The island of eternal craziness

The reason for travelling to the very North of Japan had actually not been Wakkanai, but a small island next to it, Rebun-tō. It's part of a small national park that also includes its bigger neighbour island Rishiri-tō. Rebun-tō is a hikers paradise and in summer it's covered with many rare flowers. These were some of the reasons why I wanted to go there, but also because I am an island-addict and because of it's famous youth hostel. I had heard of the youth hostels reputation from several Japanese, it really seems to be well-known across the country and is said to be one of the craziest places there is in Japan.
The ferry ride from Wakkanai takes 2 hours and the island does not look that spectacular when you arrive. It's neighbour Rishiri features a far higher volcanic peak and the flowers are getting scarce in September as well. At the ferry port a guy was standing waving a large flag like a madman. It looked like a cross between traditional Swiss flag waving and "One flew over the cookoo's nest"... So I figured he should be a representative of the said hostel. He threw my luggage into the hostel's van and then gave me a map and told me to walk there, since they would only drive people who were totally unable to walk. Fine with me... Nice 1-hour walk over the hills. The hostel was tucked into a corner of the cliffs on the West coast, very scenic location. The house is an old fishing building and the only neigbouring building is a small hut with a café inside.
I was a bit tired, not from the walk, but from accumulated lack of sleep, so I decided to have a short nap. This was soon brutally interupted by a guy screaming some incomprehensible stuff over the loudspeakers that were placed allover the house. And if I say "scream" I mean it and with a harsh, rough voice. I started to see where the "crazy" label came from...
Recognizing sleep was not an available option, I went downstairs to fill out the registration form. I got handed a list of the "house rules":

1. Momo-Îwa hostel is not in the standard Japanese time zone (the rest of the island is by the way), but +1/2 hour. So all times indicated are half an hour earlier in Standard Japanese time
2. Getting up is at 6 o'clock. Everybody who goes on a hike needs to get up at 5.10 (which would be 4.40)
3. Every evening at 5.30 a compulsory meeting is held to discuss plans for the next day
4. Later, at 7.30, the daily community meeting is held. Staff presents a varying program and guests are expected to participate
5. At 10.30 lights go out and everybody goes to bed
6. Alcohol is forbidden

Hm, this sounded a bit like a school camp with very early get up and bed times. Surprisingly though, about a third of the people staying at the hostel were clearly in their 40s or 50s. And talking to the other guests I found out that most of them had stayed in the hostel before, some would come back every year even. This place must have some kind of broad appeal obviously! The crazy shouting over the loudspeakers continued. At 5 o'clock it would announce that the meeting would be in half an hour. 5 minutes later it said the meeting was in 25 minutes and you should start getting prepared. And so on... So in the evening I attended the two meetings. The first was a quick overview of the planned hikes for the next day, you could either sign up for a 4 or 8 hour hike. They gave some information about the route, the weather forecast, etc.
The second meeting was more interesting. We were again repeatedly urged over the loudspeaker to participate. The show started off with 5 guys from hostel staff running in in diving suits, women's wear and other strange costumes and starting to perform a song. This was just the beginning of 2.5-hours of pretty disfunctional, but funny behaviour. We were singing a lot of songs, then learning some strange dances, the staff performed some pantomime and a quiz show on the islands flora. The prize for the quiz winners were vouchers for a free night at the hostel, a curry lunch or a cup of coffee at the nearby cafe all for 2009. The twist was that these vouchers were supersized and heavy or fragile and they have to be brought back in the exact same form in order to check in the prize... The whole show was really hilarious. It was also funny to see all these 40-something salarymen doing weird dancing and really enjoying it. One told me that he came here every year, but his wife didn't really approve and thought he was being immature :-).
10-minutes before bedtime, children's sleeping tunes were played over the loudspeaker and we all went to bed. Had to get up early enough anyway. By the way, early in the morning the staff also held a morning gymnastics session...
I had signed up for the 8-hour hike. We were driven to the North end of the island and then started our hike to the Southern end, about 30 km. The coast reminded me very much of the Irish West coast in Donegal. Strikingly beautiful, green and very windy. The hike was really enjoyable and in good company. Got to practise my Japanese a lot too! We made a few stops in between. Actually we even had to, the hostel required us to call them 3 times... There were the inevitable photo breaks as well of course to immortalise the group on pictures striking the typical V-sign. We also had a lunch break in a small village on the coast. Three snack stands were lined up for hikers there. I think the guy at the first stand quite pisses his competitors off. He immediately chatted us up and got us to sit down at his place, the others looking quite frustrated.
When we finally got back to the hostel a dancing and singing show was performed, the hostel staff standing on the roof, to welcome us back.
I really enjoyed my time on the island and the hostel was a major reason for that. Despite it being a crazy mix of a school camp, hippie community, military boot camp, madhouse, workshop for expressive singing and dancing and so on, it's a really heartwarming place, full of enthusiastic and fun people. Who knows, I might be back as well... In any case I will go to the big reunion party on October 18, at Tokyo's Shinjuku station.