Aogaki: Sky Town

LINKS

Tak’s Paragliding School
www.tak.ne.jp

United States Hang Gliding Association
www.ushga.org

The World Airsports Association (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale)
www.fai.org/

Performance Paragliding League (Japanese)
www.xcjapan.com/f1/

Nihon Hangliding Federation (Japanese)
jhf.skysports.or.jp/

SIDEBAR

One of the leaders of the Aogaki flying community, and one of the early pioneers of hangliding in Japan, is Tak (Tadano Naotaka, 只野　直孝), a legend in the Japanese outdoor sports community. Born in snowy Miyagi Prefecture, Tak was first a professional skier, and later a coach of world class Japanese skiers. He assisted Yuichiro Miura’s epic trip to become the first man to ski from Mt. Everest. He earned his hangliding wings in the skies above Torrey Pines and other areas in the Los Angeles area. Tak holds the high altitude hangliding record for a Himalayan flight, and was the first person to fly from Mt. Fuji.

Several years ago Tak created a sleepy mountain village of Aogaki into a nationally renowned flying area. He has been tireless in his efforts, working with the community to ensure that everyone’s concerns are addressed. Today Tak’s son is carrying on his legacy. As a member of the national team, Shoichiro is himself a distinguished pilot and instructor, and is well known in the international flying community. Currently Shoiciro is ranked among the top ten competitive pilots in the world.

The descent into the village of Aogaki gradually winds through evergreen forests with temples and shrines stuck in little pockets in the forest. Every so often is the sign beckoning you to camp or stop to buy the local mountain vegetable. In one such hole in the forest there’s a log cabin, straight out of my native Tennessee with bright, golden yellow logs. It’s a coffee shop, the fulfillment of a retired businessman’s dream: to flee the city and serve coffee in the middle of an old-growth forest along a lightly traveled road.

Gradually the tight, curved descent opens into a valley filled with rice paddies and small fields of vegetables, each with at least one person bent at a ninety-degree angle. In many ways Aogaki looks like a thousand other Japanese villages. A small central area with traditional shops sits quietly forgotten a couple of blocks off the main highway. At times it’s hard to tell if the town is spreading into the rice fields or the other way around. There is one Pachinko parlor and a few gas stands with bowing attendants waiting for their chance to jump out and halt traffic so you can buy their gas. Everything about Aogaki is typical of rural Japan. Except the sky. On any given sunny morning there will be brightly colored objects flying through the air.

Aogaki is known as Sky Town, the home of Kansai’s sky-sports community.

For paraglider and hanglider pilots this otherwise quiet community is heaven. The Aogaki valley is roughly east-west, which means it gets a full day of sunshine to create the thermals (rising currents of warm air) that pilots ride into the sky. For many, though, the attraction to this area is the atmosphere created by a menagerie of men and women who come to forget the pollution and pace of the nearby cities. In Aogaki your rank is determined by your skill as a pilot. Gender and age barriers don’t exist in the sky; a good pilot is simply a good pilot.

In recent years, hangliding’s popularity has declined in favor of its younger sibling, paragliding. There are a couple of prominent reasons. A hanglider is a wing that, even in its most compact from, is around 6 meters long and weighs at least 35 kilograms. This means not only do you have to find a good, dry place to keep it, you must have a vehicle equipped with a special rack to carry it, and you probably will need help loading and unloading the equipment. In addition, learning to fly a hanglider can take up to a year in some cases, and training is particularly grueling: you have to fly down a short hill, land (often gracelessly), and then carry the wing back up the hill.

Paragliding gear, on the other hand, fits in a large backpack that’s roughly one meter tall and a half-meter wide, and weighs no more than 20 kilograms. This makes it easier to store the gear, and the convenience of being able to carry everything in a bag means pilots can take public transportation or carpool to and from flying sites. In addition, Paragliding can often be learned over the course of a few weekends, and with less gear to carry the physical demands, while still intense, are less than for hangliding.

Paragliding isn’t an activity for the weak at heart. One of the attractions to the sport is the freedom of the sky; this means you will be very high and very alone. While students who have passed the basic ‘ground handling phase’ always have radio communication with an instructor on terra firma, they can offer little more than basic directions and encouragement.

Perhaps the best way to learn if you’re up to paragliding—or to simply have an exciting weekend away from the city—is by taking a tandem flight. This requires that you take some basic instruction, ride up perhaps the scariest road in Kansai, and strap into a harness that holds both you and an advanced instructor. All you have to do for the flight is run to get the wind in the wing, and then you sit back and enjoy the flight. The tandem flight is from 700 meter Mt. Iwaya, which will either solidify your belief that humans aren’t meant to fly or let you know that paragliding is the sport for you.

Paragliding lessons are relatively affordable. For ￥40,000 you can get the first level license, which allows you to fly from the Iwaya mountain under some restrictions. Included in the initial license fee is equipment rental. Once you are ready, you must join the national paragliding association; this provides you with liability insurance should you have a mishap and land on someone’s house. For each level of license you will have to fly a set number of hours, get Tak’s approval, and pay a small fee.

Because of the commitment required by the sport, it is possible to take a one-day lesson from the bunny hill and see if the sport fits your style and budget. You can also take a tandem flight from Mt. Iwaya for ￥10,000.

If you think you are interested in paragliding, you can contact Tak at 0795-87-0501 or tak@mxa.nkansai.ne.jp. Tak and several of his teachers can understand English, but be prepared to speak Japanese if someone else answers the phone.

Below are some pics, but most are of paragliding in the US near San Francisco and just north of Carson City.