Their bodies flailed violently. Left, right, back, forth! They knew we were close by. They could smell our sweat and almost taste our blood. Angel’s steps had awoken them, and like tremors hidden deep within the mud, the Japanese hiru were now awake – awake and hungry. Little did we know, Mt. Ryozen – our hiking destination for the day – is infamous for hiru (mountain leeches) and we were on our way to one battle we would never forget.
At the trailhead I counted our group, “One, two, three, four, five, six, and yup, there she is, seven.” Just as we started heading out on the trail to the 1000m peak of Mt Ryozen, two older glasses-clad Japanese men came running down the hill whimpering, “hiru, hiru, hiru…” I looked at Angel and he looked at me, “Ignore them.” I did, since they were wearing casual weekend clothes – not hiking gear – and thus obviously not hikers to take seriously.
The next couple we happened upon were wearing ball caps and cowboy hats (at the same time) and dressed from head to toe in protective plastic clothing, like the clothes scientists wear in movies when they are about to enter a quarantined room in which a human has been infected with an alien. They whispered the same words, “hiru, takusan hiru.” “We’re not turning back on hearsay,” justified Angel. “Let’s get on with it already.”
Just then we heard the rocks crumble and saw stones tumbling our way. Was this the set of the next Indiana Jones movie The Mountain of Death? A third group of hikers followed the tumbling rocks and were on their way down. The two Japanese women leading the pack were pale in the face holding scarves tightly around their necks. “What happened?” I asked. The young one in the pink tights simply opened her towel revealing 3 starbursts dripping with blood on her neck right below her hairline, as though a 3-toothed vampire had taken her minutes before. “Don’t worry,” her male friend said to Tak, “hiru prefer women.”
Well, we hadn’t seen any of the beasts and we knew we were faster than most (that and we had already paid $50 round trip in train fares to get to the bloody hill) so we decided to take our chances. We followed the bone-dry creek up to the mountain. The rocky landscape soon changed and we found ourselves in a lush green paradise. This, and the fact the area is known for its abundance of deer and other wildlife, is what initially attracted us to this part of the woods.
Angel led the pack; I rounded up the back. Had I only known their attraction to movement I may not have been so patient that day. One step at a time we announced our arrival. We were now in their territory, and they were ready for us. We looked with suspicion at the water, but that’s not where this species of hiru live. They like the mud: one step too slow or a pause to take a sip of water and they were crawling up our boots, under our pants and burrowing into our socks where they were impossible to spot. They were in the bushes, barely hanging on to the leaves with their sticky bottoms. When they felt us pass by they jumped aboard for a ride. And finally, the scariest part of all, they were in the trees, and would fall onto our heads, down our necks and slip into our shirts. Never before had I wished for a cowboy hat like I did that day. It felt like we were in some warped video game, 7 Mario brothers fighting our way through vicious leeches coming at us from all angles to get to the princess at the top of the mountain.
When the hiru landed on us (and this happened quite often, since I counted 14 bloody bite marks on my legs), they found a safe place to hang out for a while as they secreted their anaesthesia, freezing our tender flesh so we wouldn’t feel their razor-sharp jaws as they dug in for the feed. The patient hiru would wait until their magical saliva had taken effect, and then they would feast, slurping away until they were too full to continue, at which point they would simply fall off back into the forest, satisfied for perhaps a month or two, until the next warm-blooded creature came their way. Sometimes their greed would overtake their patience and we would feel a sharp pinch as they pierced our flesh. With their jowls in place, it was almost impossible to pull the bloodsuckers off. Salt, bug spray, an open flame – they all make the hiru regurgitate their stomach contents back into your open wound. The only way to safely remove them was to slip a fingernail under their mouths and slowly pry them off. Easier said than done.
Panic stricken, some hikers screamed (and I don’t mean the girls). Others constantly swung their sweat towels like katanas fighting invisible forest ninjas. We didn’t give up though, and after more than an hour in the dense forest we rose to an elevation too dry for our enemies. We had made it through, and only when we sat down at the peak overlooking Lake Biwa did we notice the deep read bloodstains in our clothes. We were dirty. We were sweaty. We were bloody. Nobody could talk. I think we were in shock. This was one hike our group of genki hikers would never, ever forget.
Luckily our experiences climbing up Mt. Ryouzen didn’t damper our hiking enthusiasm, and we continue to hike each sunny Sunday through various valleys, along rocky ridges and up precious peaks. We have, however, done our part for the Japanese economy and invested in better hiking gear, including gaitors and quick-dry long sleeve shirts and pants to protect our flesh from the elements of nature. Our group, mostly ladies from all over (Japan, Italia, Russia, Brazil, US, Canada) and a few Japanese blokes, has conquered many a mountain this term and I plan on doing many more… when I return in October.
