Dedicated to Fuji Hill Participants😘

My hobby is people-watching on the final day of tax filing.
Adachi Tax Office is particularly interesting.
Seasoned veterans come out on the final day. You hear people pretending to be hard of hearing, incomplete documents, and angry shouting from all directions.
There's the old man who dumped his receipts out of a supermarket plastic bag. The old woman who gets right up to the counter and then remembers a question she wanted to ask. The regular who has become friends with the staff and starts by talking about the weather. None of them are in a hurry.
The only ones pressed for time are the tax accountants, and the residents of Adachi Ward take advantage of their human kindness.
Ah, it gives me chills.
They take the blade of a deadline and deflect it by wrapping it in the cotton of human emotion. That takes years of experience.
Watching such human drama was my hobby.
It was a once-a-year festival.
My wife doesn't understand this noble hobby of mine.
"Just go when it's empty, for goodness' sake."
She says, with no sense of sentimentality, trying to get the tax filing over with quickly. The more passionately I explain it, the more she looks at me like I'm something she can't understand. Eventually, when our daughters ask, "Why did you choose Dad?", she tilts her head in genuine confusion and says, "I don't know, do I?"
It's a hobby not even my family understands.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that hobby was forcibly ended.
Mail it in, or use e-Tax. The moment that was recommended, my festival came to a close. The veterans finished their filings without stepping a foot outside, and the Adachi Tax Office on the final day returned to just a quiet weekday.
The cutthroat festival of deception that I loved had vanished.
I was at a loose end.
What I started instead was road biking.
For some reason, a guy over forty decided to try road biking. And since I couldn't go outside due to the stay-at-home order, I started something called Zwift that I could do indoors.
At first, the only goal was to lose the fat on my belly.
I just wanted to lower my health checkup numbers by a tiny bit. That was all.
But day by day, I became obsessed.
On the screen, I pass a stranger from another country. I get passed back. My heart rate goes up. Before I know it, a sweaty middle-aged man is climbing an invisible hill in a dark room.
I, a shut-in who never did sports in my student days, realized I had become a complete addict.
Words like FTP and PWR, which didn't exist in my vocabulary a year ago, started rolling off my tongue.
I even experienced overtraining once.
My legs wouldn't turn. My heart rate wouldn't go up. Even though my body felt as heavy as lead, I couldn't get off the saddle. I, who had been so thrilled by the struggles of others, had somehow ended up on the side being observed.
I used to be a spectator at the festival.
Now, I keep pedaling a bicycle that goes nowhere in a room where no one is watching.
The only audience is the power meter at the end of my pedals.
I'm still far from the experience of an Adachi Ward resident.
Even so, I wanted to know my own true ability.
I'm short and skinny, a body not exactly suited for sports, but apparently, for road biking—specifically climbing—this works quite to my advantage. The lighter you are, the faster you can climb a hill. I felt like God had given my physique a purpose for the first time.
Feeling this was my stage, I took on the Fuji Hill Climb.

Fuji Hill—officially, the Mt. Fuji Hill Climb.

It is one of the largest hill climb events in the country, where you climb about 25 kilometers from Fujiyoshida to the 5th station in June. Every year, nearly 10,000 people gather at the foot of Mt. Fuji just to climb a hill. If you look at it literally, it's a magnificent collective madness.
Moreover, this system is well-designed.
Under 90 minutes, a bronze ring.
Under 75 minutes, a silver ring.
Under 65 minutes, a gold ring.
Under 60 minutes, a platinum ring.
A year of effort is visualized in a single colored ring. It's a mechanism that breeds more faith than putting money in an offering box.
I was ecstatic when I got a silver ring on my first try.
I was convinced I was fast.
A frog in a well, as they say.
Even though there were still two rings left above me, I felt like a professional road racer.
And so, I sank even deeper into this quagmire.
Every time I did Zwift, my daughters would throw Febreze at me, saying I smelled sweaty. When I went out for a ride early on a Sunday morning and came back before noon, no one was home. In fact, the front door was even locked. And I didn't have a key.
A locked-out middle-aged man, clicking his cycling shoes on the pavement, waiting for his family to return in front of his own house.
Yahoo, I can go for another ride.
It's a fond memory that I actually went for another round trip to the Arakawa River, nearly hit the wall, and had to call my wife for an SOS.
"I don't want to live a long life with you, so please ride your bike as much as you want."
Having received that blessing, I finally started dabbling in weight reduction.
Bundles of cash flew away one after another, replaced by an increasing number of bicycles and wheels.
In inverse proportion to that, the cold gazes of my wife and daughters grew colder.
"I'll marry Daddy when I grow up."
Ten years ago, the daughter who said that is nowhere to be found.
With my retreat cut off, and even my doctor confirming, "You're addicted," I gained a little more leg strength in exchange. And so, holding onto the many things I hadn't quite lost yet with both hands, I faced my third Fuji Hill.

* * *

But at the starting line, there are my comrades.
The morning in Fujiyoshida is covered in fog. A cold wind brushes against my skin. But what hangs in the air is an atmosphere akin to a murderous intent. Everyone is silent, breathing out white mist, looking only straight ahead.
Even though I call them comrades, I'm naturally shy, so I don't strike up conversations.
Even so, looking at their bodies and their road bikes, which cost more than cars, I can tell at a glance that they are kindred spirits.
They have shaved off every bit of fat, their stomachs hollowed out. At work, they are surely worried about being "too thin," and at their health checkups, they are told they have an enlarged heart and bradycardia, yet they must be smirking inwardly. An athlete's heart. A medal of honor only the experts understand, not the amateurs.
They say human cells are replaced by the food you eat over a year.
And road cyclists eat the same things, like they were stamped from a mold. The faster you get, the more similar your optimal diet becomes.
Pouring down oatmeal, chewing on tasteless chicken.
At some point, I developed a habit of eating differently from my family.
In other words—at the cellular level, this nameless middle-aged man standing next to me is much closer to me than my wife or daughters.
This is more than just comrades; it's a family of cells and souls.
And these family members will be crying real tears at the finish line an hour from now. Middle-aged men who just climbed a hill will be sobbing without caring who sees them.
Ah, this is it.
I suddenly realize that this was the once-a-year festival I loved.
I used to just watch the human drama of the Adachi Ward residents from the audience.
Now it's different.
As a player, I compete with them, use them as a windbreak, get used by them, and aim for a single goal.
My once-a-year festival is beginning now.
No, it's our festival.
Beyond the fog, the starting gun fires.
Come, let's go.