Yuka Kobayashi is sixteen, has hands and shoulders that look oversized for her not-quite five-foot-one-inch frame, visits a climbing gym maybe three times a year, and has parked herself on the first-place podium of all fourteen national comps that she’s entered in the past three years. She hoofs it to the crag, leaving her dad to rattle on about her successes. This is the last weekend before the next installment of the Japan Tour competition series, and Kobayashi-san explains his training philosophy. “Yuka doesn’t like climbing in gyms — I don’t, either — so before comps, we just go to a crag and pick some routes for her to try and onsight. Other than that, she trains a couple of times a week on our wall at home.”
Yuka has onsighted up to 7c+ (5.13a) and redpointed 8a+ (5.13c) on trips to France and Spain. I ask her what are her favorite European crags or routes. She seems a little lost, and sister Maho needles, “Dude, you don’t even remember, do you?” Yuka giggles. It’s rumored that Yuka once asked, in all innocence, “What does pumped mean?” Apparently she also doesn’t believe in warmups, instead jumping straight onto a 5.12b, Dad’s first choice of training routes for the day. She misses the crux sequence and falls, figures it out after one hang, and later on onsights her other training climb, a 5.12c, staying completely unflappable throughout.

Kobayashi-san declares playtime, and Yuka promptly heads over to a short, nasty looking 5.12c — it’s obvious that she’s a glutton for hard climbing. I ask her about competition pressure. She doesn’t really like it, but enjoys trying the climbs the routesetters concoct. Competitions, in her view, are mostly a necessity for establishing herself as a professional climber.
In a coincidence worthy of a Douglas Adams plot, Topher has an uncle who lives only a couple of subway stops from my Japanese aunt’s house. The Donahue clan is innocent of the sort of intercontinental mixing that’s rampant in my family, and the uncle makes a convincing embodiment of Americana as the CEO of MacDonald’s, Japan. He has endowed us with a stack of gift certificates, which we’re hesitant to use because they would cut seriously into our stomach capacity for better, fishier things. Topher pulls out a handful of them with a flourish and presents them to Yuka, whose eyes light up. “Whoa, Makudonarudo! Cool, I can buy, like, a burger with each of these!” It’s the most excited she’s sounded all day.