A Kiwi living in Japan had his arm broken and calf muscles punctured when he was attacked by a bear in the foothills of Myoko.
Feeling at peak fitness after completing his first 111-kilometre ultramarathon, Kiwi Billy Halloran, 32, was out for a casual 8km recovery run in the foothills recently.
Reaching the 4km mark, Halloran — who is originally from Auckland — turned around to head home, when he saw two adult Asiatic black bears, each weighing at least 60 kg, 20 metres ahead of him.
"Oh s...," he thought, his heart suddenly loud in his ears.
After hundreds of hours hiking, running and exploring mountains and forests over the three years Halloran has called Japan home, he had never before seen a bear.
He slowly started to back off, thinking with relief that the bears were hurrying away from the trail. But one of them came running back out, straight towards him.
"Ah, crap. Here we go," Halloran thought as he made himself as big as possible, the panic starting to build.
Seeing how quickly the bear was galloping towards him, Halloran knew he should not run. He started to scream at the top of his lungs, trying to scare it away.
"As I realised the bear was gonna get me, I used my right arm to shield my face," he said. The bear lunged for him, and its mouth met Halloran's arm.
He tumbled back as the bear bit down, shattering his arm bones immediately.
"It's hard to think back on that moment," Halloran said. "I was screaming a lot, in fight or flight, thinking, 'well, this is either gonna go really, really bad, like it's gonna let go and run away, or it's just gonna keep going'.
"I thought, I just gotta defend here, or like, this is it, the worst case scenario."
The bear let go of Halloran's arm and went for his leg, scratching and puncturing his calf muscles.
"And then, I'm not really sure how, but it kind of just backed off," he said.
Terror and adrenaline pumping through his entire body, Halloran managed to stand up. "I was looking at the bear, like, 'S**t, is it gonna come at me again?'," he said.
He looked down. His leg was bleeding, and his arm was 'fully snapped' and completely out of shape, held together only by the support of his rain jacket.
As the bear ambled off into the bushes, Halloran started running in the other direction, reaching for his phone. Dialling one-handed, his wife Chisato Hayashi picked up.
"Before she could get a word in, I said: 'Get in the car right now. I've been attacked by a bear. My arm's just broken," he said.
Luckily, Halloran was only a five-minute drive from home.
When Chisato pulled up, he flopped into the passenger seat, and they sped down the road to where an ambulance was waiting.
"By then, the adrenaline was wearing off, and it got really painful," Halloran said. The nearest city hospital, in Joetsu, was a 40-minute drive away.
"I probably had no pain relief for an hour and a half or more after the accident," he said. "Chisato told me later, I had no colour in my face at all."
Halloran is recovering this week in Joetsu Hospital after his third surgery. This four-hour procedure involved a hip bone graft. His arm had been broken in three places by the bear, with a chunk taken out of the bone, just from one bite.
"The 36 hours after that surgery were pretty rough. You store a lot of emotion in your hips, and it was really, really painful," he said. "But I'm starting to come back, I've started to do rehab on my hand and am trying to stand up."
He was under general anaesthesia at that time, but just local for the first two surgeries, where he could view a live X-ray to watch the surgeons piece his arm back together and insert a mechanism to clean inside the bone, preventing infection.
"I didn't realise the kind of sheer power of a black bear," Halloran said. "Like it's not even a brown bear, the other type of bear here in Japan, but it still was a pretty substantial bite. It did a lot of damage."
He now has two metal plates in his arm and four nurses a day checking in on him. His mum flew over from New Zealand, loaded with Whitaker's chocolate.
"I reward myself with chocolate whenever I have to give blood or get a dressing change," he said.
He is not yet brave enough to look at his arm, but reckons there will be some decent scars.
Friends and family have been in disbelief at hearing Halloran's tale. "A lot of people have been like, 'Nah, you're joking'," Halloran said.
But he is not joking — and even made the local news.
Japan is seeing an increasing number of bear attacks, especially in Niigata prefecture, where Halloran lives.
Just last week, in Numata, Gunma, a 1.4m bear strolled into a supermarket and attacked two men. Another bear swiped at a Spanish tourist waiting at a bus stop in Shirakawa-go.
"They've even sighted bears in Myoko town since my incident," Halloran said.
Bear attacks tend to increase in autumn before hibernation, yet a lack of their usual beech nut fodder due to climate change could be driving them into townships.
"We've got a pretty good running community here," Halloran said.
"A lot of them always talk about bear sightings and I'd kind of joked about it with them, like, 'Oh, I still haven't seen one.'"
Halloran always runs with a bear bell, playing music out loud.
"I never have headphones in because of bears," he said.
But on that Saturday, he was running next to a river, the water supplied by the 55-metre Naena Falls nearby.
"The bears wouldn't have been able to hear me, it's really noisy in that section", he said.
With three months' recovery on the cards, Halloran said he was gutted about the timing of the bear attack. He was out in the mountains, training, running, doing something he loved to do.
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"I guess it's the feeling of how a surfer might feel after getting bitten by a shark and then wanting to get back into the water," he said. "This fear is a first kind of feeling for me."
He knows there will be a lot of trauma to unpack as his recovery unfolds, with the scene of the attack often replaying in his head.
"But I don't have any resentment of the situation. It's not really the bear's fault. It's just nature, and I was fortunate enough to get away; otherwise, things would be a bit different," he said.
"I'm feeling pretty grateful and pretty lucky to have gotten away from the situation, especially given the number of instances where people haven't."
Seven people have died in bear attacks since April - the highest since 2006 when the data was first recorded. About 100 people have been injured.
The recovery time is confronting, especially after the hip graft, restricting his movement even further. But Halloran is trying to stay in good spirits.
"I'm slowing down. Trying to look at life a lot differently. There's a bit of trauma there. But it's just something I'm gonna have to work through."
In the meantime, still very much "horizontal", he's brushing up on his Japanese lingo, and reading Four Thousand Weeks, a book about our absurdly short lifespans.
Snow season is on the horizon. Then no doubt, he will be back running again next summer.
By Samantha Mythen of rnz.co.nz
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