Beware of Bear? I think it is funny that the picture is an angry grizzley like bear and nothing like the bears I have seen. Sign at the bus stop on my way up the mountain.
On the road early in my trip I had the chance to see two kuma (Japanese Black Bear or Moon Bears). The relationship between the Japanese and Kuma is quite funny and I do not understand it. In the park there is no hunting, or at least I hope not. So there are very few kuma and tons of people visit Norikura everyday. Some of the middle school groups that show up to hike the mountain are in groups in the order of 200-300 students. With all these people around even with it being peak berry season, if I was a bear I would stay away.
However, the Japanese are really quite scared of bears. Very few people hike without a kuma yoki zuzu (Bear protection bell). One day I was in the woods working, not too far from the trail, but far enough to not be seen when a herd of middle school students started to go by. In addition to bear bells, their sheer number and their incessant yelling they also had fire crackers. When I asked the cabin owner about it he was not surprised. Fire crackers in the national park to keep bears at bay. Crazy, I don’t think that would be legal in the US but probably more due to risk of fire than anything else. I don’t think Japanese carry guns while in the wilderness, but after this experience I began to wonder. I had known for awhile that some people probably heard me in the woods working and thought I was a bear, should I make it clear I am not. Yell, iie kuma every once in awhile? Well sometimes I yell that anyways but not to tell people I am not a bear but to keep bears away. I also yell no bear, but incase the bears speak Japanese I do it in both languages.
It was not until I was about 40 meter from a kuma in the woods and startled it and it startled me and probably neither of us saw each other but scurried in opposite directions that I realized maybe I should have a bell. If me working in the woods, even with my noise allows a bear to get that close. That night I was given a bear bell to use while in the woods. While it is good for me to keep bears away, I think it is equally valuable in letting people know, I am not a bear. Though their faces might seem equally shocked when I come barging out of the woods in seeing a foreigner, as they would a bear.
During my last week on Norikura I saw two bears. One scared me while I was in the woods I think I was walking and it was walking and neither of us heard each other. However, when I stopped and started working I realized that there was a bear about 10m to my right and my heart skipped a beat. Then I made lots of noise both yelling and with my bell. The bear scampered up slope and started to circumnavigate me on the left side. That is when I decided I was done with that plot for the day and would just have to return some other time.
The other bear was very photogenic. I was walking down the road around 6pm when I came across a bear in a meadow. My bear bell rung every time I took a step so I am sure it heard me way before I saw it but when I came into view it looked at me and then went back about it’s business of eating flowers.