all.

Toire No Kamisama

The heat is becoming palpable now. The loft in my apartment is pressed close to the ceiling and the sun beats down against it, heating the room like an oven. I escape to Eriko’s apartment for reprieve in the form of iced barley tea, open windows and a cool breeze.

The television chatters a talk show that looks like and sounds like all of the others—mostly incomprehensible. I can glean some meaning, but the conversations between eclectically dressed, feminine men, and sexy infantile women still perplex me. I’ll never be fluent in Japanese, I think. The thought makes me want to study more.

When the rain starts, my weekend plans are confirmed. No climbing. I’m tolerant of the dilemma because I’m tired of trips to the climbing gym. I crave height, exposure, adventure, but have been settling for laps on iridescent plastic holds. I want more. I always want more. The converse is however, when I can’t have more, settling for complete, mind numbing lethargy. I lay stretched out on Eriko’s futon, staring at the ceiling.

She recognizes my laziness and nods in approval. She’s lazy too. She lays down next to me, her cheek leaning into my chest, my arm around her, and she says nothing.

When our minds become lucid again, she asks, “How was your interview?”

“Good, I think.”

Between her cheek and my chest it’s slightly damp. She speaks again, “I did the dishes for good luck.”

I laugh. “Good luck? Doing dishes brings good luck?”

“Of course,” she responds. “You should always do dishes before things like interviews.”

I didn’t know that. I smile and continue to look up at the ceiling, scanning for mosquitos. There is a bite on my leg and I don’t know where it came from.

Eriko speaks again. “You should also clean the bathroom.”

“For good luck?” I ask.

“Yes. There is a song about it. Toire No Kamisama.”

“The Bathroom God?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “He brings good luck.”

I laugh.

For awhile we sit in silence. Then I hear Eriko sniffling. I look down at her face and see tears running down her cheek.

“Nande, bijin? Nakanaide.” What’s wrong? Don’t cry, I tell her.

There is real sadness in her eyes, and I can only guess from where it came. Was it talk of the interview? We both know that whether I get this job or not, eventually I’ll leave.

“What’s wrong beautiful? What’s wrong?”

She looks up at me. “Toire No Kamisama makes me cry.”

I wait for more explanation, and I see it turning behind her eyes, from Japanese to English.

“My grandma. She told me about Toire No Kamisama. I’m remembering my grandma.”

I hold her tighter against me. Don’t cry beautiful. It’s okay to cry beautiful.

“For the last year before my grandma died, she wasn’t healthy anymore,” Eriko explains. “We had to take her to a hospital to live. The room she stayed in was very big, so the family could sleep there with her.

“I remember going with my parents and grandfather to see her. Grandpa had sat down in a chair, and when it was time to go he couldn’t get up. We were worried, because we couldn’t make him stand. Something was wrong with his legs, I thought, but it was okay, because we were already in a hospital. But we didn’t call anyone to help. We just laid him down on the floor with a blanket and he fell asleep. I stayed there with him.

“In the night Grandma had bad dreams. She woke up once yelling. Not loud, but yelling. She was scared. I went over to her bed. I wanted to calm her. ‘It’s okay Grandma,’ I said. But she kept shaking and yelling. ‘Tiger,’ she said. ‘There is a tiger in here.’

“I told her that there was no tiger in the room. But she did not believe it and she was very scared. ‘Tiger’ she yelled.”

Eriko stops her story and begins to cry again. I sit imagining the tiger in the hospital room.

“Grandma was the one that told me about Toire No Kamisama. She’s the one that told me that he brought good luck. She taught me the Toire No Kamisama song.”

Eriko pauses and breathes.

“I’m okay. I’m just remembering Grandma.”

She looks pensive, scared.

She says, “’Tiger.’ She kept yelling, ‘Tiger.’”

I hold her close until she stops crying. The tears come in waves and it is awhile before she stops. I kiss her head, saying “It’s okay.” But the whole time I am thinking about Grandpa asleep on the floor and the tiger in the hospital room, and about death and a good life, and about grandparents and grandchildren and about the luck of Toire No Kamisama.

I keep holding onto Eriko letting the thoughts saturate me like the summer heat.

A Picture Says...I'm Not Lying About Being Here.

Perhaps because I'm lazy these days, or perhaps because I want to shake things up a bit, I thought that this month I would offer some photos instead of a story. Each represent things that I have enjoyed about this experience with a little description as to what I think about it.

I hope you enjoy.

This is where I work. I am in the Japanese inaka, or countryside, the nearest city being about thirty minutes away. Before coming to Japan I was afraid of the congestion of people and buildings that I had heard about, but I lucked out to be able to teach English out here. Being in Fukushima I am happy to report that, so far, there have been no radiation effects (good or bad..i.e. no Spiderman-like after effects)!

I have been very impressed with the preservation of ancient traditions that I see all over Japan. Kyudo blends philosophy with the purposeful action of archery to attain perfect action. In high school I studied a lot of Eastern philosophy and I am finding that the Japanese influence is returning me to ask questions about good living, and intentional action.

Many people have been exceptionally kind to me here. I am often invited into people's houses for tea and food. This is especially surprising since, for the majority of this experience so far, I have barely been able to communicate with my hosts; this is a testament to their true hospitality.

These are two of my best friends here, Endo-San and Suzuki-San. The woman is my landlady who always brings me food and invites me to go places with her. The man takes me to the public bath and shows me the proper way to go about enjoying it. That way I don't mess up and make the other old Japanese men think that I am a dirty foreigner.

Food here is generally delicious. Each place pays particular attention to the art in serving the food, making the visual experience as enjoyable as the experience eating the food..

Sometimes however, the food is awful. This is natto, fermented soy beans in some crazy goo. It smells terrible and has a texture like something you cough up when you're sick. You'd think that I could just avoid eating it, but sometimes it is mandatory school lunch, which everyone, especially teachers, is obligated to finish.

The seasons are important here and are usually marked with festivals or celebrations. In the fall I was asked to join a family on a drive to go see the colors change. In the spring (below) my town had beautiful cherry blossoms that people came from other places to see.

Another awesome thing about being here is meeting a lady friend. She's great.

Although Japan has absurdly large cities, it also has very nice natural areas. My one complaint is that there are no places that are as remote as places in Patagonia or the American West. But I am still finding ways to enjoy what nature I can.

I think I've pretty much blended in here, like a chameleon, really. Every foreigner enjoys wearing traditional clothes. I am no exception. This is the common outfit you get when you go to a hot springs and stay the night.

Whipper

When Horie-San, a fifty five year old high school teacher from a nearby city, placed his last metal anchor into a crack on the climbing route, he was past the difficult section. The rest of the climbing, another twenty feet or so to the top, was relatively easy. In scenarios such as those, though the climbing gets easier, the mental game becomes the priority; the climber has important decisions to make. He can continue to place anchors as he advances up the rock, clipping his rope through them, but he will risk running out of valuable gear if the climbing gets harder above. The other option is to save the gear for when the climbing does get harder and risk a very big fall in the unlikely event that something goes wrong on the easier climbing.

Those kinds of mental gymnastics make climbing fun. It is like a chess game where the stakes are your body’s well being. If you make the wrong decision, and the route puts you in check, you could be seriously hurt. If you’re put in checkmate, you’re dead. But if you make the right decision, and you checkmate the route, for a brief period you understand what it is like to master your body and your mind. It’s a sensation that’s addictive.

Horie-San has been climbing for thirty years. He’s climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan, Peru’s 6,000 meter peaks, and routes in the Himalayas. He’s climbed so much that his body has transformed into a likeness of stone, hard and weathered, leaving only the densest, strongest flesh. It’s a body like a champion fighting dog. He would be scary and intimidating if he wasn’t exceptionally generous and kind. Well, actually, he is still very intimidating, despite his kindness. His eyes show that he has mastered body and mind more times that he can remember, and the lucidity of his experience is manifest in his every glance. His smile softens him though. It invites you in and makes you eager to ask him to share stories of all his adventures. He’s a good man, and knows what he’s doing on the rock.

But Horie-San, on that afternoon in March, learned that rocks hold secrets that even the best of climbers can’t anticipate. After passing the last anchor he placed, Horie-San climbed above it. The climbing was easy, save for a few final moves right at the top. Horie-San’s risk of not placing gear caused him to pause and consider. He could reverse his moves, place another anchor and turn a potential forty foot fall into a three foot one. Or he could go for it. It was only a few moves to the top after all, moves that were well under his limit of difficulty. It would provide a small rush, a slight reminder of the mental and physical prowess he had acquired from so many years climbing. He chose to go for it.

As I belayed from below, letting out more and more slack as Horie-San climbed, I assessed the scenario from my position. If something did go wrong and Horie-San did fall from that height, catching him would be nearly impossible. A belayer can only take in a foot or so of slack before he can lock the rope off through his belay device, catching the climber. By not placing more anchors, Horie-San was risking a fall that would cause him to hit the ground. I have belayed countless others who have risked the same kind of a fall and all of them always made it. Thirteen years of having seen that scenario end well, I wasn’t prepared when I realized Horie-San was falling.

Inches before Horie-San could have reached the top, he placed his foot on what looked like an excellent foothold that would allow him to stand up and finish the route. When he weighted the hold, however, it parted from the wall, propelling itself downward toward me. I had no time to realize that the foothold, about fifteen pounds and the size of a dinner plate, came crashing down a few feet away from my head. I was more concerned with Horie-San, who was also airborne.

There is one option to catch that kind of a fall, a technique I have never used before, nor practiced, but knew of. How I processed what I should do and acted in the tenth of a second I had, I don’t know. But before Horie-San could hit the ground I jumped backward, down a small hill, braking the rope through the belay device.

Jumping back only saved Horie-San a few feet, but it made the difference. He swung violently into a higher slope of soft dirt while I slamed against the rope that had gone taut against me.

A pause allowed us both to realize that he was alive. Then adrenaline released and we started trembling.

“Daijobu?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

He looked up at me, his eyes clearer than ever, and confirmed, “Hai. I’m okay.”

Sitting down onto the ground, he went to take off his shoes. His hands shook terribly. He had hit his foot against the rock on his way down but he still couldn’t feel the pain of it. As he untied his laces he started laughing.

“That was my first ground fall!” he said proudly.

I couldn’t believe it. He sounded excited.

I responded, “Yeah, that’s my first time belaying a ground fall.”

I looked down at my hand. It had started hurting and realized I had slight burns from the jarring rope.

“That was a big fall,” I added.

I checked his back for any signs of injury. Then, when he got his shoe off I looked at his foot. It seemed okay, a few scratches from the hit, but it hadn’t started swelling yet.

“We should get you out of here and to a doctor to make sure you’re alright, Horie-San,” I told him.

“Yes. That is a good idea,” he agreed. “We’ll go after I climb the route again.”

I thought I misheard, or that he had made a mistake with his English.

“What?” I asked.

“I want to climb it again,” he said, not as a possible idea but as an affirmation that he would do it.

Confused, I told him, “You don’t have to do that Horie-San. I can get the gear later.”

“No. I’ll do it now,” he responsed.

Despite my advice, he started putting his shoe back on. His foot had started swelling. He pulled the rope through the last anchor, and tied it back into his harness.

“You ready?” he asked me.

“Uh. Yeah. I guess so,” I said, shocked that he was ready to get back on so fast. “But really, Horie-San, if your foot hurts you should go get it checked out.”

“Yes, yes. After. Am I on belay?”

I locked my carabiner shut and gave the command, “Yeah. On belay.”

He limped to the start of the route and began climbing again. Before I knew it he was back at the same point he had fallen from. This time he put in an extra anchor and fired to the top. His foothold held, on he didn’t fall.

“I made it,” he shouted, not as a celebration but simply stating a fact—this time he made it, last time he didn’t make it.

Relieved, I shouted congratulations and lowered him down to the ground.

“It’s easy if the footholds don’t break,” he told me, taking his shoe off, controlling the wince that came from the pain.

“I’ll bet,” was all I could think of as a response.

We packed up our things and headed to the car. He wouldn’t let me carry any of his gear for him, even though at that point he was in a full limp.

When we arrived at the car, he told me, “That was fun. We should climb together again sometime.”

“Right. Fun,” I repeated. “I’ll climb with you whenever you want Horie-San.”

“Great”, he said with a smile. “Maybe not next weekend because I think my foot might be broken. But maybe the weekend after that.”

With that, he got in his car and drove away, promising me he would stop off at the hospital before he returned to his house.

New Short Story

Hello Faithful Readers,

This month I do not have a story about Japan. With ample time at a desk and little responsibility this month, I decided to finish a short story that I began last year. It's fiction, so has nothing to do with any of this experience (at least not in any direct way) but I hope you still find it worth your time.

The story comes with both a warning and a request.

First the warning: It's long. That is to say, it's a short story and is longer than my quick entries that you normally read. I would suggest printing it out and reading it when you can sit down with a nice glass of wine (or if you're under age, than a can of bad beer). It may take twenty minutes or so.

Also, formatting from a Word Document to the Blogger interface is more than my technology challenged brain can handle, so there may be weird errors between paragraph, sentence and word spacing. I apologize. Any grammar or spelling errors I will also blame on Blogger.

Now the request. I am curious about what people think of my stories. In this case, if you do read it (and I hope that you do) I would love to hear what you think. Be it praise or criticism, as long as it is honest, I will appreciate hearing it. Since you may not want to leave a comment for all to see, feel free to email me or send me a message on Facebook. I would love to hear from you.

The story can be found both on the link below, or in the "Writing Projects" tab above.

Chris' Island

Thank you for continuing to read my blog.

-Josh

Japanese My Is Bad

My Japanese notebook is from China, a gift from a friend that’s living there this year. He gave me the notebook when he was passing through Japan, choosing it because of the comedic English that’s scrawled on the cover. It states:

“TREE

Primary fence next to the dandelion More than

ten miles a taste of the scenery
Fog grass came the voice of her How many years
have begun to sound good Sent a letter to wish a
paper airplane Because we can not wait for the meteor”

I laughed at this when I first read it, a laugh that insinuated something like, “Stupid Chinese people, can’t even write a poem in English.” I’ve used the same laugh when reading Kleenex boxes that say things like:

“Bird is wet, and me too. Rain…Rain. It’s rain every.”

Or t-shirts on mild mannered, polite Japanese climbers, with the phrase “We are fuckin’ one” written across the back.

When I open the notebook my friend gave to me, however, there is language much more incomprehensible and enigmatic than anything else I’ve come across—my study notes in an attempt to learn Japanese.

The first ten pages or so are dedicated to vocabulary, broken down into verbs, adjectives, and then everything else. Whereas the verb and adjective sections are relatively organized, the “everything else” is a hodgepodge of nouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, common expressions, pronouns, exclamations, onomatopoeia and cool sayings that I find interesting. I use that section to quickly jot down things that I hear or read and want to make sure that I commit to memory later. At my low level of Japanese just about everything I hear or read goes into that section, flooding the pages to the point that I can’t study fast enough to be able to memorize all of it. When I do get a chance to make flash cards and quiz myself I am faced with another problem: all the words sound the same.

Okay, clearly this is a hyperbole. Of course all the words don’t sound the same. But there are similarities between sounds of words that make them very hard to keep organized. It’s a problem to the point that I have dedicated a whole page of my notebook to “tricky words”. There you can find examples like:

okita- woke up

okutta- sent
okotta- got angry
okureta- was late

Such similar words make me hesitant to speak in the past tense lest I say something like, “I woke up with George” instead of “I got angry at George.”  If I mistake the word hantai for hentai, for example, rather than saying “I disagree”, I would be calling the person a pervert.

Some words are, in fact, exactly the same. Katta can mean both ‘bought’, and ‘won’. Itta can mean ‘said’, and ‘went’. And the word kaeru means ‘go home’, ‘to change’, and ‘frog’. There are no spelling or pronunciation variations to create different meanings, you use the same exact word. If I said, “Kaeru wa kaeru toki nanka o kaeru” it would mean “When the frog goes home he changes something.”

No, it isn’t a phrase that I use often, but it illustrates the fact that when memorizing words I have to make sure I remember that that one word is the exact same way to say three other things. And this is just individual words.

When it comes to putting together sentences, the crux of Japanese becomes much more challenging. The difficulty is derived from both a very different syntax to English and the number of exceptions and special rules that arise in different contexts. In my notebook I have tried to organize these exceptions. But, like with the “everything else” section, the result is a jumbled mess. Some of the categories include:

- Three different ways to say ‘to give’

- Two ways to say ‘more’
- Two ways to say ‘to be’
- Three ways of saying ‘because’
- Three ways of saying ‘and’
- Two ways of saying ‘want’
- Using colors as adjectives
- Saying something looks like something else versus saying something is similar to something else
- Three ways of forming ‘if’ sentences
- Conjugating for potential, volitional, and conditional tenses
- Saying something is about something
- Saying something is intended for someone, versus for their benefit
- Using one word to say both ‘I already decided’, ‘I decided right now’, and ‘I’m thinking’
- Three different verbs for playing instruments
- Three ways of saying ‘only’
- Multiple ways of saying ‘it’s scheduled for’ versus ‘it’s planned for’
- Hoping for an outcome for someone else
- Hoping for an outcome for yourself
 
It goes on.

When I say two or three ways to say something I’m not referring to synonyms. In English we have lots of ways to say things, like sad, morose, melancholy, depressed, etc.  Synonyms I can understand. With synonyms, at least I can opt to just learn one word, usually the easiest one. No, the similarities that I am highlighting are the basic ways to say simple words. The easiest way to say something that I would expect to be simple, like 'and', changes according to context. The word ‘and’ can be soshite, -kute, or –de, depending on what you are saying. The different words are not interchangeable and have to be used in the right way given the sentence structure.

All of the above examples in my list have special ways of saying the intended phrase that does not correspond with any rule other than the ‘this is just the way you say it’ rule. They have to be memorized in order to use the language. Though some of the phrases may seem obscure, and maybe possible to avoid learning, like ‘I already decided’ versus ‘I decided right now’, most are things that you use in almost everything you say, like ‘because’,‘more’, and 'and'.

My notebook, which started as an attempt to help me keep track of my learning and progress in my language ability, has left me befuddled. If I’m trying to talk to someone and a verb conjugation comes up that I know I covered, it takes me about a minute to pour through all of my notes in order to find the precise one that applies to that context. It takes me about another thirty seconds to add it to a comprehensible sentence. And in most cases, I still have to look up new words in order to make what I’m saying sound complete.

That’s where I am in my Japanese right now. I have an idea about what I’m supposed to say, but know that I am most likely making grievous errors. I can piece simple sentences together, but I am sure that I sound like Tarzan. I know maybe a few hundred vocabulary words, but the average fluent speaker uses a few thousand. I can plan climbing trips with Japanese friends, order food at a restaurant (if I can read the menu), and make small talk with strangers. That’s about it.

What I can’t do: I couldn’t even begin to write good enough sentences for t-shirts or Kleenex boxes, nor get even close to writing a Japanese poem worthy of a Chinese notebook.

Impressions of Ha Long Bay

Part I: Arrogance

We set out from the harbor in light fog. The forecast for the day was overcast and cold—not ideal for climbing up and throwing yourself off of limestone islands into the ocean. But that’s why I came to Vietnam, and it was the only chance I would get because, unknowingly, I had chosen a time of the year when the daily tides were too low for safe deep water soloing. This was the one day that the tide was at a reasonable height. Despite less than ideal temperatures, I decided to go for it.



Ha Long Bay

I boarded a junk boat replete with tourists embarking on package deals to see the bay. The majority of their carry-on luggage included enough Tiger Beer to induce something like seasickness. Perhaps the kayaking and climbing included in the trip was merely the warm-up to “earn” drinking rights come noon. Or, let’s face it, 10:30. For some, the climbing trip would be the highlight of their time in Vietnam, a proud Facebook post declaring their extreme adventure: “Rock Climbed in Vietnam”. Others were wary of the adventure elements of the outing, having been forced along by their significant others.

“I don’t want to go out in the kayak,” I overheard a girlfriend say to her boyfriend.

“C’mon baby. We can go see a nice beach,” was his response.

“But it’s cold out and I hate kayaks.”

“You don’t hate kayaks, honey. We took kayaks on our vacation in Maui. Remember?”

“Yeah, and I told you I didn’t like it.”

“I thought you said you had a good time.”

“No I didn’t. And now I’m staying on the boat.”

The conversations went on like this, some making me wonder why people decided to travel here in the first place. I caught the middle of a Dutchman’s complaints to a Canadian that he met on the boat.

“And then when we got into the taxi, the driver couldn’t speak any English!”

“I know,” the Canadian responded. “Everywhere we have gone in Vietnam, no one speaks any English. I was trying to rent a motorbike and I had no idea what the guys trying to sell it to me were telling me. I kept saying ‘English! English!’ and they just looked at me like I was crazy. Thailand is much better.”

“Yeah, I like Thailand a lot more,” the Dutchman agreed.

I tried to hide in a remote corner of the boat, not wanting to be associated with the tourists. To my dismay, I was discovered by a pasty white Aussie with shorts that didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“You going on the Deep Blue Soloing excursion too?”

I cringed. Though I was going on the deep water soloing boat, I hadn’t signed up nor paid for an excursion. I had worked out a deal with the company in charge of the trips, a group of climber’s from around the world. If I helped them out with some menial tasks, I could go out to deep water solo for free. The transaction made me believe that I would be freed from tourist status and that, for some reason, my trip to climb the limestone islands would be much more legitimate than the pasty Aussie's. I ignored the fact that what he was planning on doing and what I intended to do was, in every detail, the exact same thing.

“Yeah. I’m going deep water soloing too,” I responded.

“Ah, great mate! Looks like good fun, eh?”

Unenthusiastically I agreed, “Yeah. Looks like good fun.”

Though he was unaware, he was slowly bleeding my desire to try a facet of climbing that I had believed was dangerous and for experts only. Now a ‘gumby’, as we call them in the elitist climbing world, was showing me that deep water soloing wasn’t really that extreme. Afterall, if he can wander in from a Hanoi resort and give it a shot, how extreme could it be? He continued to make things worse with the comment,

“My wife’s coming too. We don’t do the rock climbing much. I’m more of a scrambler myself. But it looks like a fun thing to try. Have you ever rock climbed?”

I’ve been climbing for thirteen years. Climbing was one hundred percent of my identity through high school and college. When I started teaching and traveling it was reduced to ninety percent. I have put up first ascents in the Andes, spent days on big walls in Yosemite and have free soloed up to eight hundred feet. I scoffed at such a question.

“Yes, I’ve rock climbed,” I responded bluntly.

“You ever done anything like Deep Blue Soloing?”

“Yeah. Once in Spain.”

“Is it fun? Is it scary?”

Is it fun? Is tossing your body from twenty meters up into the maw of a cold and angry sea fun? Scary? Is being gripped on the underbelly of a limestone behemoth, sweating while an overdose of adrenaline gushes into your brain, scary? Is having lactic acid turn your forearms into mush while you contemplate the odds of certain death before you release yourself to the unforgiving hand of gravity, scary?

My response: “Yeah, something like that.”

“Great! I’m stoked, mate. See you out there!”

When he left, my ego torqued something inside of my chest. I recited to myself, as if it was a mantra, “You’re not one of the tourists. You’re not one of the tourists.”

Part II: The Floating Villages of Ha Long Bay

Before the junk boat arrived at the deep water soloing islands, it passed through the fishing villages of Ha Long Bay. The villages were made up of small ramshackle houses, walkways and dangling electrical wires; normal fare for a developing country. Dogs wandered around sniffing at trash. Families sat in front of small cafes talking to their neighbors. Televisions ran commercials for shampoo. There were places to bathe, to buy fruits and vegetables, to play games with friends and to buy clothes. All of this is not uncharacteristic of a village, and would hardly be worth mentioning if the villages didn’t happen to be floating in the middle of the bay, like populated masses of seaweed that rose to the surface.

There are thousand of islands in Ha Long Bay, and between them, bobbing up and down in the turquoise water, hundreds of floating villages. The limestone islands that rise vertical out of the sea and are capped with dense jungle are uninhabitable. Yet the sea is optimum for fishing, an industry where many make their livelihood. The one pesky detail that gets in the way is that there is no good land to live on. The solution: build the villages on the water.

The foundations of the villages, from what I could gather, were made up of large empty blue barrels that acted as buoys laying horizontally in the water. To the barrels the villagers lashed boards that connected them to other barrels, and then to others, creating a large grid of a floor from which everything else could be erected. The floor stayed as a grid, or rather, the fishermen didn’t board it closed like a basketball court or ballroom dance floor. They kept the floor open, porous, allowing the fishermen to drop their nets into the water from large open squares between the planks. Each open square acted like small farm tracts, but instead of vegetables, the fishermen would pull fish out from their tract. 

This layout of open planks made the structure of the village foundation look precipitous, like walking beams in a skyscraper skeleton during its construction. To pass from one area of the village to another, the villagers would have to walk planks of wood that were not tightly secured to anything and that ebbed and swayed from the movements of the sea. The instability appeared to have no impact on the villagers. Small children would run across the planks with awkward, new steps, but with as much confidence as we would have taking a single step on solid ground. The adults could maneuver and balance on the planks while carrying large loads suspended from bending boards lashed to their shoulders. Even the dogs would bound and leap from one line of planks to another while chasing or attacking one another.

Floating Village of Ha Long Bay

It was a sight to be seen. From the junk boat, I pondered a life on a floating village in Ha Long Bay. I wondered how I would adapt to living on planks in the sea, in a house no bigger than my bedroom, among people who slaved everyday in order to provide themselves with basic necessities.

I caught the eye of a girl who sat on the corner of one of these villages. She was looking out at our boat. She appeared to be doing the opposite of me, imagining a life in my position. I wondered what she thought of the foreigners who took boats out into the bay in order to climb rocks. The notion must have been ridiculous to her. Why on earth would we come all the way from lands with other people that looked like us in order to climb up islands and fall into the sea? Didn’t we have families to fish for? Or was it true what her friends told her, that the foreigners had too much money and could do any silly thing they imagined; like ride motorcycles across all of Asia, or buy big islands where they would put only one enormous house and not let anyone else in.

The exchange of glances and thoughts was brief, but I felt unsettled for some reason, like my life was the wrong one. I felt guilty and ashamed. Hiding from the girl’s gaze, I tried to blend back in with the rest of the tourists.

Part III: Humility…hopefully

We departed the junk boat on a basket boat, a small, rickety craft, the stern half covered with a deteriorating black tarp. The bow of the boat was a beaten deck that was meant to be the launching pad to get onto the walls we were going to climb. I sat under the tarp in a cheap bathing suit that I bought at the market the day before. The seams were already ripping and the cut exposed more of my white legs than I cared to reveal to the others. The Aussie sat across from me. Next to him was his wife. A breeze caused us all to shiver even though none of us had taken the plunge yet.

The guide, an American girl who had been living on the main island for the past four months, shouted a non stop stream of warnings and instructions at us over the noise and fumes of the basket boat motor. It felt like a briefing on how to skydive moments before they threw you out of the plane.

“Okay guys! You all psyched?! Great! Listen carefully! Deep water soloing is dangerous! You can get hurt! When the boat gets to the wall you must immediately get to your starting holds! Don’t hesitate! When you are secure we will push the boat away from you! Do not let go of the holds or you will fall on the boat and you will get seriously injured! If you fall climbing, push away from the wall or you may hit another part of it on your way down! Always look down at the water before you fall! There may be jellyfish, trash, or rocks right where you are going to fall. Do not, I repeat, do not fall on any objects! Jump away from the objects or you will get hurt! Okay?! Great! Who’s up first?!”

With no hesitation, I volunteered. I had been waiting months for my chance at this. The boat approached the wall and I grabbed a pair of starting holds. Heeding the guide’s advice, I held strong and waited for the boat to move out of my way. When it was clear, I started up the overhanging limestone.

I chose my initial route as a warm-up, something I knew I could easily do. I placed my feet intentionally, moved my hips and torso to maximize efficiency and cruised up the wall. Fear never took ahold of me. It didn’t have time to. Within two minutes, I was twenty meters up.

“Nice job Josh!” I heard the Aussie yell from the basket boat.

When I looked down to acknowledge the comment, I realized the folly in choosing a warm-up route first. Though it was quick and easy and I had no problem I with the actual climbing, I was stuck at twenty meters, facing one solution to get off: jump.

I didn’t like the idea. Yes, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew that I would have to hurl myself into the sea eventually, but when I was faced with it as real, and my only option, I froze.

“Uh…so I just, uh, jump?” I shouted from the wall.

“Yeah! How else you gonna get down?” the guide shouted in response.

Good point.

“Maybe I can climb down a little and then jump,” I offered as a counterpoint.

“Or you can man up and stop being such a baby!” was the guide’s rebuttal.

“You got it Josh! C’mon mate,” The Aussie shouted.

Damn supportive Aussie. I became sure that if he were in my position he would jump without hesitation. The thought torqued my chest again, my ego reminding me of its presence.

“Okay,” I shouted. “Here goes.”

I tried to take control over my impulse to down climb to a more reasonable height. The jump at the end was supposed to be part of the thrill of deep water soloing but I didn’t want to do it because, well, it was scary!

The Aussie started a countdown, “Three! Two! One!”

Inhaling, I released both hands from the rock, pushed away with my feet and felt gravity whip me down towards the water. My head contemplated how I should fall, when I should hold my breath, if I should close my nose or not, where I should put my arms, all of it, just a little too late. I smacked the sea with appendages akimbo, taking in enough water through my nose to fill a water bottle. When I surfaced, the basket boat was already coming to pick me up.

“Ah man! Awesome mate! Nice job,” the Aussie said as he patted me on the back. Sea water choked the back of my throat and flowed out of my nose.

The Aussie asked excitedly, “So? How was it?”

I paused and considered the experience. I could still taste the salt water in the back of my throat.

“Well. It was…scary! But it was totally fun!”

“I knew it,” he responded.

*  *  *

Enjoying a Tourist Excursion

We all made a good go of it on the island cliff. The sun never did come out and we shivered between every break when we weren’t on the wall or falling into the sea. The Aussie did a stand up job. Climbing to the same height as me, he also went through the same hesitation before it was time to jump. Our shared fear of jumping gave us something to talk about back on the junk boat.

“Oh man, my brain was like, ‘Don’t jump. Don’t jump.’ But I just had to tell myself to go,” the Aussie described his experience.

“Me too!" I replied. "It’s funny, I thought it would be easier than it was, but I really had to convince myself to jump."

Smiling, the Aussie asked, “Hey, you want a Tiger Beer? We brought loads.”

I reflected on my past criticisms of the tourists, and the hypocrisy I was now living. “Yeah, I’ll take a beer. Thanks.”

Part IV: Nightlights

I was already buzzed when the junk boat started making its way back to the harbor. Because of the clouds that had been in the bay all day, the night snuck up almost unnoticed. There was no impressive sunset or clear transition to darkness. It was just, suddenly, night.

A group of six Dutchmen, including the one I overheard earlier in the day, plopped down around me on the upper deck of the boat. Their collection of empty beer bottles had grown in number.

One of them turned to me and asked, “You ever been to Thailand?”

“No,” I responded, laughing a little. “But I hear it’s nice.”

“Oh, so nice!” he said energetically. “And the traveling is so easy! I really like it there.”

We ended up talking for awhile about the things tourists talk about: where else has the other been, what was nice about it, what didn’t you like, where were you planning on going next. He offered me more beer and I became even more engaged in the conversation. At some point I mentioned that I live in Japan.

“Japan!” the Dutchman commented, “Do you speak Japanese?”

“Well, not really. I’m learning.”

“Does anyone speak English?”

“Not too many people where I live,” I replied, expecting to start a debate about the merits of a country not catering to English speaking tourists.

“And is it difficult? You know, not knowing Japanese and them not speaking English?”

I pondered the question. “Well…yeah. It is difficult.”

“Don’t you get frustrated?” he asked.

Again I became reflective of the experience, “Yeah. I guess I do get frustrated.”

“I bet. That’s how I feel here in Vietnam. No one speaks English here!”

I still knew that was where our theories about our frustration would diverge. Whereas I liked the frustration because it motivated me to learn Japanese, he disliked it because it made it harder for him to enjoy his vacation. But regardless, we were still talking about the same thing: frustration. And wherever it leads, the initial feeling is still a feeling that we can both agree isn’t a good one.

“I understand the feeling,” I replied.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Hey, want another beer?”

“Sure. But I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

After the bathroom visit I started heading back to the upper deck, where I had sat talking with the Dutchman. Before ascending the ladder to the deck, I paused and looked out into the bay. We were passing the villages again.

They were lit up now, the sound of generators humming from within the houses and shops. The lights illuminated groups of the fisherman gathered with their families for dinner. The walking planks, fishing nets and stray dogs were obscured by the darkness.

I could hear the Dutchmen laughing and talking loudly on the upper deck, their debauchery now enough to make them embarrassing spectacles for the rest of the tourists on the boat. When one of them started to sing loudly, a family from the floating village, eating quietly on the floor outside of their tiny home, turned and stared at the boat. A girl who was eating with them and who I imagined to be the daughter, looked up at the singing Dutchman and then down to the main deck, at me. I looked back at her as our boat motored by, each of us pondering again what life was like on the other side. I kept looking at her until the village disappeared behind an island and all became darkness again. Thoughts of life on the floating village passed through my head like an ether. Hearing the jovial laughter from the upper deck, I made way back, joining the tourists, the Dutchmen and the free beer.