September 1992
This month's article is about life, Dear Reader, and the confusion that sometimes comes from it. I thought I had my head screwed on tight enough, but come to find out, I needed a few more screws.
I was catching a late-night rerun of McGyver on NHK-2. During one of the few but lengthy commercial breaks, they announced an announcement. Roughly translated (by yours truly), it went a little something like this: Come one, come all. See with your very own eyes and cameras -- The Mountain Man of Mitsutoge. Some call him Sasquatch; some call him Yeti; some people call him Maurice. But you can call him your ticket to fame and fortune, because 100,000 yen goes to the first yatsu (dude) who can snap a photo of The Mountain Man of Mitsutoge. Standing over 2 meters tall, with long pointy cuspids, curly red hair all over his body, and sporting a primal scream to put curly red hair all over your body, this man-beast stalks Mitsutoge searching for daikon, kyabetsu and any leftover yakisoba he might find. many have seen him, but none with the foresight to take along a camera, eh? Be the first. Snap a picture and claim your prize." -- Asahi Shinbun.
At this point, you're probably thinking the same thing I was: "\100,000? BUS FARE! \100,000 doesn't buy the Spimster a pair of shoes. Now if I mcould shoot the thing, stuff it, and sell it to one of those high yen museums in Tokyo, therein would the true fortune lie.
So I hopped the next Kaiji out of Shinjuku to to Otsuki, and I troddled over to J-Mart's sporting goods section. (I knew guns, like everything else, would be cheap in Otsuki.) I selected a fine Mitsubishi copy of an AK-47, complete with a handle compass and a double over-under relay action support mechanism (whatever the hell that means). After that, I went a little crazy with camouflage raingear, facepaint, jerky, pemmican (look it up, pudwipe), and a portable TV. Can you believe they accepted my credit card? I changed and painted in the Fujikyu Station at Otsuki. I mounted the train, holding my piece firmly in front of me. Strangely enough, I had the whole car to myself. And, luckily, the conFductor never came around checking for tickets -- "Yosh! (Cool!)" I thought. I considered it a promising portent of the day's hunt.
I decided to begin my quest by giong to the Fukuichi Restaurant and hitting up some of the locals for information. I ordered soba, but the waitress just brought me a bowlful of buckwheat noodles. Noodles, noodles, noodles! Rice, rice, rice! Can't a guy get any artery-clogging food in this country?!
When the waitress brought me the check, I asked her if she'd heard of this "Mountain Man." She said that she didn't believe all that hokum, but she knew a guy named Momu-san who did. She said, "Get on the Mitsutoge by-pass and drive a spell down the road until you see an old bald guy fishing recklessly in the river on the left side of the road. Take a right. Then take the next 2 rights. Take another right and stip at the house with the velvet statue of those dogs playing poker. Knock on the door and ask tht guy for directions to Momu-san's house."
The waitress was so helpful that I thought I'd leave her a little gratuity. I asked the guy sitting next to me if it was okay to tip the waitress. He just looked at me like I was crazy and said, "But what if she can't get back up?"
I stopped at a cnvenience store near Mitsutoge Station and picked up a couple of cases of Blatz beer and a small ice chest. The owner insisted that I take whatever I want and get out as soon as possible. The hunt was on. Second stop -- Momu-san't house. (Well, I had to go to that other guy's house first.)
I reached Momu-san's house by sundown. A wizened old fart answered the door and said, "Ah, Shigemori-san, the quail eggs to pick up you have come?"
Nopesy," I replied. "Guess again."
He shufffled through his index cards, pulled one out and read, "Ramsley-san. 6:00 p.m. Wants to find Maurice." (Apparently, Momu-san was one of the people who calls him that.) He said, "Help you I can, but give me some Blatz you must." I popped open a couple of cans and asked him about The Mountain Man.
"Find Maurice you can not," he said. Find Maurice can no man."
"Look, Methuselah," I said, "you either need to start putting your subjects before your verbs or I'm outta here. I am an investigative reporter. How hard can it be to find dome big hairy guy on a little mountain like Mitsutoge?"
The old man let fly with a full belly giggle and said, "Full of such piss and vinegar I, too, once was. Find Maurice can no man. If Maurice it pleases, find you will he."
"you mean I gotta wait for him to come to me? Why the hell would he want to do that?" I sad with a bit of false modesty.
"If worthy you are, come to you will Maurice," he said, and then he turned and disappeared into the john.
In 5 short hours, I was a quarter of the way up the mountain, so I decided to set up camp. I stopped near a stream where a large numbe of sightings had occurred. I built my campfire near an anthill, so I could watch the little singed ants running for their lives. (The reception on my portable TV sucked.) I downed a few of the Blatz and dozed off.
Epiphany:I later discovered hat the rare blend of hops and kerosene found in Blatz beer wafts a scent that advanced primate species find irrestible. Had I known that earlier, I would have hung out at the station. End Epiphany.
I woke up smelling a pungent aroma I hadn't encountered in some 32 years since my days at university. (I'm dating myself, but somebody has to.) I opened my eyes and suddenly thought I was on the set of that blockbuster smash hit "Harry and the Hendersons." There was a 7-foot monster kneeling over me and stroking my chest hair. Startled at my awakening, he lunged backward. Then he smiled and held out his hand, palm upward -- a universal gesture used by intelligent humanoids since the dawn of time which roughly translates to "Brother, can you spare a shekel?" I answered him with another universal hand gesture used since the late 14th century -- a loaded, cocked piece pointing straight forward which means, "You're about to die you hairy motherscratcher."
The smile left his face and was replaced by a saddened, submissive, substantial downcast countenance. He then grunted with surprise and pointed behind me. I whirled around to find myself staring straight at the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. I was so stricken with awe that I had to use my gun to hold myself erect. 
Friend, if you've ever seen the sun from Mt. Mitsutoge, setting behind the Fujemeister, you'll understand. If you haven't, then tough noogies. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, lost in the subtle interplay of violet against fiery amber. The rusty ageless face of Fuji against a darkening ochre summer sky -- I was benumbed.
Then, suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a sense of dega vu a sense of dega vu. I realized that I had seen this sunset before. It was whenI had gone with my fiend, Reggie "The Belchmaster" Nixon (no relation) to Roscoe's Big and Ugly Men's Shop. After several hous of searching through hundreds of yards of spandex, we stumbled across a aport coat of a most remarkable design. The base was covered with dark green pine and cedar trees; flecksk of blue sky shown between the branches. Near the collar was the unmistakable visage of Fuji-san, herself, thrustion upward into a sea of wispy white clouds. Reg wouldn't buy the coat, so I said, "But Belchmaster, when willyou ever again find a coat this beautiful in a size 68 xxxxl?" He looked down at me and said, "look, Spim, I know you have a svelte, rock-hard muscular physique that women crave after (well, that's what I remember him saying), and there's no way you're going to fit in a jacket this large, but if you like it so much, why don't you buy it?" So I did. The next year, I went to a Halloween party dressed as Orson Welles, and I wore the jacket as part of my costume. It just so happened that Mr. Welles was also invited to the party, and he was somewhat less-than-amused with my impersonation. He tore me and the jacket to pieces. But I digress.
I turned around to thank the beast for wanting to share that beautiful moment with me and for bringing back such a lovely memory, but that bastard and all of my Blatz were gone. I was left standing there with mud all over the end of my piece.
This article, Dear REader, doesn't come with a happy ending, but it does have a moral. The moral is this: If you see that hairy bastard, shoot him dead and bring mehis ugly head in a burlap bag. There's a 150,000 yen in it for you, and a one month subscription to the International Herald Tribune. Because nobody, but nobody, makes a monkey out of Spim W. Ramsley. I'm Spim Ramsley, and these are my thoughts.