Down, down, down; bouncing down rock tunnels blasted through the innards of a mountain in the south of Kyushu. Steeply down, left and right and left again until, 225 meters below the mine's entrance, the heat builds up, the sulfur smell gets stronger and the certainty mounts that, alone, the chances of getting out of this half-lit maze are slim to nonexistent.
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| A miner works a drilling machine at one of Hishikari's faces. |
At the wheel, mining engineer Fuminori Hamamoto declares with a grin that "this labyrinth takes at least two months to learn." Then, as he swings the beat-up van round a steep bend, suddenly we're into a head-to-head with a behemoth on wheels, a monstrous roaring truck lurching up the damp rock roadway with one of the 50 12-ton loads of gold ore that leave the mine each day.