Yaizu/Mankanbo | A mountain where someone changes the date every day

Yaizu Alps in February.
Mankanbo was the main peak of the ridgeline trail.

I wasn't particularly conscious of the distance I had walked at that time.

The moment I started the climb just below the summit, my legs felt heavy.
It wasn't that I couldn't move forward.
But it was clearly different from just a moment ago.

My body told me that I was tired.

Something was placed by the side of the mountain trail.
When I got closer, I saw it was a calendar made of branches.

Today's date was indicated by the arrangement of the branches.
Moreover, it was designed so that you could change it to tomorrow's date if you put your hands to it.

When I imagined, "Someone comes here every day," and "Someone changes the date every day,"
I couldn't help but laugh.

I felt something I had been bracing myself against suddenly relax.

The final climb to the summit.
I had been climbing in silence, looking only at my feet.
That was when a face carved into a tree stump caught my eye.

I couldn't exactly call it skillful.
If anything, it was quite rough.

I burst out laughing.

It was so shocking that I stared at it intently.

At the summit, local people were gathered in a circle. There was no special event going on. They were just saying what they wanted to say. And it wouldn't stop.

It was peaceful. They weren't raising their voices, but the conversation never lapsed, and they looked completely natural being there.

I once heard a saying like this:
"Good people gather at mountains with a good atmosphere."
It was about a mountain in Hokkaido, but at the summit of Mankanbo, I suddenly remembered those words.

I sat a little outside that circle and, for a while, mingled with the atmosphere of the summit.

Descending from Mankanbo, I found a bench just as I started the climb back up toward Hanazawayama. It is said that Tokugawa Ieyasu viewed Mt. Fuji from here. The bench was called the Ieyasu Bench.

Beside the bench, a notebook had been left behind.

As I flipped through the pages, the names of people who had climbed, the weather, the dates, and short messages were lined up. Some people had written in nicknames.

Reading the handwriting of strangers, I felt a strange sense of nostalgia.

Walking down the path, I thought back on the things I had encountered earlier.

A calendar made of branches. A tree stump with a rough face carved into it. A message left by a stranger in the mountain notebook. Local people laughing in a circle.

They were all modest, and they were all small.
But each one was a piece of this mountain.

If I had hurried past, I wouldn't have seen any of them.

Someone is probably changing that date again today.

Conclusion | Good people gather at mountains with a good atmosphere

The joy of climbing, the joy of discovering.
Even the descent is part of the mountain time.
Mankanbo was a satoyama that gently slowed down those who were in a hurry.

If you'd like, please take a look at my past work too! ⤵︎