From Hamburger Hill to Broccoli Mountain

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It’s been three weeks since I finally escaped the meat grinder and quit That Job. Now I work from home, answer to no one, and can make tea or nip to the loo whenever I please. Most days, one or more cats drape themselves decadently across my desk while I work. In just two weeks, I built my online teaching site — and I’m busily spinning fresh plans for world domination.

I’ve also done quite a lot of walking. I get out to do a good five kilometres every day that the weather’s OK and that there’s no actual primeval forest lurking around that might consume me with a burp. See ‘Stacks passim.

It’s quite important to do a lot of walking because if you just sit at your desk all the time, you eventually die and desiccate like an ancient Buddhist priest in living burial, or simply rot in your swivel chair like the dead bloke in the office cubicle whose passing was overlooked by his colleagues until he didn’t show up for his retirement party twenty years later.

I am lucky that I live on Mt Shigi in Nara. I’d feel luckier if I lived in a punk squat in Stoke Newington, London, or in a Situationist den in Paris, or in Reykjavik with a view of erupting volcanoes from my living room window, or, really, anywhere else at all. But living on Mt Shigi is better than living in a stony hole in the ground surrounded by the dried bones of small rodents and desiccated husks of insects, which are the detritus of the diet of a typical hole-dweller. No, given that I am barred from Stoke Newington and also the civilised world, Mt Shigi in Nara will do.

When I was living in Stoke Newington, it was possible, in magic mushroom season, to pick magic mushrooms in Springfield Park, right there in Hackney. Perhaps you still can. You don’t get magic mushrooms on Mt Shigi, but you do get fly agaric. Fly agaric? Anyone wanna play shamans?

Mt Shigi looks like a non-magic broccoli. I have been struck since I moved here with the broccoli-ness of Mt Shigi. A giant brassica stuck in the ground between Osaka and Nara for no good reason. Covered in hiking trails and creatures and shrines. Once there lived here yamabushi, mountain ascetic monks known for their rigorous spiritual practices in the wilderness and eccentric fondness for centipedes. That would have been before the Kintetsu and JR rail lines were laid in and the shrine at the top of the mountain got its capacious car park.

But the mountain has its clefts and ravines, and dense forest, and wildlife, which is all quite remarkable considering that the neighbouring towns are bland sub-suburban sub-cemeteries.

I’d like to share just a little of Mt Shigi with you today. Its nooks, its corners, its delights, and the other things.

So, today I’ll take you on a wander in the woods. This route takes me from my front door and back to my front door in 90 minutes or so.

When I tell people I live here they don’t believe me.

👉 Welcome to the Shigi walking trail. Beware rock falls, falling trees, boar, vipers, murder hornets, and mushrooms. Have a nice day!

👉 Here there are forest fires, that’s what the sign says. If you come across a forest fire, no matter how tempting it is, don’t take it home with you. Forest fires are also called ‘wildfires’ for a reason: they belong to the mountain. They do not do very well in human homes and cannot be domesticated. Leave them where they are.

👉 There are no convenience stores in the forest, but you can find plenty of utility poles in case you need a utility.

👉 No one believes it when I say I live here. This is a view from the mountain in the direction of my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the view was marred by high voltage electricity cables but using clever Photoshop trickery, I have erased them.

👉 When I tell people I live here they don’t believe me.

👉 Flowers. What is the actual point of them?

👉 Want to make cans and bottles ecstatically happy? Set them free by tossing them in the hedge. Remember folks, whatever it is, wildfire or consumer incombustible, leave it in nature!

👉 Do not under any circumstances look at this impressive view! By order!

👉 The forest trails are beautifully maintained.

👉 Bridge looking for an English partner. (See what I did there?) Yes, there’s a lot of water on Mt Shigi. You’d think it would just roll off, wouldn’t you

👉 Pole, rampike, or stake? Let’s ask Vlad.

👉 A magical forest, indeed. Walking these trails I found love.

👉 Like the Japanese soldier hiding in the forest for decades, this cone came here to escape students and didn’t know when to leave.

👉 Wayside shrines are common in Japan. I especially like this one, which is very colourful.

👉 Lions and tigers and bears and terrorists! Beware the Popular Front for the Liberation of Mt Shigi!

👉 When I tell people I live here they don’t believe me.