Footwear for treks in Japan

Phillip,
Im not local, as in Hokkaido, but I do live and hike in Japan. Im sure you researched the weather stats at your destinations. It will be a rainy month. Low temps on the highest mountains at 2300m or so could possibly dip to 0C due to the temperature lapse rate and orographic cooling if a cold front is passing by.

I would suggest a high-loft synthetic jacket instead of fleece, and a wind-shirt as sun and wind protection.

The choice of footwear is a gamble. If you get torrential rains and the trail is 10cm of soft deep mud, you would want higher synthetic boots and gaiters. If the weather is dry you'll be kicking yourself for the weight. Since this is the rainy season, Id go with light hiking boots and gaiters or trailrunners with TIGHT fitting gaiters.

Im going on a similar trip next month, and the packing list will be similar to the one posted at my profile here; but I am substituting synthetic hiking boots for the trail runners, adding a rope and climbing rack, and substituting an alpine pack (Cilogear) for the Golite Dawn. The boots are not for rain, but for occasional extremely rocky scrambling on-route.

My choices of footwear incidently, are Inov-8 330s or Montrail Torre GTX at twice the weight.

Good luck and enjoy the adventure; Japan is an amazing place, in Hokkaido you are a world away from 'planet Tokyo'.

Miguel, you are much more experienced than me here; any advice?

I wore light fabric boots or running shoes for most of the walks I did in Japan, including last year in Rishiri in Hokkaido. The locals tend to be over-booted but there's no need to go down that route and I know mountain guides who recommend light shoes. In other words the Terrocs should be fine.

I don't recall ever seeing much in the way of mud on any of my walks in Japan, certainly nothing like Tasmania or parts of England, but I always wore or carried gaiters.

As to weather, it can vary a lot. Rishiri is as far north as you can get in Japan but we had an almost balmy day; on the same day the year before it had been snowing. So I'd consider taking fleece/WPB layers and a wind-shirt. On the other hand if you don't find Paramo too warm you could try that – Miguel swears by it. I'm about to buy a Velez but I expect that it's only going to be for winter use for me. And just to complicate things Japan is feeling the effects of global warming so last winter was more like spring.

One thing to note about Daisetsuzan is that it does have brown bears – i.e., grizzlies. I used to carry bear spray in Honshu if I knew I was going into an area with active black bears and I personally would definitely do that in Hokkaido. Contrary to what a lot of foreigners think, bear attacks are not uncommon in Japan – a man was killed on the mountain where my father-in-law has a farm and he and I were "woofed" at there, and I saw a victim being walked out of the Oze area last year and an identical attack had occured when my group was there a year earlier. You can pick up bear spray in Sapporo – I presume you're going through Chitose Airport?

Thanks for your help chaps – I think I'll take the risk and go with the terrocs. Thanks for the info about bears – lots of conflicting info out there, with some saying they take no precautions other than making a bit of noise and not walking around dusk or dawn.
Flying into Narita and taking the train up to Hokkaido (not the quickest route but I'm on the rail pass and I enjoy taking it slow). I assume they sell bear spray locally in places like Asahikawe Onsen?
Oh, one more question. I see lots of criticism of the Lonely Planet guide to walking in Japan – what do you think of its grading of routes – overly cautious or too conservative?

If I was below the tree-line then I was always making noise – the little bear-bells which people recommend drove me mad so I used to just yell out "hey bear" if I was in an area I thought might appeal to bears, and avoiding dusk or dawn in bear-heavy areas is a good idea. I just decided that I wanted the bear spray as a back-up.

I wouldn't bet on getting the spray at Asahidake Onsen – I'd check in Sapporo or Asahidake first since you'll be going through there in any case. There was a good gear shop near the university in Sapporo which I think is this one:

http://www.shugakuso.co.jp/index.htm

The shop was near the university and they spoke a bit of English. They also appear to have a shop in Asahidake (third photo along) and the Patagonia outlet in Sapporo. They'd be the ideal ones for advice on bears etc and probable walking times.

In terms of route grading, Lonely Planet (in Honshu at least) based their times on the times printed on the Japanese maps. The Japanese map makers calculate their times on the presumption that you're carrying a pack, tent, sleeping bag etc (if I recall correctly, they presume the load will be equivalent to 25% of your bodyweight) which is why walkers using the huts and carrying a daypack will be faster.

This magazine has an article on Daisetsuzan but unfortunately it's not on their website yet:

http://www.outdoorjapan.com/oj/contents/home/?language=english

Philip, the person to ask here at BPL is Perrin Lindelof. He walked Daisetsuzan using very ultralight gear last year.

Everything I’ve heard about Daisetsuzan is that it is much rainier than the mountains in the south and can get pretty cold even in the summer. A friend of mine walked there two years ago. Just remember that Daisetsuzan is much further north than central Honshu and while the altitude of the peaks is not as high as that of the mountains further south, its climate is offset by the higher latitude. There is a reason why brown bears and picas and ezo deer and larch trees live up there and the winters are Siberian.

I think going UL is perfectly feasible and your Terroc shoes will be fine, as long as your pack doesn’t get too heavy. The Terrocs don’t have much cushioning and if you walk with a heavy pack you will feel the rocks up on the ridges. Make sure your feet are adapted to using the Terrocs… your feet need some toughening up to use them. Some people say that using Superfeet inserts is not necessary, but I find that using the blue Superfeet inserts gives the shoes a bit extra sole protection.

I think the Paramo jacket would be just right for Daisetsuzan, though, if you have a nice warm insulation layer like Arapiles suggested above, a thinner rain jacket would be fine, too. Personally I love Paramo. Nothing breathes as well. I use it as a thin insulation layer rather than a microfleece shirt, but I also still carry a windshirt because I find the Paramo doesn’t do well at blocking cold wind.

The warning about the grizzlies is real. In the last few years bear attacks, by both the Japanese Brown Bears and Asiatic Black Bears, have been increasing. However, I have been hiking in Honshu for 30 years and have never seen an Asiatic Black Bear, but I hear that it is quite common to see the Brown Bear in Daisetsuzan. I’m not sure what the advice is for bear cannisters there.

You will want to be more careful of the Red Foxes. They are not afraid of humans and many carry Echinococcus multilocularis. It is epidemic in Hokkaido. Don’t let them near your food.

I really don’t like Lonely Planet guidebooks. I think they too often look for the negatives of a place and overlook the good points. Their Hiking in Japan book is a good introduction, but skims over finer points and completely ignores some of the best walks in the country. Unfortunately there is only one other book in English, “Hiking In Japan” by Paul HUnt, and it was published in 1984, way out of date (many roads were still dirt back roads back then in Hokkaido).

Hope you have a wonderful trip! Hokkaido is absolutely wonderful!

That all sounds like good advice.

What I was trying not to say about the Japanese LP guide is that some of the authors have real attitude problems and, worse, I'm not convinced that they actually did some of the walks because they omit info – like, in the case of Kitadake, huts that have been there since the 1920s(!!)- that you would expect them to mention if they'd walked the route they describe.

In any case, I'm extremely envious of your trip – have fun!

Miguel – I'm going to be in Japan in August (I'm planning on doing the Tsurugi to Kamikochi walk while I'm there) – will you be in Tokyo at any point? And what are the hikes that LP don't mention?

Arapiles… oh, too bad. I’d love to have a chance to meet a fellow BPLer here in Japan! I’m going to the Alps (Europe) for the entire month of August. I won’t be back until the 30th. So I think I will most likely miss you. Sorry. (still haven’t even met Brett yet! We did plan a walk to climb Mt. Asama… though I’ve since found that it has been closed due to dangerous volcanic gas around most of the cone).

Great walks in Japan. Hmm. Well, there is the five day walk from Mt. Mizugaki to Okutama, right through Oku-Chichibu. Then there is the six to seven day walk from Kamikochi to Aritate, passing through either KurobeGoro or Kumo-no-Daira, some fo the most beautiful places in Japan. There is the 1,375 km long lowland three month walk from Mt. Takao to Kyoto, the Tokai Shizen Hodo (mentioned just in passing in the LP book). A lot of it has overgrown since few young people walk it any more. There is the Circuit of Kanto Plain, which would probably take several months to walk, starting from Kamakura and following the ridges all the way around the plain up through Gunma and Tochigi, down into Ibaraki. There is the three day walk of the Asahi Range in Yamagata, climbing over Asahi-dake, some of the most peaceful mountains I’ve walked in Japan (no camping allowed, though, not even stealth camping, to protect the alpine plants, so the mountains huts can be overcrowded). And the four-day Mount Iide walk in Fukushima. Can be a bit of a hairy traverse, with some crossing of razorback ridges. I nearly slipped off one of these because of a huge backpack… that was the day I decided to lighten my load. If you want really wild, unpeopled mountains, try a walk in the Hidaka Range in southern Hokkaido or from the tip of Shiretoko, also in Hokkaido and which can only be reached by fishing boat. These are backcountry walks with no escape routes or roads to bail out to and no help if somethig goes wrong. And then, near Tokyo and cheap to get to, is the west-east traverse of the Tanzawa range. Low mountains but hard ups and downs. Very few people walk this range longitudinally… most do it south-north. Those are just a few.

Yes, bad timing – I'm arriving on the 2nd and leaving on the 25th so it sounds like we'll be passing each other over Siberia. Seems to go like that – I missed Areality by a day or so on Kitadake two years ago.

Thanks for the suggested walks – something to keep in mind for when I'm next living in Japan. I did a lot of walks in Japan with Elk and they were often in areas that didn't feature in the LP, particularly if they were around Yamanashi itself. And I still have Europe, Nepal and NZ to explore …