Japanese version of Green Climbers Home
I had so much fun in Laos so I dreamed of bringing something similar to Japan;
What was so nice?
Very ecological... Cows and Goats are eating grass on the same field human climbing, they had very country style living. Cats and dog not to mention.
Peaceful... no one is really on competition, most climbers are not local, so they are on vacation, the local people were on low economically developed so their life is already simple.
Diverse... men and women, young and old, any race, all are just playmates not a competitors. In Japan, climbers are competing instead of playing. It's a world of male ego.
Simple life... eat, climb, sleep, then repeat. So simple minded. People, the belayer is like a stream of liver, comes and goes... never still. So no one ask you commitment nor loyalty, all you need is regular friendliness, and the feeling of "we are a part of big family" kind of awareness. When rope is up with a knot, you don't blame the people, you kindly offer to climb and retrieve. It is not a big deal if you have a basic kindness as a human. So everyone is trying to help each other because it is obvious no one wants to have a terrible vacation, it is supposed to be fun, not a punishment.
In Japan, rock climbing... not ice climbing in my case... was no fun at all. People are competing each other when I try to have a fun climb. Most people climb to fulfill their ego, to show off how bold they are.
So I got disgusted and lost my appetite for climbing.
I am a short climber of 152cm high, pretty small, smaller than Linn Hill, I think she was 158cm, and in the bolted route, i.e. sport route, how far you can reach is the basic of safety.
Sport route safety and the reach
Most climber do not understand this, especially, alpine climbers... because they never do bouldering in outdoor.
In outdoor boulder, we have something called sit start. Usually sit start is much more difficult than standing start... because suddenly, you can not reach to the big hold, "Gaba" we say in Japanese, in English, it is jag, big steady holds, and in bouldering, or any kind of climbing, the smaller foot holds are harder, of course and the distance to a big good hold, is overcame by either using very small hold on foot or by range, jumping toward the big hold.
So it is much more dynamic move is involved.
In alpine style, all moves are very static, if you have to take a dynamic move and there are a lot of chance of falling, the advice is not to climb at all, or use aid climb.
So it is the limitation of old alpine climbers, who has limited experience as well as others. They may have good experience in the mountains, but they don't understand, this; The lower the starting climbs, the harder it gets.
Japanese male’s average height is about 170cm and female is 158cm.
Old free climbing crags are mostly developed by those alpine climber who had zero understanding in boulder sit start, therefore understanding that a shorter person had to take a greater risk, when a good holds are too far away, is hard to understand for them. They just can not understand.
So as a result of this lack of understanding, the layout of bolts in old crag is only met to the average of 170cm person.
you are safe if you are one of average of 170 cm tall.
I found out this fact by noticing my climbing mentor does not understand the cam he sat is not at all safe to me, I needed my own setting.
See this photo.
This is the cam set of mine who has only 152 cm and a short reach. Notice the first to 3rd cam is much placed lower than this photo.
Whereas...
This is my climbing mentor's cam set. He is 175cm.
As you can see, I need the first cam at very lower place and the second too, and the 3rd.
My climbing mentor did not understand this, insisting that I should climb lead, with his cam set. (pink point) Insisting that is safer, when actually NOT.
But obviously, his cam setting is NOT safe at all to me for I can NOT reach to clip his cam with the same secure foot hold that he used.
I need my own cam layout for my security... and he call me "CHICKEN", with his limited knowledge but he does not realize it.
As you can see, this accusation is based on ignorance and the ignorance came from his limitation of experience. He has never done the boulder outdoor nor wanted to try.
TRAD is safe for a short person
So the reason why I like the trad better than bolted route is for my safety reason.
I always have this bolt layout problem...it is not safe to me at all... as long as I climb bolted routes in Japan, anywhere done by old climbers.
So my humble opinion is that all the bolted routes especially 5.9 and 5.10 something (introductory level)should be re-considered by someone new, a lead climbers with good bouldering experience, like Sachi or someone, could be Yuji.
The fatal accident with runout is happening anywhere in Japan, because for the developer climbers with a big height, like 180cm has no understanding about this.
It is not they are the greater climbers than shorter climbers...it only their tall height helped them to reach further than others, that's all. Nothing to be proud of, since no effort involved.
I have seem so many taller climber with a less skill of climbing can climb better grades than me so, the grades in this case does not show any climbing skills.
5.9 for short is not 5.9
Thus, with this reason, the shorter climbers are usually better climbers always. They need to develop better skills to climb the same grade compared to taller ones.
For example very far layout-ed jags are easy 5.9 for 180 cm climbers but it is so dangerous for 140 cm climber since that climber must jump toward that jag, which is much more chances of falling.
So shorter ones are better risk taker actually.
Hyugami
The Hyugami crag is originally developed as Aid-climbing 's crag. So the ethic of original bolting is; The far, the better.
So it is norm to see, a way too far bolted routes, and in especially of taller developer's routes.
The route called Taro, one day I was trying to climb, and my climbing partner stopped it for me, that was one case of very far bolted route.
After this climb, I stopped climbing in Hyugami, especially the route that is unknown to me.
It is because I did not have a partner belayer with this understanding. My partner at the time starting to call me chicken when all the reason that he thinks so was that he is tall enough to reach and clip before crux. I was willing to overcome the hardship I've got but not with a guy who has no respect to me.
The reason of why bolts are there
The sole reason of bolts is to protect. So no more bolts than needed is just a disgrace of climbing.
Run-out is not protecting any one really, so why don't they free sole instead?
So if you Kyusyu climbers are really bold as you states, then free solo should have been the way of climbing but it is not so in the reality... so I concluded that they are only trying to LOOK BOLD not truthfully BOLD at all, therefore it does not worth my attention.
Free school... teaching to kids
So I got disgusted with male dominated, and pretentious culture here in Kyusyu, supported by ignorance, I decided it is worthless of giving my time, I had to find something with true value.
First I taught kids... and it was fun. There are a lot of free school these days in Japan, Japanese public education is corrupting because it is more of training to obey, not education.
Climbing can be a great thing for kids for sure, but you must teach them how to think, otherwise natural tendency is just enjoying fake scare, and ignoring the true braveness. It is easy to go for a easy praise.
I have witnessed so many cased of wrong teaching result. So it is the climbing education which is wrong.
The wrong education is done because the coaches are competing each others. It is a thing of generation. Japanese baby boomers does not know anything better than competition.
So I got disgusted again in competitiveness of former generation, so I sought for a different world than just competing and flarting( believe or not, they still flart age over 65)
I found the natural farming... it was a long journey... so I don't go any further than this but in short, I got disappointed again.
Free ranch
It was fun to live in a hand made log house and it reminded me of the book I liked as a child "Little house in a big woods". I was fascinated by the idea of building my own log house and now I am equipped with the skill.
So if it is ok to cut down the trees and built my own house, I will.
Autism and Orthomolecular medicine
Since I got knee injury, I had to stay in bed for a long time, like two month.
In that 2 month, I did not wanted to loose my muscle I built but I did. Why?
I did not have enough protein. I was farming so I had enough veges but not enough meat... so I lost my most of climbing muscles. So sad.
So I started to study why I lost my muscle and found out that I was taught wrong thing in my diet, like Japanese are vegetarian or such.
Thanks to the study, I learned about mental illness came from a wrong diet, and these days there are a lot of kids with autism, ADHD, or such... also came from a wrong diet.
I can think of some incidents with my climbing mentor that he get so easily irritated and short sighted and acted like ADHD... such as I was abandoned in Korea by my mentor, because I refused to climb wide crack that is, stemming was the must, when my knee was so loose, that I could hardly carry my pack...I went there because two other climbers said they won't go if I don't go... so I had to put up with the pain.
I thought he was a kind of a guy who ask where is my meal? when a sick wife is in bed... he was asking me to entertain him when I am in physical pain obviously... I was puzzled then, thinking I was betrayed since I trusted him so much, but it was ADHD or autism, his conception was sickened... perhaps.
So this is so far what happened to me this 5 years in Kyusyu. A bad experience.
My husband could not understand what I was going through since he does not understand climbing and he thinks I am lazy, since I don't hold regular job now, who can work as a yoga teacher with injured leg? In retrospect, I had been going through such a tough time without a friend nor support.
No one really see my standing point, no one could really see things from my aspects, since there is no other 152cm female climber with 17kg grab power. But I have a fluent English, and a lot of dreams of peace and love worlds...I still know everyone will love GCH Japanese version since older people are going there but I know now I am not going to make any sacrifice for that.
I had my good times, also, to be fair... it was great to walk around Korean mountains also, a visit to Taiwan was great, I get to know few Thai climber friends.
But those are the people I should be friends with, not my fellow climbers in Japan.
Green Buddha I like Green climber, not competitive climber
この記事の日本語版 https://allnevery.blogspot.com/2019/08/blog-post_68.html