Introduction — The Mountain as a Field for Living Questions

In life, there are fields not for finding answers, but for living the questions. For me, that field has been mountaineering.

It became an accelerator for self-discovery — a human laboratory where thought, emotion, and action are tested at once. Every time I reached a summit, what I saw was not merely the view, but a new and uncharted map of myself.

How It Began — A Single Sentence That Changed Everything

I began climbing in May 2023, when I joined a kindergarten hike up Mount Nagamine with my three-year-old son.

That day, I was out of breath and barely reached the top. Even though I drove down the mountain afterward, my calves were so sore the next day that I could hardly walk.

The following morning, when I shared this at my son’s school, a teacher—more than ten years older than me—smiled and said:

“Masaki, what are you talking about? I wasn’t tired at all. You’ll get used to it. I climbed Mount Jonen a few years ago.”

That one sentence struck me. Someone older than I had climbed that Jonen. At that moment, I quietly thought:

“Someday, I want to be able to climb like that too.”

That was where my journey as a mountaineer began.

Climbing as Rehabilitation for Everyday Life

At the time, I was juggling the pressures of entrepreneurship and family life. What started as physical training gradually became time to restore my mind.

When I climbed Mount Kirito with my son, he stopped halfway and said,

“Papa, I’m tired. I want to go home and watch TV…”

My Son at Mt. Kirito

Strategic Mountaineering — Thinking While Climbing

After Mt. Nagamine, I began to ask myself, “What do I need to climb Mt. Jonen?”

Distance, elevation, and familiarity with rocky terrain — I approached each requirement step by step, climbing mountains like Mt. Chōgatake, Jiigatake, and traversing the Southern Yatsugatake.

After reaching Jonen’s summit, my next goal became to connect the ridgelines I had once looked up at — the Mt. Gendarme, the Ura-Ginza route, and Mt. Tsurugi — with my own two feet.

To prepare, I pushed my endurance to the limit with a one-day ascent and descent of Mt. Kaikoma’s Kuroto Ridge, honed my focus and decision-making on the tough ridges of Togakushi, and strengthened my ability to handle chain sections on Mt. Tosaka.

Climbing was no longer about collecting summits. It became a practice of creating, testing, and refining my own growth strategy — a field where the PDCA cycle of thought and action turns faster than anywhere else.

Turning Mishaps Into Material

In the mountains, the unexpected always happens. But whether it becomes a setback or raw material for growth depends entirely on how you respond.

One morning, as I prepared to climb Mt. Okuhodaka, I realized I had forgotten my boots in the car park. My mind went blank — weeks of planning, ruined in an instant.

But a few minutes later, I thought:

“I have my gym shoes. They’ll slip, but if I move carefully, I’ll be fine.”

I adjusted my route and focused only on Mt. Okuhodaka and Mt. Karasawa. At sunrise the next morning, standing atop Mt. Karasawa, I looked out over the line of peaks — Mt. Okuhodaka, Mt. Maehodaka, the Gendarme, and Mt. Yari — and felt something deep inside me say:

“I want to connect this entire world with my own two feet.”

AI as an External Device of Consciousness

Before I knew it, I had climbed over a hundred mountains. With each one, I repeated the cycle: experience → record → reflection → redesign.

But in 2025, a new element entered the process: AI (ChatGPT).

Feeding my climbing records into it, I could see where my pace had slowed, what decisions worked, and how fatigue and focus intertwined.

Comparing my intuition with AI’s perspective helped me design my next climbs more consciously.

AI isn’t just a tool — it’s another version of myself, a way to externalize awareness and visualize thought. Just as mountains cultivate introspection, AI accelerates it — a true thinking partner.

What Climbing Has Taught Me

To me, living means exploring one’s full potential. That belief began in my teens when I encountered Jung’s idea of individuation.

“Life is too short for a person to fully understand themselves.”

Those words freed me. Since then, my life’s theme has been how deeply and broadly I can explore my own being within limited time.

Mountaineering revealed how effective that exploration could become. It is a practice where thought and action unite — planning, deciding, acting, accepting results, and applying them to the next step. Each cycle deepens self-understanding.

And unlike business, that cycle moves fast — you can complete a full PDCA loop in just a few hours on a mountain. That’s why climbing accelerates self-awareness like nothing else.

Conclusion — Mountaineering as a Lifelong Exploration of the Self

Nature always asks the same question:

“How do you wish to live?”

That is why mountaineering has become, for me, the best way to know myself and a living experiment in what it means to be human.

Mountains, AI, and everyday life — all are mirrors reflecting the same self.

And so I will keep climbing — thinking as I climb, climbing as I think. For life itself is a long mountain, and every summit is not an end, but a new beginning.