Mountain First Aid Course in Toyama

And the oldest person to ever climb Everest

Kia ora Koutou, Tim Bunting, Kiwi Yamabushi here on the Japan you never knew you wanted to know.

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Something short for you today as I was away for the weekend.

From Thursday until yesterday I took part in a mountain first aid course through The Association for Mountain Medical Rescue in Toyama Prefecture. The last time I had done such a course was in July of 2022, so it was a great refresher for general first aid.

I was there as part of my role for The Yamabushido Team. It helps to know what to do in case things go sideways, but more importantly so that we can prevent such things from even happening at all. This is all but one small part of what is a rather comprehensive risk management policy.

The Tate-yama mountain range is visible from Toyama City. It’s like they designed the city with that view in mind (they probably did).

In truth, the course was a bit of overkill for us. This time around it was the winter version meaning it included sections for things like dealing with hypothermia, frostbite, and avalanches. Dewa Sanzan yamabushi never do training outdoors in winter, except I guess for the two Matsuhijiri taking part in the Winter’s Peak Ritual. Even then, it is on a low mountain with a constantly manned jinja (shrine) or local village very close, a bit different to what we were training for.

It should never come to this where we are, but part of our course involved wrapping Takeharu entirely in his own world of warmth. It was so comfortable he nearly fell asleep apparently!

The course is more for people who are active outdoors on tall mountains in winter. The person who leads the course, Doctor Kazue Oshiro, was on the expedition team when the oldest person to climb Everest, Yuichiro Miura, did so, for example. Either way, knowledge like this is still useful to have at hand just in case!

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Daily Yamabushi for This Week

On the way down to Toyama we stopped at Primal Coffee in Niigata, run by Sakata local, Sugawara-san.

Daily Yamabushi posts for the week of February 9 to February 15, 2024.

Read Daily Yamabushi for free at timbunting.com/blog or Medium.com.

1. The Professional

2. The Third Road

3. What it looks like

4. Getting it rather than getting it right

5. I did the thing

6. What’s good for me

7. Do What Needs to be Done First

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Mountains of Wisdom: Tell Your Friends!

When all was said and done, Akai Kohei took us to a standing sushi restaurant called Sushi Jinjin run by a Michelin-starred chef. It was quite the experience, and Kohei seemed to love Toyama as much as he loves Yamagata. Definitely reach out if you need a trilingual (Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese) guide!

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Ka kite ano.

Tim.