Scaling Dogshit Mountain

 

 

 

 

 

Struggling up icy trails in sneakers, dog walkers in the snow.

Spring Snow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past four or five years, Noda Sankichi had secluded himself at a Tokyo high-rise hotel for the evening of New Year’s Day, until the morning of the third. Although the hotel had an imposing name, Sankichi’s name for it was the Dream Hotel.

“Father has gone to the dream Hotel,” his son or his daughter would say to New Year’s visitors who came to the house. The visitors would take it as a joke meant to conceal Sankichi’s whereabouts. 

“That’s a nice place. He must be having a good New Year’s there.” Some of them even said this.

However, not even Sankichi’s family knew that Sankichi actually did have dreams at the Dream Hotel.

The room was the same every year. It was called the Snow Room. Again, only Sankichi knew that he always called whatever room it was the Snow Room.

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Images from the North Shore Mountains.

Text from Snow, by Yasunari Kawabata (1964).