Yamagata-ken ：

Nishi Azumayama 吾妻山 2035m difficulty~3 scenery~1
Solo climb

I set off to climb Azumayama by myself one cloudy morning. I got lost a few times trying to find the mountain so stopped of at a local "combini" (7-11 etc.) to get some breaky and some directions. Not one of my better ideas but I opted for a tasty looking peice of fried chicken. Apon bitting into the chicken I soon realized it was 90% oil & fat 10% chicken. Somehow a big dolop of oil found its way to the crotch region of my shorts and left a nice wet spot perfectly resembling someone who just pissed themselves. As you can probably guess oil dosent dry as quickly as pee might so when ariving at the car park for the mountain I had to walk quickly past the hords of other climbers getting ready to board the ski lifts. So I found my way to the trail head to start the long climb. It took me about 3 hrs just to get up to where the ski lifts where taking all the lazy climbers. I was glad when it started to rain because most of the less determined climbers headed back down to make the climb more of a quiet relaxed one. After trudging on a few more hours the path became forked on a few occasions and I had to resort to my trusty map. The hard part is reading the kanji on the signs to know where I am. Eventually I found my way to the top after passing several false summits. There was no view to speak of from the top, just a few trees, clouds, me and my still oily wet crotch. I quickly headed back down to the car park to try and beat the night, happy to get out of my boots and eat lots of food and a beer. The climb took about 6-7hrs in total.