24 Hours With a Japanese Hermit in a Hidden Village

last year i learned about a hidden village here in japan that apparently couldn't be accessed anymore naturally i aspired to locate it and went straight to google earth and i found it but there was a problem it really wasn't accessible it was only one road from the village and it led to a dead end a facility that turned out to be a landing point for a maintenance boat operated by the nearby dam so of course i followed the lead i contacted the dam but they wanted to make two things very clear in our conversation a nobody but damn staff was permitted on the boat and b that the village truly was no longer accessible and that there were no other access points it turns out that this was their standard response and it was a lie i knew this because i had found a blog by a man who claimed to have visited the village saying that he was friends with the last remaining resident but that getting there was no easy feat his blog painted a picture of traversing over entire mountains by foot in order to reach the village a journey that took hours required safety equipment and ran the risk of falling off the side of a mountain or coming across bears or other aggressive wildlife and he wasn't wrong any remnants of a mountain path had disappeared long ago and for the first hour of the hike i could honestly barely keep from slipping off the narrow ledges let alone properly hold my camera so the guidance of ebisun have been hiking through these moderately narrow mountain paths for about the last hour or so and honestly there's literally barely enough space to stand on the edge for most of this and when i saw that on ebisun's blog i reached out to him and asked him if he'd be willing to come along with me and be my guide for this and he said that he would absolutely love to do that as he's part of a society that is trying to preserve the last remains of the village that we're hiking out to right now and so the stars kind of lined up for this one i feel really lucky today [Music] now he is just a little bit shy so he's asking me not to put him on camera too much but so far an amazing person an amazing guide and his hike it's like something else [Music] i hike fairly often every sun is 75 years old and leaving me in the dust and he says that the old hermit that we're going to visit is even faster at getting through these trails but i am genuinely so glad that i brought ibiza mostly just because there are a lot of spots along the way where the path just disappears and i wouldn't be sure of which way to continue or if it was okay to continue or safe to continue also apparently these mountains are filled with bears so i do have my bear spray and i do have my emergency sos garmin thing [Music] this is certainly within the top five most difficult hikes that i've done so far but definitely within the top three maybe four most beautiful [Music] i will say that man is fast and he's making like a game of it too every time he manages to get really far away from me he turns back and throws me this shady grin in order to cross the river i had to change into my my rain boots i have rain boots now i haven't had rain boots since i was a little kid [Music] [Music] this is quite likely the deepest into any japanese mountain valley that i've had the chance to hike so far but the thing that i love about it the most is that for the most part it's only people who i got stuck on the tree we lived in that village and people like ebisun here on abison's recommendation i actually sent a case of beerus to the gentleman that we're heading out to visit right now and it turns out that every son actually did this entire hike and carried the beer he was very proud he managed to pull off the entire thing in just over an hour and a half man it's a beach says once we get into this group of trees here we're only about 15 minutes away from the village itself [Music] hello [Music] and this was izumi the last living link to kadonyu a nearly forgotten village hidden in the mountains of gifu the village was bought out by a major dam decades ago along with seven other villages but as it was on the outer edge it was never flooded and so izumi-san and a few others went back but now he's the only one left take a peek upstairs oh wow oh this is a beautiful beautiful room super cute foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] is me [Music] was [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign he regaled me with so many stories of what it was like to grow up in such a remote place and for over two hours he showed me around the entire village but there was one thing that stood out one thing that above all else he was afraid of foreign water started for us by which i mean heating it up using this stove right here the stove is out there and the bath itself is right here that's the bath is that here just kind of exploring the area and in the field over there there's a black bear for all the trips and all the times that i've said we might come across a bear on this trip and there's one right there i'm obviously gonna keep a safe distance from him something tells me he's probably faster than me he's small it's just a little black bear but there's a bear there i do actually have my bear spray on my wrist not that i'll need it he just crossed down across the river like this little walkway by the way and i'm probably happier than i should be to be coming across a bear but there are plenty of structures for me to go inside of or on top of and we were at a far distance and he was a little bear i realistically should probably be just a little more nervous if anything i'm disappointed he's gone i left my other camera here with a big long zoom lens on it and i was looking forward to coming up and getting some shots of him but he uh he left he must have heard my voice and left sucky oh [Music] do [Music] he doesn't even know the dog's name just feeds it every single time that comes around it used to belong to a farmer who lived in this area and apparently now it's just surviving on its own we have had a long night but a good night plenty of food plenty of drinks gonna turn in for tonight [Music] foreign [Laughter] [Music] sun is just coming up over the mountain it is six o'clock in the morning and i'm out for a slightly more cautious walk than yesterday now that i've seen a bear in the area and additionally i messed up my finger pretty bad yesterday like pretty bad but this finger right here that is not how thick it should be and this is is that any more clear at all yesterday part of the trail gave way under me i went down landed on the finger we were almost here as well and there's no cell phone service or way for us to contact izmi-sun so our only way to we would have to actually show up to contact him and then we're we're hours away from the nearest hospital anyway yeah i figured it'd be fine but through the night it'll probably be okay it's a little more purple than it probably should be and it's kind of hard to move so i might get it checked after i go back but while i'm here there's not really much you can do and that kind of gets me thinking about what life in places like this was like and why so many of these ended up abandoning like there's nothing nearby and you saw the hike to come in here that's what you would have to do if you sustain some kind of injury but it does show some of the dangers challenges and struggles of living this far out in the middle of nowhere during the talks we had up until this point izumi's son spent a lot of time reminiscing about the past and he made it very clear that he was sad to see this village disappearing but there was one thing that he said in particular that made my heart sink you see me son has a special arrangement with the nearby dam where they allow him to use the dam's boat to come and go from but it actually turns out he's not allowed to stay there in the winter anymore it's just far too dangerous so izumi-san has become what i guess you could call a part-time hermit spending every minute that he can in the village but no longer able to spend all of his time there now foreign and my heart really sank when he continued on to tell me that he was always certain that this year was to be his last time to ever see the village or be in his home but he did express once more that he was eternally grateful for having the opportunity to be born raised and spend so many of his years in such a beautiful place before leaving i wanted to come out and get a closer peek at this tree right here i usually like to show places that people will be able to come to visit experience on their own and that's been one of the big challenges inside of this place because outside of just getting here and how difficult that is also getting ebisun to agree to that was a fly to bring me out here it took us six months to get to know each other and while on surface value that might sound counterintuitive to their goal of keeping the history of this village and of izumi-san alive he wanted to make sure he knew who i was as a person so we've actually spent the last six months getting to know each other and it took that long for him to finally say yeah definitely i want to spend this time with you i want to bring you out here and it was six months very well spent in emails and phone calls and even the odd letter sent every now and then in that way this is a little bit bittersweet because i know that the vast majority if not everyone who watches this may never get to see the beauty of this hidden village tucked deep within the mountains with their own eyes but it's all the more reason why i'm glad that i could come out and capture this and as always if you have watched up to this point thank you so much but either way it's almost time for us to get back on the trail so i'm gonna go say hi goodbye to ease me some [Music] yes

Channel: Tokyo Lens

Views: 1,636,532

Keywords: Japan, Tokyo, Vlog, Tokyo Lens, Tokyo Vlog, Japan Vlog, Norm Nakamura, Norm Tokyo Lens, Japanese, Hermit, Japan hermit, 24 hours japan, 24 hours with, i spent 24 hours, 24 hours with a hermit, 24 hours with japanese, japan hidden village, japanese hermit, hikikomori, hikikomori documentary, japan documentary, japanese hikikomori, japan hikikomori, japanese bear, hidden village, hidden village in japan, hidden japanese, hidden japanese village, secret japan

Id: z4Bze9T27kw

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022