Hakkai-san School Hike & First School Enkai!

Every year, the third-year students and teachers and new teachers (i.e. me) will have to climb Hakkai-san. Hakkai -san is a mountain in our area about 1,700+ m high. The name is literally "Eight Sea Mountain". The reason for the name is that Hakkai-san has not one distinct peak, but a series of 8 peaks, like waves on the sea. Here's a picture of the eight peaks of Hakkai-san:

The first and second-year students and teachers go for a 20km mountain marathon/walk (depending on your fitness level). They don't actually scale a mountain, but cover a hilly route around the mountains.

I was given an option of either taking the cable car half-way up the mountain and start from there, or join the students and climb all the way from the bottom (i.e. challenge climb). I thought I was up for a challenge. Urghs! It was a tougher climb than what I faced in Nepal. At some points, the rocks were so smooth that there were metal chains fixed on them for climbers to use! THAT was quite scary because it was a very cloudy day. We were walking in clouds most of the time. The clouds of course dampened the ground and rocks, so everything was slippery. The other bad thing about it being cloudy was that we had absolutely no view when we climbed to the top! No reward for our hard work at all... :(

At the foot of the mountain, waiting for students to come back from the toilet before commencing with warm-up exercises

Along the way, there were many interesting small shrines and bells. The Japanese will usually clap their hands and pray in front of the shrine or ring the bell then clap their hands and pray (I suppose for the journey to be safe).

See how cloudy it is? This is also a shrine but a smaller-scale one

We also passed a number of natural springs which we refilled our water bottles from

Some genki (enthusiastic) students in my group who were singing all the way up and down

This was the view after climbing for 2 hours and we had only reached the cable car station (i.e. only halfway through!) Why didn't I choose the easy option? I was told that the peak we were aiming for (covered in clouds) was behind this peak that you can see in this photo

After a 4-hour climb, we finally reached the peak! We took a short lunch break there before commencing on our descent. Group photo at the peak:

Thankfully, we only had to climb mid-way to the cable car station before taking the cable car down. Upon our return to the bottom, we were greeted by enthusiastic parents pushing huge slices of the Yairo watermelon that this area is famous for into our hands.

Check out the amount of watermelons left at the end...and imagine how many they brought

Part 2: Enkai! (Party)

After the hike, the teachers and some parents proceeded on to a ryokan hotel in my town for a party. We all took an onsen (hot spring) bath before dinner. Going into an onsen felt so good after such a strenuous day. The hot water just melts away all the muscle aches. Shiok man!

Nice and clean now, we proceed to our dinner party. Yummy platters of Japanese food was served and unlimited drinks. I was famished and ate a lot. They even had Hokkaido crab legs which I love! The party was great because the teachers who were all so busy at school just started coming up to refill my glass and talk to me. They became completely different persons!

What I thought was the coolest was how they ended the party. The year-one, year-two and year-three teachers would take turns going up the stage as separate groups and arrow a representative to shout some kind of wish for their students. (Japanese education system is such that a teacher teaches only students of one cohort.) Everyone stands in this pose: (including those not on the stage)

The representative will end with "GAMBETTE!" (the equivalent of "press on!" or "jia you!" in Chinese) and everyone else will shout "O!" and punch their fists in the air like this

It's really fun.

And that's just the first round of the enkai. Japanese enkais usually have many rounds. The first is the formal one - dinner and drinks in a nice restaurant/ryokan hotel. Then they proceed to a bar or something for more drinks and after that karaoke or something. Anyway, I joined them only for the second round enkai. We went to this small restaurant for drinks and snacks.

Check out the guy who's so drunk that he's nodded off to sleep right at the table. He's the father of some kid at school.

Kampai! (cheers!)