hey all,
As foretold, Michi and I went rock climbing in Jogasaki. According to my guidebook, there are over 500 routes to climb there, but Michi and I had a hard time finding any. The Jogasaki climbing area is located on the Eastern facing coast of the Izu Peninsula. It is almost entirely volcanic rock, spread across around 5 miles of gorgeous coast line. Because the climbs often end directly in the sea, the routes are mostly top-rope. I also think that the bolts rust too quickly to be worth replacing when they go bad: they are exposed to sea air and salt water 24/7; 365 days a year. Most of the places that Michi and I looked at had screws still placed in the rock, but the eyelets had been removed.
As usual, there were some shenanigans meeting up. Michi tends to be a little late, and Saturday the plan called for us to meet at Yokohama, which is about an hour South of Tokyo. She was on a different train than I expected, so I rode past Yokohama for a few stations, then waited for her train to arrive. Before going climbing, we went to a grocery store to buy things for dinner. Our hotel room had a small kitchenette with pots, pans, dishes, silverware, a range, fridge, and microwave, so we had planned on cooking our own dinner from the start. We bought things for curry rice and nikujaga, and dropped them off at the hotel. One of the staff members actually drove us to the start of the coastal hiking trail in their car, which was incredibly nice.
Unlike my experience at every other climbing place in Japan, we didn't see any other climbers than us the first day. This is really unprecedented. Yugawara has been busy both times I've been there. Ogawayama's camp site had at least 250-300 people in it, maybe 100 of them climbers. Koutakuji hear Hon-Atsugi was also crowded.
The first day, we only climbed one route. We hiked up and down a small stretch of coastal trail looking for signs that people had been climbing there, and for clues as to which climbing area we were near. We picked one place, and then I chickened out, as it was a difficult looking lead climb with a high start: if I fell before I reached the first bolt, I'd land on sharp unstable boulders after falling for 15 feet. So we changed to a different wall, and set up our top rope. We only got to climb it a few times before it began to get dark, and we walked back to the hotel in twilight. For the first day, we made curry for dinner: just chicken, carrot, potato, rice, and curry mix.
The second day we didn't go climbing at all. We had a very late start, and then we dragged our feet because it was quite cold that day. I probably would have gone climbing still, but Michi declared it too cold to climb. Instead, we went hiking along the coast, and searched for places to climb for Monday. We actually ran into a group of climbers that afternoon, but otherwise the many cliffs were abandoned, although the hiking trails were still quite popular. That night we made nikujaga: literally, "meat-potato," but probably meaning "meat and potato:" just some garlic, ginger, soy sauce, chicken, and yes, more rice, carrots and potatoes.
The last day, we had a slightly late start, and the hotel staff were kind enough to give us a ride out to the climbing place again. We only had to walk about 5 minutes, which was good because we were both carrying the leftover food, all our clothes and toiletries, etc in addition to our actual climbing gear.
We set the top rope in the place where we encountered the climbers the day before, and were able to switch it around to several different routes throughout the day.
One of the features of Jogasaki's climbs is that there are many overhangs, so they require more upper body strength and endurance than a typical 90 degree climb. Because of this, Michi wasn't able to complete a single climb we tried, and I was only able to complete two out of 6. While a little disappointing, we both had fun trying the climbs.
We made really good time on our way back towards Tokyo: only waiting a few minutes for the bus, and the first train, and catching each train after that without having to rush or to wait for too long.
