Friendships never die

In the last five years, I climbed up mountains literally and figuratively. I started by climbing up Mt. Fuji, and I discovered myself to have both mental and physical endurance to go ahead with this hobby. However, I have not been that serious in pursuing climbing, but once or twice a year, I continued this hobby. The reason why I continued was the existence of my friends, one who works at Honda and now lives in Kumamoto, and Gucci-san.

The friend and I went to the same university and attended the same research laboratory that specialized in internal combustion of heat dynamics. As many of my friends did, he worked at a car manufacturer since he liked motorcycles so much. As a training course of Honda, he worked at a sales dealership, and that was where he met Gucci-san who also worked for Honda. Gucci-san is now a director of our company. So, Gucci-san and I became friends because of the existence of our mutual friend.

There was another friend, from the same laboratory of the university, who unfortunately passed away 15 years ago, due to a sudden Osteosarcoma. Since then, together with my friend at Honda, we visit his grave and his parents every year. My friend at Honda was transferred to Kumamoto in Kyushu six years ago, but our visits to the grave continue using the occasions he comes back to Tokyo. After one of our visits to the grave, we invited Gucci-san at work to have some drinks with us. We three have known each other for almost three decades.

Over some drinks, we started to discuss mountain climbing in Kyushu, since we have a person stationed there. So simply, Gucci-san and I started to visit Kyushu every autumn and climbed up mountains. There are the so called "100 best mountains" in Japan, and six of them exist in Kyushu. Since the first year, we went there five times, and we have accomplished climbing up all six of them to their summits.

Our friendship keeps us doing things such as regular climbing. We found that due to the existence of our friend who passed away, we made it a habit to visit his grave, and we happened to talk about the climbing in Kyushu. So, he cemented our bonds of friendship. Our bonds of friendship exist in each of our hearts even though one has passed away.