I’ve never seen anything like this in Japan. Just seeing how easily all the trappings of society get completely turned upside down makes me wonder what will happen when the sea levels really begin to rise. We are so fragile.

for three weeks now thunderstorms with incredible lightning displays accompanied by the heaviest torrential rains on record and, when not raining, the highest temperatures on record, have been hammering the islands. even as i write the train rides through a lashing rain that obscures the lights of the city outside, but lights up every now and then with flashes of daylight. thunder pounds against the roof of the train.

it’s almost a dream, sailing blithely through the night land while the gods stamp about among the rooftops, hurling spears and roaring in anger. around me in the train car passengers doze and glance up sleepily when a lightning bolt stabs the roof of an apartment hi-rise. the world could be sinking into the sea for all they see. in the seats across from me a baby snoozes in the arms of her mother while the mother watches tv (the olympics most likely) on her cell phone. nothing is really there.

the rains and lightning may hold me back from climbing this week; i’ll have to keep an eye on the sky. but at least i’ve broken out of this two-week shell and will feel whatever may come against my skin. there is nothing like the rake of the immediate world.

I never thought I’d be ready to sign on with a social networking site, but Facebook has been amazing in helping me get back in touch with friends I had long ago lost touch with, including several very old friends from 35 years ago when I was a boy in Tokyo. And the list keeps growing. If anything Facebook is where I can stay in touch with people I have few opportunities of seeing. And makes the world feel a smidgeon smaller. Or bigger, depending on how you see it.

So I planned a whole month’s worth of hiking and visiting friends during this month-long summer vacation. Originally I had planned to visit Vancouver in Canada, but the plans to meet my brother fell through. THen his plans to visit Japan fell through. Then, on the day before the vacation officially began I cut I had gotten on my right shin a week before suddenly bloomed into a bad infection and for a week I’ve had to lie in bed trying to recuperate, with occasional limps to the nearby Seven Eleven for basics in food. This place being what it is it’s been a week now since I’ve talked to a living soul (except once to my brother on the telephone and a few emails to my wife in Tokyo). I think I am going to lose my mind if this keeps up much longer.

I don’t like to post about this here, but I also just need to connect to people, anyone, so as to feel like I’m not living in some tomb. It’s like my mind is falling down the stairs and I need to catch myself before I hit the bottom.

If anything, the situation here has made it clear once again that I’ve got to make the move away from here now before more damage is done. That was my main reason to go visit Canada this summer, so as to begin to make the changes, so not having gone has been a real blow to my confidence. Worse, this constant disappointment and lack of movement is nurturing an incredible anger inside me that I don’t know how to dissipate. I feel desperate all the time now, especially in conversations with people, as if I’m losing a tenuous hold on sanity. And of course that only tends to drive people away and make me feel more isolated.

The weekly exercise get-together that I had faithfully gone to all spring and in which I thought I had begun to finally make some much-needed friends mutated into more and more intensive concentration on the exercises alone and less and less on the camaraderie of people getting together to have a good time. When one of the original members started losing their temper at those of us laughing and enjoying each others’ company I knew that the whole endeavor had turned a point where those for whom getting in shape was the sole purpose of the gathering began to dominate the whole thing. It ceased to be fun. The exercise started getting so intense that some people were beginning to get injuries and several times came close to passing out. The whole thing turned into a big competition to see who could suffer the most and to push the limits every time. I tried to voice my concern, but my words went unheeded, even met with consternation on occasion. So I began to drift away and stopped going to the workouts.

Needless to say, the sudden disappearance of everyone’s company really left me bitter. And I’ve let my body slowly lose all the gains I made for six months. Not a good direction for diabetes.

I’m really okay. I just need people to talk to. To not be alone all the time. It’s playing havoc with my sense of humor. I opened up to the doctor who treated my infected leg, an old Japanese guy whose hands shook from his alcoholism, telling him , when he insisted that I come in again in two days time, that I was losing it just sitting around the apartment, needing to get out to the mountains where I was sure to meet people and get away from this awful small town. You know what he replied? “Don’t you have any hobbies?” For an alcoholic he certainly had some nerve!

So forgive me for opening up yet more depressing stories about me. I’m not seeking advice or for my hand to be held. I just need to talk.

Higurashi Songs

All summer the miasma of diabetes had wrung havoc from my legs, rendering me at times incapable of taking a step without excruciating stabs of pain shooting through my thighs. So as the Tour of Mont Blanc trip loomed before me I worried that there was no possible way I was going to be able to complete the journey. The first steps up the foothills to the southwest of the Mont Blanc Massif filled me with apprehension, for the further I ventured away from connections with towns and up into the wilder region of the mountains the greater the risk of getting stuck up there. I had to grip my shoulder straps tightly and set my heart for the distance, telling myself I could do this and that I wasn’t going to let diabetes defeat my love of mountain walking.

All throughout the foothills surrounding the Mont Blanc range, especially in France and Switzerland, young families have returned to the villages to bring new life back to the old chalets and byways.

I moved much slower than I would normally have walked in days past, but, in spite of being out of breath and falling behind everyone along the way, the hills and slopes rolled by and by mid-afternoon I found myself gazing at the vista of the alpine crags.

The mountains grew bigger and bigger, almost frighteningly so, with a mass and ominousness that I had never experienced with the high mountains in Japan. At once both a sense of dread mixed with unutterable joy nagged at the back of my mind. It was all still too new to get lost in; even my photos felt tentative, as if trying out a grander horizon.

As the late afternoon sun began to approach the line of peaks to the west and I still hadn’t reached the refuge where I hoped to stay for the night and no one else was in sight, I began to lose heart that I would make it. Clouds were gathering and it looked like rain. Breathing heavily I topped one rise and came upon this memorial to winter. Out of breath I plopped down on an outcropping and laughed like a man drunk.

The Refuge de Bonhomme sat above a tumbling valley resplendent with emerald green grass on every rounded slope. Upon setting my pack down and scanning the panorama below, I witnessed the famed alpine sheep seething across a distant peak. For the first time I could picture the landscape the Heidi so adored.

All my life I had dreamed of glimpsing Ibex. They represented an almost deity-like symbol of the remote and legendary world of the Alps, a place where only intrepid mountaineers and hardy shepherds could venture. So when I finished my dinner and glimpsed a lone Ibex tossing his horns along a dark ridge, I grabbed my camera and stalked outside as fast as caution allowed. The Frenchman, Sebastien, who had befriend me over a beer, laughed and cried out, “What’s the hurry? They’re so tame you’re guarantied to see one! I just wonder about that bright red windshirt you’re wearing, though!”

The refuge was so different from what you get in Japan. People sat around meeting one another and welcoming people they didn’t know. Two refuge staff members brought out guitars and sat on the kitchen counter singing songs to candle light. Outside night fell, turning the world blue while a powerful wind howled across the rooftop.

I fell asleep to the pattering of rain against the bedroom window and the rise and fall of Sebastien’s breathing. The stout wooden walls felt solid in the mountain air and the bed a safe haven. I slept so deeply that I cannot remember that night.

One thing I discovered as I walked was that you were never far away from at least a hamlet. To my surprise the Alps in Japan were much wilder and required that one be a lot more self-sufficient. I was able to buy fresh Tambe cheese and still-warm baguette at a local bakery near the bus stop here in Chapieux.

My first glimpse of an alpine glacier came here in Villes des Glaciers. At one time the glacier must have held an otherworldly spell over the village below, but today so much of it had melted away that mostly only orange hued rock remained. Throughout the walk I saw clearly that all the glaciers had melted away to but a fraction of their former grandeur. It was humbling to such powerful forces of nature burned away to nothing.