text: I was out with the Doc enjoying a blowfish dinner course : blowfish sashimi with sudachi lime, blowfish hotpot, blowfish gonads ( surprisingly good ) and blowfish tempura, all washed down with hirezake ( blowfish fins set alight in sake). It was a hell of a spread. During our conversation, he mentioned Kamikochi, a mountain resort nestled in the Alps. ‘One of the great Japan views!’, he exclaimed, red-faced from drink, whilst picking a blowfish bone out of his teeth. His eyes shone. I remembered the conversation and took a bus to Kamikochi in June 2020. The bus crawled through a forest and up a winding mountain road into a big empty car park with a view of white-capped mountain peaks in front of it and an ethereal blue river that wound its way down through the valley. The bus dropped us off and drove away again leaving just me and a handful of hikers there. The hikers seemed prepared. They threw on MontBell backpacks, adjusted the laces in their boots, pulled up their thick socks, and disappeared into the forest like a platoon of elves, the gentle tinkle of their bear bells getting quieter and quieter until there was no sound at all. I stood in the car park alone and stared at the expanse in front of me. The Doc was right, it really was something else. I walked up to a nearby wooden tourist cabin and left my luggage with a lady at the counter, and the only person in the whole center as far as I could tell. I went outside again and walked through a gathering of pines into the morning sunshine, my feet scrunching cones, until I came to a bridge. Water rushed underneath it and there was a symphonic buzz of insects. On the bridge stood two old ladies nattering away, bent and jovial. They moved off to the side of the bridge and studied a burst of colorful flowers, like two wizened gnomes selecting ingredients for an evening recipe. I walked deeper into the forest. The trees were older there and an ancient mossy rock face slid out from under a gurgling small stream and rose up above the trees. I reached an out-of-season campsite, leaned up against one of the empty huts there and cracked open a small bottle of sake that I had brought with me. I shook it and the white residue at the bottom of the bottle dispersed evenly creating a milky cloud. The alcohol, sweet and smooth in taste, swirled into my veins and I walked on with new momentum and purpose. The land soon became marshy and mucky and a wooden platform which I strode down, went through the middle of it all. The water on each side was thick with reeds but the few intervals of open water that there were, reflected the alpine landscape beautifully - a serene glimmering of whites and blues. The marsh ended and my feet hit sturdier ground again. I passed a hornet’s nest high up a tree to the left, perfectly round and smooth, like a hairless coconut. The path came out into an opening. I crossed a small bridge with a shallow stream dribbling beneath it. The path then bent sharply to the left and that’s when I saw it. About 50 meters ahead, a large bear emerged out of the long grass to the right of the path and strode regally across it, its head down, sniffing the ground. I froze in shock and disbelief. It’s bulky body rippled as it shifted its weight from paw to paw. It was bigger than anything I’d ever seen in the wild and I suddenly felt very small. I had of course seen a bear in the zoo, or on TV before, but not here, in the forest, on its own turf. It seemed to not have seen me yet, or at least it was giving off that impression. And it appeared to be a very clever animal too. Its fur had a dark reddish hue under the direct sunlight. This threw me initially, for I’d always presumed that should I ever encounter a black bear in Japan, it would be black as the night. But not the case at all, apparently. I stood still as a rock, then turned slowly and started walking back in the direction I had come, taking great care not to make any sudden movements. My back now faced the bear, something you should never do, or so they say. Well, good luck following that rule next time you see a bear in the woods! I picked up pace and looked back, half expecting to see the thing racing towards me, all muscle, tooth and claw. Pure fear and imagination took over - Thoughts of how silly I was to be there, alone, in that forest at all. And what an awful demise probably awaited me. I shrunk in shame at the stories people would tell.. ‘Hey do you remember Simon who went to Japan? He was killed by a bear!’ And how slow and painful it would be. These thoughts reeled through my mind like pictures in a slideshow but as they did, my feet put more and more distance between me and the beast, and fear quickly changed to relief when I saw the bridge ahead, and then bigger waves of relief arrived when I actually crossed it and came back to the campsite. I threw off my bag and breathed in lungfuls of sweet air. Five minutes had barely passed when the ground started to shake. Just my luck, an earthquake! The tin rooves of the empty huts all around me, rattled and pine cones fell out of the swaying trees. Three or four large boulders slipped off the mountain side and plopped into the river, one by one, the water swallowing them with ease. And then as they often do, the earthquake stopped as quickly as it had started. I picked up my bag and walked back to the tourist cabin. It was only 1pm but I’d had enough of the mountains for one day. Two days later, safely back in Tokyo, and very glad to be there, I might add, the TV news reported that a bear had mauled and killed a jogger in his 70s in a village about 40 km away from Kamikochi. Adult bears are known to walk up to that distance in a day. So it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine that that was my bear. So do be careful when you’re out walking in the mountains.