Suicide Forest (2 page)

“We could hang around town until ten or so,”
I said. “Start the climb then.”

“One continuous hike through the night?”
Neil said.

I nodded.

“What are we going to do all day?” John
Scott said. “Sit around and talk?” He made it sound as though
talking were a punishment.

“How about Fuji-Q Highland?” Honda
suggested.

“The amusement park?” I said.

“I’m not spending the day in an amusement
park, thanks,” John Scott said.

“What do you recommend?” I asked him.

“I don’t know yet. But let’s think this
through.”

“There are many hot springs here,” Honda
said. “We can go to one, then take lunch afterward.”

“Have lunch,” I corrected him vacantly. I
didn’t usually do this outside the classroom, but “take lunch”
always irked me, one of those expressions the Japanese favored that
just sounded wrong. You teach for long enough, you’ll hear some
pretty odd stuff. Once I asked an attractive female student what
she had for dinner, and she told me a cock. I asked her where she
got the cock, to puzzle out the mispronunciation, and she said the
machine at the front of the school. It took me a second before I
realized she’d meant “Coke.”

“Ah, have lunch,” Honda said. “I’m sorry. I
always forget.”

“I don’t think hanging around naked with a
couple dudes all afternoon is really my thing,” John Scott
said.

Bluntly stated, but it’s what I was thinking
too.

“We can head up to the fifth level,” Neil
said. “Look around.”

“And do what?” John Scott persisted.
“There’s a tourist store where you can buy a hiking stick. That’s
about it.”

“You’ve climbed Mt. Fuji before?” I said,
surprised.

He nodded. “Went with a couple buddies last
year.”

“Why do it again?”

“Why not?”

I frowned. Climbing Mt. Fuji was hard,
laborious work. I didn’t know anyone who’d done it twice,
especially in consecutive years. An old Japanese proverb put it
best: “You are wise to climb Fuji once, but a fool to climb it
twice.”

“We can always cut our losses and head
back,” John Scott added. “It’s Saturday. Tokyo will be
hopping.”

I looked at him evenly. He didn’t know
anyone here except Mel, he was a last minute tag-along, and
suddenly he was calling the shots for all of us?

The main doors of the train station opened,
and a young Mediterranean-looking couple emerged. Their hiking
boots and backpacks suggested they were here to climb Mt. Fuji,
though I would have guessed that even had they been dressed in
tennis whites and runners. Why else did foreigners come out this
way? They walked past us, heads down, in conversation with one
another.

“Excuse me,” I said to get their
attention.

They stopped and looked at me, then at the
rest of our small group. They were quite attractive, both with
dark, wavy hair, dark eyes, and smooth, olive-colored skin. The
girl was petite, the guy average height and springy in an athletic
way. They couldn’t have been any older than me, twenty-five or
twenty-six, tops.

“Yes?” the guy said. He was smiling and
seemed like a good-natured sort.

“Are you two climbing Mt. Fuji?” I
asked.

“That is why we came here. But the woman at
the ticket booth told us we cannot climb.” He shrugged. “She said
wait until tomorrow.”

“Did she say the trail’s closed, or it’s
just not recommended to climb?”

“I do not know. Her English was worse than
ours, you know.”

He found this funny and laughed. Based on
his gentle accent and cadence, I guessed he was Israeli. While in
Thailand by myself the year before during the Christmas break—Mel
had gone back to California to visit her mother—I’d met an Israeli
named Moshe on the ferry from Ko Samui to Ko Phangan. He was a
chatty, friendly guy, and to save cash we agreed to share a room on
top of a restaurant which, judging by the mops and buckets in one
corner, might have doubled as the janitor’s closet when unoccupied.
That same afternoon he invited me to a party to meet his friends,
who were already on the island. They were all Israeli, and I
quickly became something of a celebrity-oddity. Israelis were
notoriously close-knit when traveling together, and an Irish
American infiltrating their group was apparently a hoot. I left a
couple hours later drunk and stoned and glad to be on my own
again.

“I am Benjamin—call me Ben,” the Israeli
added. “This is Nina.”

I introduced myself and everyone else.

“So what are you two going to do now?” John
Scott asked them, though it seemed the question was more directed
at Nina.

“We are going camping.” Ben pointed west.
“We were going to climb Fujisan today, then camp in Aokigahara
tomorrow. But now we will switch the order. Camp then climb.”

“
Honto?
” Honda said, with a rising
intonation on the
to
. His eyebrows shot up above the rims of
his glasses. He mumbled something more in Japanese, shaking his
head.

“You’re talking about the suicide forest or
whatever it’s called?” John Scott said.

I saw Neil nodding.

“Yes, that is right,” Ben said. “Every year
many people go there to kill themselves.”

“Seriously?” I said, surprised I’d never
heard of the place before. “Why there? What’s special about
it?”

“There are many stories about Aokigahara,”
Honda said. He was frowning, clearly uncomfortable to be talking
about the subject. “According to our myths, it was once the site of
ubasute
. Families would abandon their young or elderly there
during periods of famine, so there would be less mouths to feed.
Because of this, many Japanese think the forest is now haunted by
yūrei
, or the souls of the dead.”

I tried to imagine the psychology behind the
decision to doom a loved one to the slow and agonizing death of
dehydration, starvation, or exposure. It sounded like the folklore
of Hansel and Gretel, only in reverse, with the young abandoning
the old. “But what does that have to do with people going there to
kill themselves?”

“It has always been a place known for
death,” Honda said simply, “so it attracts death.”

“And there are those books,” Ben said.

“What books?” I asked.

“Many years ago there was a bestselling
novel about a couple who kill themselves together in Aokigahara.
This made the idea very romantic and popular. Then there was
another book called
The Complete Manual of Suicide
. It
described the forest as beautiful and peaceful and the perfect
place to die.”

That last bit struck an awkward note with
me.

The perfect place to die
.

Silence ensued. I looked at Neil, then John
Scott. Neil’s brow was furrowed, as if he were perturbed by the
dark turn the conversation had taken. John Scott, too, seemed
preoccupied with his thoughts. Ben said something to Nina in
Hebrew. She said something back. She saw me watching them and
smiled.

Ben said, “We will take a bus to Aokigahara
now.” He pointed to a nearby bus stop. There was no bus there yet.
“You know, you and your friends should come with us. It will be an
adventure, what do you think? We do not mind the company.”

I was about to decline when John Scott said,
“I’m up for that.” He shot a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Reds
that had appeared in his hand. “Beats an amusement park.” He lit up
and blew the smoke out of his mouth in a long, relaxed stream.

I’d quit smoking a year ago because Mel had
wanted me to. She’d said she was concerned about my health, though
I suspected she simply didn’t like the smell of the smoke on my
clothes and in my hair. Still, to this day, a freshly lit cigarette
always unleashed a craving inside me I had to forcibly ignore.

John Scott took another long drag, blowing
the smoke around his words while he spoke: “So how about it? We
wanted to kill some time? Camping in a haunted forest sounds
sick.”

Neil was gazing at nothing in the distance,
which I interpreted as noncommittal. Honda had started shaking his
head again. He was definitely not cool with the idea.

“Neil?” John Scott pressed. “What do you
say, big guy?”

Neil wasn’t a big guy, and considering he
was about twice as old as John Scott, I thought “big guy” sounded
disrespectful.

Neil shrugged. “I like camping, and I’ve
heard of the forest. It could be interesting. But it’s going to
rain. The last thing I want to do is spend the night cold and
wet.”

“Aokigahara, it is special,” Ben said. “The
trees, you know, are very dense. The canopy keeps most of the rain
out.”

I found that hard to believe, but I didn’t
say anything—because I was warming to the whole camping idea. It
was a long weekend, which meant we could still climb Fuji on Sunday
and return to Tokyo on Monday without anyone missing work. “We’re
pretty well prepared to camp,” I said tepidly. “Food, tents, warm
clothes…”

“Dude, let’s do it,” John Scott said.

Honda made an X with his arms and bowed
apologetically. “I’m sorry, I cannot go, not there. But you go. I
think you are crazy. But you go. No problem.”

Ben shifted his weight from one foot to the
other, as if impatient for us to make up our minds.

“Give me a sec while I run this by my
girlfriend,” I said.

I
climbed in the
front seat of Tomo’s souped-up Subaru WRX. Mel, I noticed, was
still sleeping. I said to Tomo, “What do you know about Suicide
Forest?”

“Ah! Is that what you talk so fucking long?
Leave me here?”

“You could have come over.”

“You say watch Mel.”

“What do you know?”

“It’s famous for Japanese. Guys go there to
suicide.”

“So that’s true?”

“Crazy, right?”

“What would you think about camping there
tonight?”

“Are you fucking kidding, man?” Tomo was a
hip guy, and it was hip for young people in Japan to use swear
words when speaking English. It showed off their fluency. But some
used four-letter words too much. They didn’t grow up with them,
weren’t lectured against their use as children, they were just
words. Tomo was one of those guys. “You want camp there?”

“We can’t climb Fuji because it’s supposed
to rain. So we either go back to Tokyo or do something here. Honda
doesn’t want to camp. But Neil and John Scott are okay with the
idea. Those two there”—I pointed to the Israelis—“are going.”

“She’s so hot.”

I think Tomo currently had two or three
girls chasing after him. He was handsome, with the shaggy hair
popular with Japanese guys, almond eyes, and a sharp nose and
cheekbones. He could use a visit to the dentist, however, because
his teeth were crooked every which way. But that was only my
opinion;
yaeba
, or snaggletooth, was commonplace in Japan
and considered attractive. I’ve even heard of people paying for a
dental procedure to get their own fake
yaeba
.

A newsboy cap with a stiff peak sat atop his
head while a cashmere scarf was looped around his neck, the tails
dangling down over a vintage motorcycle jacket. It was leather,
like John Scott’s, but somehow it seemed less pretentious.

“Who’s hot?” It was Mel. I turned and saw
her stirring. She sat up, blinked, and rubbed her eyes, which were
a sparkling blue. Her blonde hair was messy and all over the place.
She had the same makeup on from the night before. The right side of
her face was red, from where it had been pressed against one of her
arms.

“Hey,” I said, leaning between the seats and
kissing her on her cheek.

“Thanks,” she said, brightening up. She was
always thanking me when I kissed her. You might think she was being
sarcastic, or bitchy even, but she didn’t have a sarcastic or
bitchy bone in her. I believe she simply enjoyed it when I showed
affection. I was flattered she felt this way. I’ve known couples
who can’t stand each other after six months of steady dating. The
fact Mel and I still got along so well was a good sign of our
compatibility, I thought.

“Are we here?” she asked.

“Almost,” I said. “We’re in the town at the
bottom of Fuji. There’s a bit of a problem.”

“Of course there is.”

“It’s supposed to rain. It doesn’t look like
we can climb today.”

“Good, I can keep sleeping.” She flopped
back down on the seat and closed her eyes. “Wake me up when we get
back to Tokyo.”

“Actually, we just met a couple who were
supposed to climb Fuji today too. They’re going camping in a forest
nearby. We’re deciding whether we should join them.”

She opened one eye and peered up at me,
pirate-like. “How far is it?”

“I don’t know. Right around here
somewhere.”

She considered this for a moment.
“Okay.”

“Really?”

“Why not? We’re already here.”

“There’s a catch.”

“What?”

“It’s called Aoki—?” I looked at Tomo.

“Aokigahara.”

“So?” Mel said.

“It’s also called Suicide Forest,” I told
her, “because Japanese apparently go there to kill themselves.”

She frowned.

“I’m sure it’s more hype than anything,” I
added quickly. “A few people have probably killed themselves there
over the years, and it’s gotten a bad reputation—”

“No, I’ve heard of it,” she said, sitting up
again. She pulled her hair back over her shoulders, revealing her
slender neck. She slipped an elastic band off her wrist and used it
to tie her hair into a ponytail. The pair of emerald studs I’d
given her for her birthday back in June glittered in her ears. “My
students told me about it. And it’s not hype. I think a lot of
people kill themselves there every year.”

“We don’t have to go far in—”

“You don’t have to baby me, Ethan. I’m not
scared. I’d like to see it for myself.”