PORTAGE --

The father of

, the Portage man presumed dead after he went missing in Japan in January, remembered his son Wednesday as "very adventurous and very inventive."

Jerry Johnson, of Portage, said Matt once shipped his bike to Los Angeles and then rode it hundreds of miles to a cousin's wedding in the San Francisco area.

"He got to the wedding 20 minutes ahead of time," Jerry Johnson said. "He got there just in time to change his shirt."

Jerry said Matt used to teach himself about electronics by reading technical manuals. While in high school, he said, Matt used spare parts from music equipment from their church to make an automatic door to his bedroom.

The door had push buttons on either side that would open it automatically, Jerry said.

Matt would later graduate from Western Michigan University with a degree in computer engineering, putting skills he learned while working on their solar and hybrid car teams to good use turning a 1972 Triumph into an electric car and working in the hybrid truck division at Eaton in Galesburg.

It was while on a business trip to Japan -- where he had traveled to meet with Eaton colleagues and customers, the

-- that Johnson went missing during a camping trip that began Jan. 14 at Mt. Fuji.

The family's search

Officials in Japan have been searching Mt. Fuji for traces of Matt since his disappearance, but Jerry Johnson said no evidence of Matt's presence has yet been found on the mountain.

Jerry recently returned from a 10-day trip to Japan with his son-in-law Gerry Wescott, of North Carolina, during which they spent five days actively searching the mountain for any traces of Matt's whereabouts. They, too, hampered by snow and heavy winds,

.

"The conditions are like a crusted snow, like after it rains and then it freezes again," Johnson said of being on the mountain. "And then there is a strong wind that can gust, and it can come from any direction because it comes from over the mountain."

Johnson said it was a sunny day and wasn't snowing when his son,who hiked often, first went up the mountain, and that most of the snow came after his son went missing, which makes the search for his whereabouts that much more difficult.

"We searched everywhere," Johnson said. "We exhausted every possibility of where he could be and didn't see anything."

No new search till spring

Johnson said that as of now, there will likely be no additional searches for Matt until spring, specifically May or June, though as hikers go up the mountain all year it's possible someone could find traces of his son before that time.

Still, he doesn't plan on returning to Japan any time in the near future, he said. And as for memorial services for Matt, nothing has been planned at this time.

"We don't know what to do" about that, Johnson said.

He said through the entire ordeal, one thing that's particularly struck him is the support they've received from other people, some of whom they don't even know.

A Facebook group set up for supporters called

for instance, has more than 3,300 members as of this writing.

"It is just fantastic the amount of kindness that people have offered our family," Johnson said. "It's a good thing to see the kindness and generosity of people around us through this."

Simon A. Thalmann is a public safety reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact him at sthalman@mlive.com or at 269-350-0708. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.