Yesterday I got out of the metropolis for an extraordinary day in the beautiful mountains of Okutama. There are more pictures to come but hey, I want to share them slowly so you can all soak up the beauty. I started an Okutama flickr set, go check it out over the coming days. I'll put a few up every day.

I ache all over today. The concept of "tree-hugging" I always thought was a kind of peacenik conceptual thing. Yesterday I did a lot of tree-hugging but I can assure you, it was more for pure survival than anything else. Kenta, as you may have guessed, is quite the nature adventurer and used to be a hiking guide out here. He's something of a monkey and casually led me up 90 degree slopes full of soft leaf matter and fallen trees and rocks to get to his special places. It was totally worth it but must confess, it was the most radical "hike" I've ever done - more challenging by far than the post-monsoon flooded river-crossing jungle hike I did in Thailand 2 years ago.

We rock-climbed and trekked through icy streams barefoot, made a kind of scary river crossing (leaping rocks) at a point where the bridges had been washed away, crossed narrow, slippery, ramshackle wooden bridges with no railings and yeah, up and down insanely steep slopes where we both did a lot of the afore-mentioned tree-hugging or clambered/scrambled/slipped/slid on all-fours. The higher up we went, the more stuff we abandoned by the trackside. First, the packs, then our shoes... with all the recent rain the tracks were quite crumbly and bare feet really offered the only trustworthy assessment of safe and solid foot placements. He carried my camera, I was too scared of losing my balance. It was the only thing we carried all the way to the top.

Quite the adventure.

We hit the Okutama onsen afterwards where a horrible old woman complained (in front of me) to her adult daughter (in Japanese) that tattoos shouldn't be allowed in because this was, after all, an onsen. I turned and fixed a most penetrating gaze upon her and nodded my head ever so slightly. She stopped in mid-sentence, nodded back hesitantly and changed the subject to discuss someones wedding. Anyway, the mountain soil was so deeply embedded under my finger and toe nails that a good onsen soak couldn't get it out and I had to spend about 10 minutes cleaning my nails before work this morning! The onsen also failed to completely ease the aches today. Damn.

In other news, I hung the exhibition on Saturday evening and it's almost ready for the opening party this Friday night. I'm quite happy with the way it sits in the bar - it adds a lot of great colour and energy and when we came back after dinner I was able to sit back, look around and feel quite proud.