Love this line. It ties into the idea of materialism and tourism disrupting the beauty of nature. But this is someone who converted to a conceptualist even though the original intent was to do it for tourist-like reasons.

It's an interesting decision to put these facts side by side. One extreme to another.

The descriptions of the scenes and the people the author talks to are so well done. The dialogue adds to it as well. When I read this part, I could picture Mr. Watanabe in my head and could almost hear him talking.

The author keeps returning to this idea about how industrialization and tourism has ruined the natural parts of our world. By showing other people the beauty of the mountain, they've gone too far to the point of it becoming exploitation. The act of showing is also killing.

That's an interesting thought process. To me, it makes sense because the pollution is already so bad to the point where you can't see the full mountain. He cares more about preserving the image than conquering the landmark. When you're on the mountain, you can't see it, so the motivation to climb must be to see what everything looks like from that perspective.

I'm hoping the long sentences are just done on purpose now that I'm reading more. I'm reading this and feeling the same way I do whenever a child tries to tell me what they did on the weekend. A few times feels purposeful, but the lack of a break makes my head spin.

I kind of like how long this opening sentence is. I feel like the run on sentence captures how elaborate of a scene it truly is. There's a lot to look at.