The sky was blue and beautiful, a good day was in sight. Despite the poor sleep of our previous night, we were ready to hike up to Mount Gassan. The trail was well kept and time flew fast. “Pink!” Emiel shouted while pointing at the pink plastic string tied to a branch. The memory of our adventure on Yakushima was fresh in our minds, and recalling it filled us with emotion. Losing our way on a mountainside was not something that could simply go in the box somewhere in our heads where all the boring thoughts go. Or at least, not so quickly. We laughed thinking back together, and searched in the distance for the next pink string that would confirm our way. 

The landscape slowly changed and some snow patches entered our vision. Hopeless bits of winter clinging to the mountain, we were lucky to witness them before their disappearance. The ascent to the top wasn’t hard and we enjoyed a stunning view from the summit just before the wind blew some cotton candy clouds on us. White. Nothing in sight except the countless other mountaineers that polluted the peak. We escaped the thick clouds only by passing below them. The descending path was steep and packed with people. Half of them going down, the others struggling their way up. “Damn, these guys going up are out of their minds, I’m glad we don’t have to”. 

The more we descended the luckier we felt. When we turned to the path that would bring us neither to the ski-lift nor to some car park, we finally got away from everyone. However, the pleasant decline that made us so glad in the first half swiftly turned into an almost vertical descent that made our palms and knees sweaty. Every step down I felt my legs wobbling out of exhaustion. But we weren’t so far from our finish line anymore. After a stop at the mountain shrine, we finally reached our hotel. In front of it stood a massive torii gate which made us feel small, though it was indeed a good subject for our sunset pictures. 

The old and traditional hotel had two hot springs for us to enjoy. After a long awaited bath, we had fun going around in yukata like the Japanese do. However, the thing I enjoyed the most was seeing my name followed by the honorific sama both on the door of our room and on the table during dinner. I don’t usually care much about the places I sleep in, but I did agree this hotel was worth the extra buck. 

After a night of deep slumber I woke up to the sound of a speaker calling us for breakfast at 7 a.m. I ate my breakfast like a zombie and immediately returned to bed to recover from waking up without enough time to realize the new day was here. “Babe, have you found a good, cheap way to get home?” I asked Emiel just before our check-out, and was really surprised when he replied he hadn’t planned anything at all. First thing, we needed to get off the mountain. Getting to Tokyo would be a whole other challenge. And without a car, the closest bus stop to anywhere else was three hours hiking away from the hotel. I suggested that we could start walking and then try to hitchhike on the way. However, as soon as we started getting down the road, an old man ran towards us, insisting that we couldn’t walk on that road. “Car only,” he kept saying. “Dangerous.”

Our only way down was with some wheels, and he told us we’d better call ourselves a taxi. So of course we hitchhiked. We quickly found ourselves a ride down the mountain and made 40 minutes of progress on our way home. After reaching Yamagata, Emiel suggested visiting some shrines, going around the area and somehow filling our time before the night bus at 23:00. So when I said “Let’s hitchhike all the way to Tokyo, we have a free day anyway!” he wasn’t exactly excited. 

He was deeply skeptical, so I made a bet that if my proposal didn’t work I’d get us shinkansen tickets to Tokyo, still over 400 kilometres away. That was enough to convince him. He reluctantly accepted my proposal and we boarded a bus towards a highway service centre. The only thing between us and our adventure now was a fence which we easily climbed. “That was easy, see? I told you it’s gonna be a piece of cake”. But I spoke too soon. Our chosen service station was deserted. No cars at all. “See? I told you this wasn’t a good idea.” 

However, within minutes a car arrived. I explained our situation and asked the driver and his girlfriend if they could give us a ride. Which they did. “Bam! Come on babe, it worked!”. We got in their cool Toyota, discovering that our driver was an amateur race car pilot. He had three other cars at home and outside his free time he was the boss of a kindergarten. A rather unique combination, we thought. We stayed with them for about an hour. They even went out of their way to drop us off at a large and busy service station, beyond their own destination.

Again we had to find a ride. Despite the station being packed it took a while to find someone willing to take us. After maybe twenty minutes I asked a friendly looking guy for help, but his wife turned us down. It looked like we were out of luck this time. But suddenly, ten minutes later, the wife came back to tap me on the shoulder. Apparently she had changed her mind. We joined her and her husband in their van, quiet and polite. She made clear it would be just to the next gas station and that she wouldn’t share her phone number. “Yes please, anything helps, as long as we can get closer to Tokyo”. 

We ended up staying with them for almost three hours, having some interesting conversations about European culture, Japanese religions, and more. The lady that was so distant and opposed to us at first, in the end said goodbye with a smile, thanking us for the good time together. She even gave us two fresh peaches. By this time we were more than halfway, and I was exhausted after entertaining our drivers for so long. We rested, had a bite and then looked once more for a ride. Hopefully our last, we thought. Again our sign and thumbs were not of much help. Nobody paid any attention to us. As soon as Emiel spotted a foreigner we knew he was gonna be our ticket home, whether he wanted to be or not. Emiel walked up to him and bluntly asked if we could tag along on the backseat. The guy was indeed headed to Tokyo and willing to take us on. Finally Emiel made some conversation in my place, leaving me off the hook. I fell asleep and by the time we entered Tokyo it was dark. Our first time driving in the city was great, seeing all the skyscrapers lit up was quite the experience. He dropped us off at a metro station, and as I had predicted by 9 p.m. we were home. “See? I told you so!”