Mayonnaise Snow Cones Keep Hiker Alive for 15 Days

No one has ever been happier that he didn’t hold the mayo.

“Thank you, thank you, oh, dear mayonnaise,” said frostbitten Eiichi Urata, an amateur mountain climber who survived 15 days lost and alone in the frigid Japanese mountains eating almost nothing but mayonnaise and snow.

On May 6, Urata set out for a one-night climbing trip on a 7,700-foot peak near Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. But he lost his way, and then his map, and by Day 2 he had no food except two jumbo squeeze-tubes of mayonnaise.

That a mountaineer would set off on an overnight hike with more mayonnaise than warm clothing did not surprise anyone in Japan, where people absolutely love their mayo.

According to officials at Kewpie, the leading Japanese brand of mayonnaise, 99% of Japanese households stock mayonnaise, which they slather on everything from tomatoes to crab. In Urata’s small pack, which contained no sleeping bag or tent, he carried some vegetables, rice balls and eggs--and two fat tubes of creamy mayonnaise.

Reached at his home in Osaka just after he arrived home from the hospital, Urata said he squeezed a few globs of mayonnaise at a time on snow and ate it like a snow cone. “It was quite good and tasty,” said Urata, 59, a landlord, who lost 15 pounds and suffered two frostbitten hands before he was rescued by a dumbfounded fisherman who stumbled upon him Saturday.

Urata said he still had mayonnaise left, and was holding onto it as a keepsake. At least until lunch.