Nara

Now that I'm homeless, I've been using my newfound free time to A) sleep a little B) travel a little and C) see some people and stuff. For a while, I was living at my friend's place (who was gracious enough to put a bunch of us up, though, we were put on the no-air conditioner-sweaty-diet {though really, it wasn't as bad as I complain since there was usually a nice breeze, just ohman humid} and I think at one point there were seven people). I feel like I've been doing a bunch of day trips, since finding a hotel or hostel or anything within a reasonable price range (ie, under $100ish a night) is pretty impossible even a week beforehand.

Today, I did a day trip to Nara, the first permanent capitol of Japan, and the capitol prior to Kyoto. Actually, yesterday I went roaming around Kyoto for a bit since that's where I'm staying, currently.

Before that, I did a day trip to Yamaguchi to see Akiyoshi-do, the longest cave system in Japan (and one of the biggest too, I'd bet). Like seriously, it's HUGE compared to the caves in Niimi. Quite magnificent too. They had explanations in English, which was an extra nice touch.

Limestone caves in Japan. Who would have thought.

Nara though, is where, really, I got a sense of enormity and the scale to which Japanese palaces used to be built. I made the mistake of walking to the palace grounds, so when I got there the primary thing on my mind was distance, but oh man! I went in through the Southern Gate - the Suzaku (tee hee, Fushigi Yugi) Gate, and the main palace was nothing but a small house in the distance. And the main palace, is quite quite large. I mean, there's a *train line* that goes through the palace grounds beyond the Suzaku gate.

My face looked a little bit like this: ；▽； ("Oh god, that's so far away. I should have taken the bus here. At least I'm getting all these steps in my pedometer...")

Seriously though, this place was huge. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it felt like I was walking for a good ten to fifteen minutes at least! Then I got to the main imperial palace (reconstruction) gates. There was still another massive courtyard inside! I was like HOLY FRIGGIN COW THERE'S MORE?!

Yes, there was.

I had just been walking straight too. There were actually grounds to the east and the west that had things like gardens and museums, but I decided to forgo those due to time and holycrap they were far away.

It really made me marvel though, at just how big the palaces were back then. Seriously, that was a lot of space. You could fit a small village in there (and they probably did).

Needless to say, I took the bus back to near Nara Park. And then I had *more* walking to do, since there were a lot of world heritage sites in the park area. I don't think I even hit them all.

I'll get the names of them later, but I think I managed to go to three of the WHS, including, of course, the famous Giant Wooden Buddha. That was pretty awesome. Again, the scale to which both that and the building that housed it was amazing. I mean, these were built ages ago! How did they manage to build things that high? Blows my mind to look at things that tall.

There was also a gorgeous candle light kind of lantern festival that loads of people in yukata came out for. It was really pretty. I wasn't planning on staying until the evening in Nara, but it kind of ended up that way when I saw them put all the lanterns out. I killed time at this awesome little restaurant that had pretty tasty curry, an unlimited drink bar, and a fantastic (working) model train set. I felt like a twelve year old boy. It was pretty freaking sweet. I took so many pictures. :)

Today, I say bye to Kyoto though and make my way to Tokyo! I'm super excited. I'm supposed to meet up with two sets of relatives. :D Yaaay fun! I was also supposed to meet with two friends, but one turns out to be busy instead so hopefully we'll meet again in California.

Here we gooooooooo.

Mori no Sanpo 「森の散歩」 Forest Walk~

Not all who wander are lost - J.R.R. Tolkien

Today I did a bit of wandering... though I think towards the end, I did get a little lost since I had noooo idea really where I was geographically. In an attempt to justify hours and hours of video gaming today to myself, and to check out what was up with this Bitchu-Matsuyama Castle Festival, I decided that today was going to be a good day for walking and set off walking up the mountain. It's a really pleasant walk to the hiking point. There's also a hiking route available but yeah, I prefer concrete sometimes (especially when there are loads of bugs...) plus the concrete path that the cars drive up is also actually quite beautiful, especially when the rice has been planted (and even more beautiful when the rice has grown all green or is almost ready to be harvested). The hike up to the castle is nothing new, since I've done it several times. It's been a while since I've gone all the way from the bottom to top; last time with my parents we took the shuttle bus up. I thought it was going to be a nice little hike full of exercise, no more than two hours, two and a half tops.

Yeah, nope.

The festival bit was kind of small, and mostly consisted of banners lining the road all the way up to the castle from the base of the mountain (next to my house even). They had shops selling Takahashi things (yubeshi, a kind of yuzu flavored mochi, and "Indian yakisoba" made with curry powder and tomatoes) up near the shuttle stop, and the shuttle was free as well. Oh, at the top, right outside the castle, they had armor that you could pay to dress up in (or were free if you were a child). I think there were other things going on as well, but alas, they were at times I wasn't there. 

There was a path leading behind the castle that you didn't need to pay to get into - the castle you need to pay 300 yen and I've been there a bunch of times, plus they weren't doing anything inside for the festival thing - so I took that. You get a pretty nice view of the back of the castle and the little... housey thing that's really old. But behind that, there was a little path leading downwards, and it piqued my curiosity. 

It didn't look like it was in too sad a state - or well, it looked as if it had been maintained somewhat, so my brain reasoned that clearly, this meant this was a path that went Somewhere. I'll just check it out, since I want to know where this path goes, I thought. I won't be walking for too long. This was my reasoning for not walking back about 100 meters to get my water bottle refilled. 

The path, to start with, was wooden stairs that disappeared into the forest. Leaves - probably from the winter and fall, now that I think about it - were around the path, but someone had clearly swept them away from the center of the steps. Earlier I had seen a sign that had the kanji I so often see with "no smoking" signs... and I wasn't sure if that was a "don't smoke here" sign or if "this path is forbidden" sign. I'm going with no smoking. Yeaaaaah. Probably was that.

The path eventually led to a small bridge, that led to a small clearing. Ever curious, I decide to follow it "just a little bit further" and then turn back. From the clearing, I went up a bunch of steps that twisted and turned like a snake before finding myself before a small sign that indicated that indeed, these paths went places with Things to See. The signs were the standard ones they had in the city that indicate in both English and Japanese the Destination as well as how far away they are. So I figured that this was definitely a legit path, and continued on my way to what I thought was another part of the castle ruins. Actually, they were kinda that, but it was just kind of a clearing with stone markers. The site for where the ruins would be of the castle, and also, a little further down, a suspension bridge! 

Oh, I passed another man who was really surprised to see another person walking along the paths, and he warned me that there were poisonous snakes in this area. Thank god I've played video games in Japanese! They taught me the word for poison hahaha. But the guy was like "uhhh... be careful."

When I saw that there was a suspension bridge from the signs, it was like, "well, I'm going to walk to at least the suspension bridge, since omg what, there's a suspension bridge behind my house in the mountains?!"

There was indeed a suspension bridge! It was green, and on both ends there was this cage with two sets of doors... I guess since the mountains have monkeys and they don't want the monkeys on the bridge? 

On the other side was a nice concrete path... so that piqued my curiosity even more (plus I had slipped a little on the sand on the way to the bridge, so I was trying to find a way back that didn't involve going back up that). It even had rope dividers between the two sides... so instead of turning back across the suspension bridge (since my original "plan" was only to go to the bridge) I went up the path. Wee~

I ran into another, equally startled, man who said something about a parking lot and a shuttle bus, so I went off to find said parking lot. And I found it (plus a sign with warning about monkeys). There was one car. No sign of shuttle times or anything. Reaaaaaally didn't know where I was, though there was a map. I did puzzle out that I was in a place whose kanji I couldn't pronounce, and that the city was about... 4.2 km away, and the castle was a good 1.2 km away. Eventually, this old man in a truck also came to the parking lot, so I asked him about where I was and where the paved road went, and how far away the city was - just in case. 

Turns out that the road was 4.2 km, and it led to a place called Narai (...town?) that was a bit inland from Takahashi. Yeaaaaaaah. We concluded that it would be better to just return on the same path I took and go back to the castle. The old man also helped me find a nice walking stick, since he too warned me about the same type of poisonous snake, called mamushi in Japanese (and apparently in English too, though there are two types: the Japanese mamushi and Tsushima mamushi, which only lives on tsushima island in between korea and Japan). He was giving me advice on what to do if I see a monkey, and so I asked him what to do if I saw a snake. His advice was to run away haha, but also that I should try to scare it away with a long walking stick. Then it came to his attention that I didn't have one, so we went into the forest, found a stick laying around that looked about the right height, and made it into a walking stick (though due to its suspicious length, I think it was a walking stick someone already made and then left behind). 

Walking stick: acquired. 

Thankfully, I didn't run into any snakes on my way back (tons of bugs though, and blue tailed skinks) and while I didn't see any monkeys... I definitely heard a bunch.

All in all though, my adventure took somewhere around three hours, so by the time I made my way back home, exhausted, it had been a four hour trip! That was with taking the shuttle bus back down, since my legs were reaching that point where they really needed a rest. I did walk/jog the rest of the way down, and saw one of my third year students working at his part time! That was a fun little interaction. Going out took way longer than I thought, but way more interesting as well. Also, racked up TONS of steps on my 3DS hahaha. The 3DS has a built in pedometer, so I was using that to kind of keep track of how far I walked. (Apparently, it was about 13,868 steps) 

I should really explore Takahashi more often! I'm constantly finding amazing and beautiful things. :) I'm really going to miss it here. 

Oh yeah, speaking of amazing things, I went to the Naruto whirlpools with one of my JET friends. They were pretty cool to see, even if I was slightly disappointed at first (since they are definitely not the permanent, end of the world, ship destroying whirlpools I thought they were). But it was fun. We went on a boat into them! That was even more fun. I miss being on a boat. Maybe I'll write a proper entry about that later with pictures. :) 

Day 1.5

Today was my first full day on Ishigaki, since I spent most of yesterday just getting here. However! That's not to say I didn't do anything my first half day! The guest house I'm staying at, Maetakaya, offers dinner and breakfast, so I figured I would sign up for both, though personally, I think dinner is a little steep seeing as how cheap you can buy taco rice from local restaurants and stuff. An well. At least it's always pretty good. And actually, given that it's a set meal and that so far, it's come with some form of seafood, it would probably cost around the same price in a decent restaurant. Last night there was sashimi and pickles with I think champuru (a stir fry with Goya, and ours had ground meat and tofu and veggies). Plus dessert. Plus it's the closest I've had to home cooked food (of the Japanese variety) that I've had for a while. So other than the fact that I can't quite justify eating more taco rice, I really can't complain about the food!

Anyways, I was ready to write off last evening as a kind of dude "go to bed early" day but after dinner, the chef guy (who actually worked/lived in CA -the OC- and later Maui as a sushi chef) drove a few of us out into this jungle thicket area, where we were advised to suit up in long pants, long sleeves, and boots if we had them or close toed good shoes. We got there during dusk, so we killed time by spraying ourselves with bug spray to avoid being eaten alive. After night fell, we trumped through the jungle on a small muddy path to this small grove, where we were privileged enough to observe magic happening. Truly, it was amazing.

Though it was nearly pitch black, small light green and yellow lights floated in the air, while others seemed to sparkle in the distance. I had no idea there was more than one kind of firefly. The shiny ones were so pretty! It reminded me a bit of Christmas. The regular ones though... I dunno, there's something that just makes them seem so magical when there are ten or more floating around high in the air. So pretty. :)

But yes! That was my evening. :) I honestly cannot think of a better evening. Or well, okay, we'll I mean I can, but that ranks up there in the top. It's kinda nerdy, but I would choose to go watch fireflies like that over going to a club any day.

Today though, I got to go diving! It was ridiculously fun, even if we didn't go to the manta point. Kinda disappointed about that, to be honest. The waves were pretty choppy at our first dive site, and they said that they would probably be choppier at the manta point. As a diver, choppy waters make surfacing a pain in the ass, but it doesn't really matter once you're underwater. Our group, however, also had some snorkelers (waves, as I'm sure you can imagine, are not so great for snorkeling), one of whom got seasick at the first point. Having been with people who freak out with choppy waves (I swear, one day, that post about the Philippines will be finished), and knowing how scared people can get.... and the fact that the poor lady was seasick, I didn't want to be the douche and decide that the whole group is going to go to manta point. Despite the fact that I would have loved to go there and see manta possibly twice.... since I'm going tomorrow I decided to be a nicer person and let them take us somewhere calmer.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the second dive as well. Actually, we saw a bunch of really cool things that almost made up for not seeing manta. Almost. Among the fish we saw, we saw a couple of cool lionfish, a b ch of small tiny black fish hiding In an anemone, loads of clown fish, and a moray eel. But. Y far, my favorites were a sea snake I swam behind for a while (seriously, those things are so awesome! It was at least as long as my whole arm, and possibly as long as my leg, though it was hard to tell since it was swimming). That was freaking sweet. I don't think it was (too) dangerous (and by dangerous I mean poisonous). It was white with black stripes. I'll have to look it up later.

Oh! And the other rad thing we saw was an electric.... clam! Who knew clams could be electric! I didn't that's for sure. This one was a bright vivid orange color, and was I a small crevice-like hole inside a small cave/tunnel thing we went into. It had long tentacles coming out of it and when our guide, Harvey, shine his light on it, it was like watching lightning streak around the outside! Freaking sweet.

What else did we see that was awesome.... Hm... well, we also saw a puffer! They're actually quite large; I was kinda surprised. And we saw oh! We saw an octopus, though it wouldn't come out of its hiding spot. Lots of sea slugs, an orangutan crab, ghost pipe fish... Those were cool. Really large Nemos. Angelfish. I think I saw all the fish from the Tank except for Peach, though I did see some starfish, some no bigger than your thumbnail. Oh! And some awesome spikey sea slugs.

I also met a fellow JET from Fukuoka, where I quickly established that I suck at geography lol. Apparently, she came the same year I did. She was part if the snorkeling team, and we had a good time chatting away in English :)

Our trip finished way earlier than I expected though, so I was left with an over abundance of time on my hands... So I walked around Kabira, the name of the city/area I'm staying at, for a bit. They're well known for their cultivated black pearls (less known for their soba) so I visited one of the vendors there, learned about how they inject oysters with irritants in hopes that it'll take and produce a perfectly spherical pearl, and window shopped hahaha. I also walked around the beach a bit, before going "back into town" and grabbed some ice cream and checked out the souvenir shop. They had a bunch of cute things! They also had Jasmine gelato! It turns out, Sanpin-cha is Jasmine Tea - had I known this last time I would have only bought that lol!

Actually, when I went to eat my gelato, the cashier lady came up and started talking to me, and we chatted for a bit in Japanese before she introduced me to her coworker who spoke English and lived in Pennsylvania! We chatted for a bit in English hahahaha. It was really weird, but I keep hearing from Japanese people that they don't like the states much, or places where there aren't many Japanese people to talk to and stuff. That was fun though. I also got into a conversation with the vendor of a glass store who lived in South Africa for a while; he spoke English, and I spoke Japanese. Super good practice! It was a lot of fun too (also apparently according to him the unemployment rate is 50%, or was when he was there, so it was super dangerous in the city he was in).

Actually, that's why I enjoy traveling alone sometimes. I find that I get into more random conversations like that (and will even start some myself!) which, if the conversation is in Japanese, does amaz g things for my Japanese. :)

OH YEAH. ALSO TODAY A COCKROACH THE SIZE OF MY THUMB WAS CRAWLING ON MY ARM. MOST DISGUSTING THING EVER.

Oh also, so I learned a little bit today from the local man at the glass shop about the kind of places you can stay here in Japan. I knew most of them.... Just not about guest house, which is what my place is.
Hostels are super cheap of course, and feature dorm style housing. Guest houses, however, while still economical offer individual rooms and stuff apparently? That's what Maetakaya is.

Anyways, for future reference, if anyone ever decides to go to Ishigaki and stay in Kabira, here's a rundown of the place I stayed:

Maetakaya guest house
Regular price: ¥4700/night
W/breakfast: +600¥
w/dinner: + 1600? I think.
Dinner & breakfast: 6300¥

Good points: Own Room. Clean. Close to Kabira (everything). Good food (albeit a little early). Clean bathrooms. Deck. Free wifi downstairs. Hotaru viewing. English ある！bathroom has paper towels. Has shampoo and body soap. Nice view.

Meh: tatami rooms and futons. Ridiculously skinny stairs. Dinner is kinda expensive and kinda early. rental towels are kinda small. Only four showers and three bathrooms to share with the while guest house (our wing anyways).

Bad: pay for AC! 400 yen/8 hours. Windows have no screens! If you're going to make us rely on our windows and a fan, at least make sure the bugs can't crawl in while we sleep! So many bugs. :( seriously, while I've been writing this, I've squashed four bugs. Four!

Overall thoughts: not too bad. Kabira is hella quiet, and it's probably one of the cheapest places here, but I would splurge for a bed and free AC. Also I think if I came again, since there's free shuttle pickup, I'd totally stay I. Ishigaki for
Ty next time, since the other JET chick said she was at a super cheap hostel. But ,
Maetakaya Wasn't too bad; I've stayed at worse I guess.

Reminders

Today, after sitting on my butt for a good two... three... quite possibly four hours (and by sitting, I mean laying in bed) I decided that I needed to get out of the house and do some walking, since this whole "walking" thing wasn't something I had done in-

Wait. Waitaminute. I walked on Friday. On Friday I was at my special needs school with the elementary school kids, year six. Every friday, they have ”やまあるき” or "mountain walking." Since the place is pretty much built into the mountains, there's ample space to go walking up there. It had been a while since I had last walked, so I was actually pretty excited to go up.

Little did I know what awaited for me. We did our usual route at first, which took us past the cowshed and chicken coops, past the kiwi groves (how random is that), then down to where the golf course and the information... cabin thing is. Inside they have a mini map of the area, information on wildlife, and, more importantly, restrooms. So we usually walk to there, and then turn around and walk back since I mean, these are elementary school kids we're talking about.

Today though, since I was with the older kids (last time I was with the first years, a boy in a wheelchair and a small but very very very energetic little girl) I got to go in group one. Group one, since it was only ten o'clock (we started around 9:30) when we got to the cabin (must have walked too fast) was going to do the "marusaku course" and I didn't really think much about the name at first.

Turns out that means "the course where you walk up a giant-ass hill." I mean like, this was no small hill. I think we walked around the circumference of the golf course, because when we got back we were pretty much 100m away from the cabin we started at. We kept losing kids along the way as well, since some of them got tired (it was a really really long walk with a good half of it uphill) so they'd refuse to move, so one teacher would kind of hang behind and coax the kid (or wait for the kid to give up). Eventually, we would be rejoined by that kid, and then some other kid would fall behind.... We even got rejoined by this one kid whom we had left at school, only to lose him again when he too, got tired... Major props to the four kids who managed to stay with the group the whole time.

There was also some leftover snow (from Monday) around the grounds when we were walking. That was fun. That also meant it was COLD, no matter what the temperature was. If it was cold enough to keep snow for a while... yeah, cold.

Anyways though, we got back to the school some time around 11ish. A good solid hour and a half of walking, some of that being hills. I was actually kind of tired.

Saturday, I actually walked back to my place with people rather than ride my bike.

So I dunno what I was thinking when I said I haven't walked in a while. It's not like I'm in the States right now. Yeesh.

But anyways, today, in light of having absolutely nothing to do (...like not study Japanese and not work on correcting papers) I decided to take a little walk before video chatting with my parents (with my brother as a surprise guest). I've been meaning to start doing like... routine walks up the giant hill/mountain behind my house, for at least like, 30 minutes or something since it's probably the most outside working out I'll do apart from my daily commute. Plus it's really pretty.

So I started up the giant hill, with the intention of going and seeing the pretty area along the route to the mountain castle... but then I decided to see if the baseball kids were practicing or something (despite it being Sunday, the day when most shops aren't open here, including this adorable cafe I found that is one of my new favorite places in Takahashi).

As I walked up towards the fields, I came across these really cool looking moss covered stairs, and thought "hm, where do these go?" Since it's winter, there is a significant decrease in the chances of encountering one of the dreaded huge black and yellow spiders (or any spider for that matter) and bugs in general. This makes me much much much more inclined to explore places I haven't been to in the mountains, since I actually think it's pretty interesting. Up the stairs I went! I thought I was going to slip and fall, but it was alright, and at the top there was this kind of little grove and something that may or may not have been a path and a bunch of bamboo. I decided to go back down.

It wasn't long though before I reached this little park area that had a little uhhh, not pagoda, but it has one of those roof things, shoot, I swear I know the word, but I just can't... remember it. Terrace? No. It looks like a small hut and it's roundish but more polygonal with straight edges... I want to say bungalow but that's not it either. Anyways. One of those. In this little clearing area with a pond that screamed out "MOSQUITO BREEDING PLACE." So glad it was winter. But there were some stairs there as well, so I figured, why not. I was really curious to find out where those stairs went.

The entire stairway and path to the stairs were completely covered in dead leaves and mulch, as if nobody had been there for a long long while. The first thing I worried about was, "what if there are bugs and slugs and even worse, mukade, hiding underneath these leaves?" So I resolved to look down as little as possible, and made my way up the stairs. About midway, I could see that they led to this kind of clearing looking thing, so despite my misgivings about running into snakes or giant centipedes, I walked up to the clearing.

It turned out that in the clearing area, the path continued up along the edge of the hill/mountain that I could see. Along the path, green knee-high weeds had sprung up, making me slightly wary about finding spiders and spider webs. But so far, nothing.

This continued, with me going another twenty feet before stopping and looking at the path before me and wondering if I should continue down it. By this point, I had traveled pretty far. I could see the baseball field... off in the distance. I wasn't really eager to make my way down the (damp) leaf strewn stairs, and I really wanted to find out where the path went. I mean, it had to go somewhere, right? I thought originally, it went to a clearing or something, but as it turns out, it actually led to a space above the baseball field, another dirt field with this abandoned looking... fountain or something, along with a fenced in set of benches that looked like an observation spot. I was kind of tired from climbing, so I wandered over towards the raised spot where the benches were and as I got closer, I noticed that there was actually more stairs, as well as an actual path with railings and everything.

This piqued my curiosity even more, and I found myself once more wandering down the path until I got to this watchtower thing, and then to a map thing that I had absolutely no idea about. It turns out I thought I was on the wrong end. I thought it was showing that I was at the end, but I guess I was at the beginning of it? There were stairs down, so I figured "why not just follow the stairs? As long as I keep going to the left and downwards... I'll probably end up somewhere closer to my house."

I passed a bunch of paths that looked closed because of I have no idea, and these observation decks... or something. It said that it was the university park or something? The paths looked like they were somewhat maintained (as opposed to the leafy path I had taken earlier) so I figured hey... they must go somewhere! This was an area of Takahashi that I hadn't actually explored though, so every time I looked out, I had absolutely no idea where I was.

Eventually, after going down stairs for what felt like twenty minutes, and passing by this really interesting shrine with a bunch of stone figurines, I found myself in someone's backyard area, where they had a garden. Thankfully, there was a stone path towards an actual kind of road thing, which led to, finally, a familiar place, about 200m from where my house was. My legs were not so happy with me, from having to go up, then down, all those stairs. But they were more than willing to walk me the rest of the way home so that I could sit down and drink some tea.

On my journey though, I realized that I had forgotten how freaking gorgeous it is around my place. If I was in the States, I never ever would have been able to just wander off like that and get lost in the woods for forty minutes before wandering back home again. I live in a pretty awesome place. The woods were really pretty (and even better, I hadn't run into bugs). The shrines were old, and screamed out that kind of rural Japan that just made me shake my head in wonder. I mean, you see them and just go "...damn, I'm totally in Japan aren't I."

I love having those moments, even though I've been here for a year and a half, almost. Takahashi, really, is an amazing place to live, now that I've taken the time to explore it and have found restaurants I actually like. The hours suck, sure, but still. I really do love it here. I guess deciding to leave has really... made me appreciate the things I have here more.

Village Hidden in the Leaves

The weekend of the 8th and 9th (a three day weekend for us here in Japan - I got Monday off too!) I went with a friend to explore the northeastern part of Okayama, a part of my prefecture that I had never ever been to before. It's not like I've had much reason to go up there. Tsuyama City is the largest city in that part of the prefecture, and getting there is not easy. You can drive there if you have a car, of course, and that makes things a billion times easier. It still takes about 70-90 minutes though, and that's with taking the ridiculously expensive expressway (like a toll road).

But for those of us without cars, we are left with a couple options. One is the bus; I'm sure there's a bus that goes up to Tsuyama from Okayama, and possibly even from Takahashi. Second is the train. There are two trains that will go to Tsuyama. One of them is from Niimi (which, in itself is 30-40 minutes away by train). That train leaves not very often, and takes a ridiculously long time to get there. I think from Takahashi it's at least three hours? That basically goes across the northern part of the prefecture, probably in a one man train. I bet it's gorgeous. The second train requires getting to Okayama, and then taking the Tsuyama line up there. From Okayama it's somewhere between 40-60 minutes depending on if you get the train that skips some of the stations or not, and about 1400 yen, one way. So like, to get there from Takahashi is a little under two hours, if you get your connections right.

However, our destination was not Tsuyama. Oh no. My friend, who's a huge Naruto (a Japanese comic about ninjas) fan, wanted to visit this town called Nagi, since the author of Naruto was born there, and based the Hidden Leaf Village off of his hometown. I was there mostly for support (plus I generally enjoy exploring the prefecture, and I had never been up this way). She wasn't sure if they had anything for the author there, or were trying to capitalize on his success with Naruto and turn it into a tourist destination. Either way, we figured that we would take the train there and, should it turn out that it was just another little rural inaka town that we would bring our Japanese study materials and study at a conbini or restaurant or something.


View Larger Map (B is where Nagi train station is. A is Nagi proper. If you zoom out once, you can also see where it is in relationship to Tsuyama. If you zoom out two more times, you can see where it is in Okayama prefecture. Also, for reference, I live in Takahashi City)

Our first sign that the town, at least near the station, had nothing to do with Naruto, was that we were the only two people to get off at the tiny station, which was basically a small platform surrounded by a vast amount of forest. You know in Narnia (the first movie) how the kids get off at a train station that's really empty and in the middle of nowhere? Yeah. That was Nagi Station. There was the one train track running towards it and away from it.

That being said, the place was absolutely gorgeous. They had pine trees and other trees that we don't have on the western side of the prefecture as much. The train ride was also really pretty. We saw a festival going on... but that looked like it was a good hour walk to get there from the station. We passed it at first and were like 'oh hey let's go to that festival!' and then we just kept going... and going... and then we passed this really pretty bridge and were like 'well I suppose we can walk there since the trains are going to be pretty sparce...' ...and then we kept going and finally, probably about a half hour walk away (so really, not too bad) we got to the station. We were the only ones who got off.

The station itself was in a place that was nowhere near any kind of buildings other than the board of education and a couple of houses dotting the small river it ran by. They all looked empty, and possibly like they weren't in use. Of course, it being the weekend, there was a fair chance they were in use, just simply closed. It being the inaka, there were spiders EVERYWHERE. Those huge yellow and black stripey spiders that get to be amazing sizes had managed to populate the area in the absence of people. It's kind of funny, since I don't actually mind those spiders, so long as they aren't in my house. Usually they just chill up in their webs and they don't really move. I haven't seen them jump or move like... ever. So I don't mind going up close to look at them or take pictures, especially since we have them everywhere in Takahashi as well. My friend though, being from Okayama city, was creeped out by them since they're kind of large, and I don't think they have many of them in the city.

Clearly though, from looking at the map, we missed Nagi proper by about... three hours. Three hours and twenty minutes, to be exact. That's how long it would have taken us to walk to the central part of the city, where presumably, there are things like the post office and maybe a restaurant or conbini, or at least vending machines. Oh well! Can't help that. The chances of us going back there are pretty slim, though, it was really really pretty. If we had a car or something, I'd be down for going back. But yeah. No car.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to do much exploring either. When we got off the train and walked down the steps from the platform, the first thing we did was check the time schedule for trains going back to Tsuyama. The next one was in half an hour, and the one after that was in not one, not two, not three, but FOUR HOURS. From what we saw, even if we walked to the festival, we would still end up with time to kill. And from our minimal exploring, there was no place we could actually sit down and study at, save the station. The station was actually a really nice building; probably the nicest in the area. It had a little bench area, as well as a book area (no Naruto though) and a sign telling you that the nearest thing from the station was about 1.5 km away. Hooray.

Also of interest within the immediate vicinity of the station was a signboard with a map of all the historical sights of the area. More interestingly, there was also a list of the village areas with a household and population count. They weren't very high. I think most ranged from 6 households (16 people) to somewhere around a hundred or two.

Most interesting though, was the fact that not only were these things written in Japanese, but they were also written in English. Clearly, this meant that, at some point in time, there was (and perhaps is?) an English speaker out in that area. I'm not sure why they had a sign in English about historical landmarks near the station, but to me, it hints that people - tourists - come to this area for one reason or another (though I hope for their sakes they come in cars, despite the sign being almost right next to the station). The bigger question is, what happened?

Well, we both agreed that we did not want to wait for the train in four hours, so, despite having just got there, we would leave on the next train in half an hour. Kinda lame but... oh well? It was about 12:30 when we got there, and we were expecting to be able to find like... something where we could at least get food. I don't think I even saw a bathroom around the area. We hadn't eaten lunch, nor had we brought anything with, which was kind of stupid of us. The next train left around 1 o'clock and the train after left around 4:30. It was going to take an hour to get back to Tsuyama (and thus, food). So we could either eat around 2 o'clock... or around 5:30, unless we happened to get really lucky and somehow stumble upon food (chances were looking pretty slim though). Taking this into account, it wasn't that hard to decide on the earlier of the two trains, since we were both pretty hungry. We had left Okayama sometime around like... 9:40, which meant that I had left Takahashi that morning sometime around 9 o'clock (though, that morning I had been really really dumb and missed the 8:10 train and had to wait for the 9:05 express train to get there on time). Needless to say, we had eaten sometime around then and were reaaaallly hungry. That part, we hadn't really thought about until then. Oops. Had I the chance to do it again, I would have made a point to bring something for lunch, even if it was just stuff from the convenience store.

With that time frame though, we pretty much had only time to wander around close to the station before we had to wander back again. Missing that 1 o'clock train was not an option. I wanted to walk to the bridge, but alas, no time.

That's basically the story of our really really short trip to Nagi Town. The outskirts of Nagi town, anyways. We eventually made it back to Tsuyama, where our priority was getting food. One of my teachers is from Tsuyama, and we had talked about how Tsuyama had lots of 'B-Rank' restaurants.

B-Rank restaurants have nothing to do with the American restaurant hygenic rating system (though, I'm willing to bet that the majority of B-Ranks here would get like... a B or C from that). Instead, B-Rank restaurants are like... one step below fast food restaurants. They're not fast food places like McDonald's, since you can't always take things to go. Usually, you eat at the restaurant. But the food is ridiculously fast, sometimes faster than the fast food service I've received!) And what's more, it's really good, and generously portioned. These are places like the ramen restaurants, or rice bowl (donburi) places like Yoshinoya or Sukiya, or like the okonomiyaki restaurants that Hiroshima and Osaka are famous for. You get your food really fast, and generally, you don't take that long to eat it. That's what a B-Rank restaurant is. Chipotle would probably be a B-Rank restaurant, though I'd wager that most Chipotles are larger than even normal restaurants here. For some reason, places are just really really tiny (even in the larger cities).

Anyways, Tsuyama is supposed to be famous for those kind of restaurants. The city, next to the station, is kind of grungy, and well... my teacher said that the city really comes to life at night when people are out drinking (and going to these B-Rank places after/while drinking beer) and during the cherry blossoms bloom. So we started to look for these places.

ホルモン焼きうどん、Grilled Horumon Udon

We found a couple places all advertising that they sold the B-Rank food Tsuyama was famous for: Hormone Udon ホルモンうどん。 Hormone is... well... Hormone are a mixture of organ meats that are supposed to give you more stamina. Typical ingredients include things like the heart, the liver, tripe, kidney, and stomach. Mmm. I've tried a couple things, like heart and tripe and stomach, but generally, I found out what they were after. Some of them aren't too bad either. So like... I'd advise trying it before you ask what it is. Seriously, it's how I get through Japanese meals sometimes. Generally if you try it and don't like what you eat, people will let you alone without giving you too much of a hassle. I promised my teacher that if he took me to a hormone udon place, I would at least give it a try (especially if there was beer to wash it down with).

Needless to say though, with just me and my friend there (and I tend to be one of the more adventurous eaters in my friend group here), we decided to forgo trying Tsuyama's famous B-Rank foods. Instead, we walked to the Tenmaya store (whose sign we saw from the street) across a bridge (with these HUGE fish! You could see them quite clearly from where we were standing on the bridge, a couple stories above the river), and into the building, hoping for food within the department store. I think we failed at finding stuff, because we could only find one family restaurant and the things they sold in the grocery section of the store. Oh, and a bakery. Eventually, we ended up eating at the bakery, since they not only had sandwiches (ham and blue cheese~! SO DIVINE) but also savory breads and things like (smallish) Japanese pizza slices that weren't that bad. I also ordered minestrone soup (which came from a bag), and I kid you not, it tasted like I was eating spaghetti-O's, minus the pasta. Really really weird. They also had a gelato place we hit up after that. Japanese gelato places are super fun, especially since they have things like matcha (which, as gelato kind of tastes like sweet grass) and seasonal foods like sweet potato and chestnut.

Yeah though, we didn't see too much else there so we decided to go back in to Okayama instead, where there were things to do (and eat).

We also went to the gardens that weekend, but I think I'll save that for a post when I can add my pictures in too!

English camp

I meant to write about this and finish my post about Fuji as soon as I came back from English camp, but Cardcaptor Sakura came on TV, and that was followed by two episodes of Ouran High School Host Club and well...

At least I got the laundry done that night, I suppose. That's important, right? Right now, I'm supposed to be packing for my trip and cleaning up my house, lest my house become a cockroach-infested hell hole similar to houses left alone in Animal Crossing for too long. Nobody wants that. Or I could be practicing my presentation for that. That seems like it would be a good idea. Or, rehearsing for this impromptu English lesson I'm doing for 10 JHS students and 2 adults who are visiting Troy, Ohio (how random!). Our former Japanese Prefectural Advisor who moved to Takahashi, asked me to do it. So I'm doing it, cause I'm a nice person. For free. Or well, I'm going to make him buy me a drink (or two) later since technically we're not allowed to have alternate sources of income. Yeah though, a 55 minute English session/lesson on self-intros and shopping phrases. No idea what level their English is at. Never worked with a group this small. I guess worse comes to worse, we can play a game...? But - small rant here - the class goes from 5-6:30, and then, on top of that, I'm going to the Japanese culture class (originally, it was billed to me as a Japanese language class "for beginners" which turned out to be complete BULL) that starts at 7 and goes until 8:30. Then I'm going to watch Harry Potter 7.2 with one of the JETs who's leaving... at the 9:40 showing. Gets out after midnight. Work Friday is in Niimi. No classes, but gotta leave at 7 instead of 8. On top of this, he was saying that, should we need more time for the English stuff, we can just extend the time into the 30 minutes between classes... so I can stay later and answer questions! I might have to put my foot down and say "No, that's the time I was planning to eat dinner," because, well, I was planning on eating dinner since I'm going directly from school to the class, and then from class to class, and then from class to train to movie theater and we all know how expensive movie theater food is. /end rant. Yay for a full day and very little time to pack.

I should also probably be studying Japanese, since I can never do enough of that. ~_~

But instead of doing these more productive things, I choose to work on writing blog posts. Very smart of me, I know. But as long as it gets done in the end... right? Actually. I'll probably write half of this wednesday night, and half thursday while I'm at work (cause lord knows I've got nothing else to do...).

I'm... excited, I suppose you can say, for today.

Last Thursday and Friday, I was at an English camp for a junior high school in Okayama, where one of my friends and fellow JETs is an ALT at. It was a huge English camp - 3 classes of students for a total of around 120 students. Trying to speak only English for two days. 3rd year junior high school, no less. Granted, this was a special junior high school (I keep wanting to say middle school) that they had to test to get into - though, they get automatic acceptance into the high school that's attached. Basically, instead of taking an entrance exam for senior high school, they took it instead for junior high school. Either way. They did superbly, as I almost forgot that I was in Japan! They were all fantastic kids and really enthusiastic and good at speaking English. I had to speak a little bit in teacher English, but I didn't need to modify it nearly as much as I normally do. It makes me feel like a bad parent. I wanted to steal these kids and make them my students lol. My students are lovely, don't get me wrong, but their English level is just... wow.

I'm sure though, it'd be a completely different experience. Oh city kids. :)

One of my teachers at school is wearing sandals WITHOUT SOCKS. I applaud his fashion choice, since I feel less bad about not wearing tights or socks with my own shoes and occasionally taking my shoes off. Seriously though, he's the first person I've seen do that in all 4.5 of my schools.

Anyways.

Since the English camp was for an Okayama JHS, I got the pleasure of (leisurely) taking the train in to Okayama, and then caught a bus that drove for 40 minutes to a place that was probably between 10-20 minutes from where I live. Yay lots of traveling. Amusingly enough, both of the guys I was walking to the bus station with (one I randomly bumped into at the station) had both forgotten that we were supposed to bring our own lunch, which resulted in both of them scrambling to buy food for lunch before we walked to the bus station. Which almost made us late. It's a good thing the bus came later too! It gave us time to cool down and question if we had come to the right bus stop, which involved several people pulling out the directions and double/triple checking - and we were at the right place, they just probably told us to get there early so they wouldn't have to worry about late people.

The bus ride over was fun; we sat in the middle seats (they fold out) and we chatted with the kids - most of my conversation was dominated by music and manga (specifically One Piece). We did however, exchange jokes and tongue twisters with some of the students. I found that it was incredibly... hard, to come up with jokes that weren't slightly racist, appropriate, blonde jokes, or dead baby jokes.

I think we managed to come up with two or three knock knock jokes, and the chi-chi-chi-chichi monkey joke. That was it though. I later recreated this conversation with a couple of other ALTs (1 other californian and 3 brits) and we managed to come up with awful yo' momma jokes and blonde jokes and I figured out that I'm really really BAD at telling jokes. I think I botched the interrupting cow joke... three times. The first time I forgot to say it. The second time I said it too late. There was no actual third time. But we also started talking about awful pick up lines... and well, that's a story for another day.

It was silly though, because I wrote a paper about this exact topic - (appropriate) jokes, more specifically, puns - in one of my college classes. You'd think I'd remember at least one!

So... in the staff room is a very bad place to look for amazing puns, as I have just found out.

I like this site for
This body doesn't dance. Not well anyways. And not without copious amounts of alcohol. Then maybe. But I'm a very not-well-coordinated person, and their ALT happened to be a particularly good dancer.

So yeaaahhh. It was almost alright. They were doing Poker Face. I haven't even seen the video for that and I was like... wat. Actually, I would have been slightly more willing to make a fool of myself (more than I had anyways) had I known that there was little chance of seeing anyone in that room ever again. I mean, realistically, the one person in the room whom I knew (a fellow JET) was going to be leaving for the US and not doing a second year, but he's also one of the ALTs whom I counted as a friend (albeit however infrequently we saw each other) and one of the nicest guys in the prefecture. Not bad looking either, everyone agreed. So having to dance like Lady Gaga in front of him of all people was like auuuuuuuuugh. Slow painful death. Dancing in front of anyone I knew, really, would have been a slow and painful death.

In the end, I put on my pair of huge sunglasses (they lended well to the costume aka, the bright "wig" of multicolored paper strips I wore) which made it much harder to see, and kind of tried to forget where I was and just... danced. Probably awfully.

To make matters even more embarrassing, when I went to sit down afterwards, I actually missed my chair completely and sat down hard on the floor. Like you know when people pull out the chair from underneath you? It was like that. Except nobody pulled out the chair (I think). SO EMBARRASSING.

I felt like such a bad supervisor, because while I did want my group to do well and win... winning meant that we'd have to do it again. In front of EVERYONE. So part of me really didn't want to win. I'm a bad supervisor. ._.;

The rest of the skits were really amazing though. Everyone worked really hard on their skits, and the content of all of them were amazing. AND they memorized their whole skit! Can you say wow?

The second day, they had to give a presentation on something from Japanese culture, and again, I was highly impressed. One kid brought her koto and played for us (twice, since she ended up going twice). It was absolutely beautiful. The kids in my group did different things, from yukata to Japanese new years, to that top spinny toy and sushi and washoku. It was fun; I got to pick the brains of the washoku kid after, and it's one topic I love asking them about.

Speaking of food, this was the best camp food I've had. It was "viking style" which is essentially buffet - you can take what and however much you want. One meal we had pineapple slices and one kid - no joke - took 20 slices of pineapple. The boys could eat an amazing amount. I could only sit there in awe as I at my green veggies probably soaked in butter and stir fried. But seriously, the food there is really really good.

Parting was sad, in the end. Even though this was a short camp, the kids were all super friendly and nice, and eager (generally) to speak English. It also made me wonder if I'll actually have students recognizing me when I go in to Okayama now! I only see my students there sometimes (for which I'm kind of grateful, since it avoids the whole BOYFRIEND?!?!?!? question).

But yeah. Despite having to miss a couple classes at my schools and it being at an inconvenient time, I had a lot of fun. Hopefully next year I'll be able to go again!

富士山： Let's Mount Fuji Pt. 2

I'm finally going to finish my post about climbing Mount Fuji! It's kind of turned into a really really long post. Hopefully this makes up for the lack of posts in July.

So, as an edit to the last post I made about the three different groups, actually, even people who were in the second group, due to the enormous crowd of people climbing Fuji, were not actually at the top at sunrise. They were close, but they still had a bit to hike to reach the actual summit.

Really then, I had no chance of making it to the top and back down again without missing the bus and also probably missing the group at the onsen. I probably would have had to take a bus to the train and then shink back to Okayama. That would have cost an exorbitant amount of money, especially if I had to taxi instead of bus back, and I currently do not have those kinds of funds.

I'm a little disappointed that we went all that way and didn't reach the top. In retrospect, I should have realised that this hike was slightly out of my range, and that I would have had a much better time (and would have reached the top) had I done it in two stretches: hike up to the 7th or 8th stations, rest for a while in the huts, and then make my way leisurely to the top, sunrise be damned. Really, you can see a fantastic sunrise from the 8th station. Fuji is definitely not a mountain that you should rush, so it's far better to overestimate the amount of time you think you're going to take. Like I said before, we did an overnight climb, leaving the 5th station on the Yoshida trail between 9 and 9:30. Sunrise was at 4:20ish. Websites quote that it takes between 5 and 8 hours to do the climb to the top. It took the moderate group about 8 hours to reach the top. The top part, just before the summit is actually quite crowded so places that shouldn't take a long time, do. I think one of the groups said it should have taken them 30 minutes, but took them an hour instead. Many people, as we were talking after the climb, had extreme amounts of rage at the tour groups that had done the climb (there were a lot of them). Thankfully, I didn't have this rage. I'm still proud that I got as far as I did, but dunno, sometimes it's kind of embarrassing to admit that no, I did not make it to the top.

Anyways.

The Fuji trip started off way before we got to the actual mountain. I caught a train in from Takahashi to Okayama, taking the second train that got me in 5 minutes before the meet up time rather than the earlier train that got me in a full hour before the meet up time. Figured it wasn't worth trying to rush out of my house and forget something important.

I met up in Okayama Station with all the other crazies who had decided to climb Fuji, where we'd all catch the bus together. We were waiting at the West Exit, where the buses usually come and happened upon this gem of a bus:

Yeah Space Dolphins. :D

It turns out though, that through miscommunication (or just bad information or something) we actually weren't supposed to be at the west exit, so we all moved over to the east exit bus stops, and then eventually to granvia grandvia? - the fancy hotel where the bus driver walked over to escort us to the bus. Yeaaah. The first of several hiccups on our trip. But no matter. We all boarded the bus, and off we went!

A bunch of people brought movies, though half of them weren't region 2 so we unfortunately missed out on some Men in Tights and Mulan. We did watch Hot Fuzz and Amadaeus, though some people were trying to sleep during this leg of the trip since, you know, we'd be hiking all through the time when normal people sleep.

I think I managed to doze off several times throughout the trip, but not for very long each time. Our bus also stopped every 2 hours at a rest stop - and damn, I gotta say, Japanese rest stops are absolutely amazing. They're even more amazing when compared to california rest stops. In California, our bathrooms are kinda gross and dirty, and there's usually only bathrooms and maybe gas at the place, or a convenience store attached to the gas station. Sometimes there's fast food. But the Japanese ones, oh man. Ohhhh man.

One of the places we stopped had a map of the toilets that had lights to tell you if they were occupied or not. There were bathroom grandma's staffing the bathroom making sure it was spic and span; I'm pretty sure they thought I was some crazy Chinese person, especially since I took pictures in the bathroom, and came back again LATER to take more pictures. That whole place though, is CRAZY. Sadly, I had no idea where this actually was.

Eventually though, about 9 hours (that's pretty much the average time it takes to drive from San Diego to San Francisco, albeit with far fewer rest stops) and lots of snacks later, we arrived at the 5th station of Fuji, right at the Yoshida trail and the Kawa-soemthing 5th station. It's the one where most people go; there's tons of omiyage shops and shops that sell those wooden sticks and other things to climb the mountain with. It was dark when we arrived around 8:30ish, and it was COLD. Or well, not cold, but quite chilly! A nice change from the blazing heat that we had traveled through during the day, but when we looked out and saw people in their jackets and everything, it took us by surprise.

After arriving, we unloaded the bus and everyone went to go change and put on the necessary layers (we were still in our "damn it's hot" clothes). I put in my contacts, as well as my light longsleeve heattech shirt from Uniqlo - usually I wear this long sleeve, thermal-like layer under my clothes in the winter. I figured that it was better to start off with the bottom layers first, and then add as we go on. My bottoms, I was just wearing the lightweight pants that I had been wearing on the bus ride over. My legs don't normally get cold easily, so I figured that I could put on the tights that I had later when it actually started to get cold. In retrospect... I'm not sure. While it would have gotten quite warm with them on, I'm sure I would have lived. Changing anything below the waist involved a lot of work; when I actually did put my thermals on, it was really really really really tiring. I had to unlace my boots and pull them off, careful not to step on the gross bathroom floor (though, for public toilets, most were fairly clean). It also took a lot of time to do. So I'm not sure.

Anyways, we all gathered as a large group after we had all finished changing and our group leaders told us about the trail and stuff and about how long it would take, and what to expect going up and coming down, and about altitude sickness (actually called acute mountain sickness though, AMS). We double checked our climbing buddies. Adjusted our headlamps. My headlamp was TINY. Not so good an idea, actually. It was cute, yes, and it made it look like I had a giant power button (and was waterproof, which I wasn't sure if the other was) as well as not super expensive. Yeah, I kind of wish I had picked a different headlamp. One that rotated would have been excellent, because then I wouldn't have to move my head as much in order to figure out what was directly below me. That got annoying.

Everything in check, I decided to start off with my climbing buddy. Our friends were still taking a little bit of time to get ready, and the main group had already gone off. And well, I'm really slow. I know this. So I didn't want to wait around for longer because, I figured, I needed as much of a headstart as I could get if I was going to get up the mountain in time. So off we went.

Initially, from the 5th station, the Yoshida trail is actually really really easy, and really nice. We were walking down it and were like "yeah, if Fuji is like this the whole way, piece of cake." Oh how naive we were. At some point, we actually started walking *down* and I was kind of like, what, why are we going down? This downhill part became an annoying and aggravatingly long uphill walk on the way back.

We hit a more gravelly area, and I got tired of not being able to see stuff as easily with the headlamp on my head, so I pulled it off and attached it to the top of my walking stick instead. It reminded me of Gandalf a little bit, so we had a good laugh fooling around, pretending it was a magic staff, pretending it was He-man's sword, the thundercat sword... Yeah. This was while we still had energy and thought all was well.

Eventually, we hit this part that was lots of rocks going up. We saw this and were like "ah, so Fuji, you start to show your true face" and began our ascent. Shamefully, I was/am far more out of shape than I thought (and I had already assumed I was pretty out of shape) but the altitude hit me really fast and it wasn't before long that I was huffing and puffing for breath as we continued our climb up. I had to rest several times to catch my breath before I could continue. It was kind of embarrassing, and I felt bad for my climbing partner.

Eventually, our group of friends caught up to us; they said they had started off extra fast in order to catch up to us. I felt kind of bad. They would have caught us eventually; this was inevitable at the rate that I was going. But after they caught up, the six of us set out together. This was right before the sixth station, I believe, for we soon hit the really boring zig-zaggy bit after the sixth station where you're basically just walking up loose gravel (like, really lose gravel) and rocks for a looong while. It was here that it became apparent that our group had several different speeds. Alia and Lok were the fastest, followed by Hannah and Gemma (my climbing parterner). In the rear with me was Caroline. Both of us were not having fun going up the hill. Mountain. Have I mentioned how much I hate going uphill?

Eventually, it got to the point where the two fast ones would hike ahead, wait for us, and then we'd catch up, wait a bit more, and then set off again. If that were me, and I was trying to make it to the top by a certain time, I'd definitely be... annoyed a little. So eventually, we decided to swap climbing buddies - Caroline and I would be partners, while my partner, Gemma, and her partner, Hannah, would be climbing buddies instead. That way we were with people around our same speed. Happily paired, we let them go on ahead while we continued to tackle the route, bend-by-bend. Literally. We'd go from one bend to another, resting a little bit (or a lot if it was a harder path) at the end of each one. I've never felt more out of shape in my life. But the path that we were treading on was this volcanic rock stuff, large pebbles that shifted as you stepped on them, making your foot sink in and slide back a little bit each step. This is my reasoning for why such an uphill climb felt harder than it looked.

But hey, it worked I think. Small goals, we told ourselves. Small goals. Each bend in the road. More frequent, short rests meant that we could catch our breath faster without feeling like we're dying, thus saving time over all. I thought it was pretty effective.

At each station, and each hut, actually, as well, there's a guy who sits next to this giant kettle with the embers of a fire and a big giant brand, which he'll burn into your stick for 200 yen. They're really cool brands, and if you're looking for a souvenier, this one is pretty good. Plus my stick came in fairly handy when I was leaning or pulling myself up rocks or whatever with it. It was a little annoying when it got to the rockclimbing parts (I tried stowing it between me and my backpack, like a sword-stick, but I underestimated just how damn long the stick was, and ended up in constant danger of hitting things like the rocks and my climbing buddy), but otherwise it was perfect. I didn't spend too much money on hiking poles (though they would have been useful going down I think) and it also gave me something to stamp at each hut that we made it to. It kind of felt like I was unlocking achievements with each hut I got to, and then was thusly rewarded with a stamp that got branded into my wooden walking stick.

Most of the guys manning the branding bits were young dudes (won't complain about that) and generally, when you walk up to the station, walking stick in hand, they can tell that there's a chance you'll want a brand. Especially if you already have lots. So a lot of them actually came up and were like "braaaaand?" and I was like "YESPLS *pant pant*" in the least attractive way possible lol. Not that it mattered. But as the night wore on, a couple of the huts actually weren't giving out stamps because the brander was sleeping. One of the dudes though, let me in to the nice warm branding hut and entertained a couple of questions while we waited for the fire to warm up that I managed to piece together in Japanese and a little English. We had a fun conversation about how the kettles used to heat water in the old days, but now they just used the electric pottos and didn't really use the giant kettles so much. It was a nice break from walking.

Also, at these huts where they sold the brands, they usually also sold food and beverages, so in case you ran out of or stupidly forgot water or sports drink, you could buy it there... for a price. That price being an arm and a leg. Water, if I remember correctly, was around 400 yen. Food was more expensive. I think a cup ramen was going for 600 yen or something. EXPENSIVE. And it only got *more* expensive as you got closer to the summit. Since I didn't make it all the way up, I dunno how much it cost up there but I heard it's a pretty yenny.

On a related note, water is HEAVY. I never noticed this as much before. I took 2 L of water in those GIANT 2L bottles, as well as a 500 mL bottle of pocari sweat. I'm actually really really glad I took the pocari sweat along, because drinking from the 2L bottles is a giant pain in the rear. Like seriously. When you have to stop, unzip your backpack, haul out the 2L bottle, then repack your 2L into your backpack with all your layers of clothing, it gets tiring really fast. Wasted energy. So instead, I poured some of the 2L into the smaller bottle and stopped every so often to fill that up when I ran out. I drink water like a fish though, so the 2.5L of liquid lasted me about until we started our descent, and then I ran out. Luckily, my climbing partner had barely touched her water (which might explain why she got such a bad case of AMS) so I "liberated" some of the weight she was carrying as we went back down.

I digress though. After we made it to the 7th station up the zig-zaggy loose large chunky gravel path, we got to the dreaded region between the 7th and the 8th station. The view from here was absolutely phenomenal though. Looking up, you could see the huts that lined the path between the 7th and 8th, giving you some kind of tangible goal to work towards, and the line of lights as people (headlamps and flashlights attached) made their way upwards. We wondered, many times, which group of lights were our friends, and wondered if they wondered how far behind we were (actually less than we had thought, kind of). The sky, too, from that area was absolutely gorgeous. Anyone who climbs the whole way without stopping for a little bit to look at the night view is truly missing out. The sky was clear; you could see hundreds of stars dotting the sky, and the faint wispy path that we assumed was the milky way. Below us were the city lights, though there were far fewer those than there were natural lights above. Honestly, had it not been for the stars, climbing at night would have utterly sucked.

Why? One, I bought the wrong kind of headlamp. A rotating headlamp, so that you can point it at the ground while you look on ahead at the steep cliff of a chunk of rock you're supposed to climb up. So that you don't have to move your entire head to aim your light at what you want to look at. I found out later the headlamp I wanted to buy but didn't because it didn't say it was waterproof actually was. Sigh. But yeah, hiking - and rock climbing to a small extent, though my rock climbing friends would probably laugh in my face if they saw what we were calling "rock climbing" - in the dark was just kind of annoying because you had to go slower since you couldn't see half of the things and had to actually look around for good handholds and footholds (there were plenty though, and as long as you had good hiking shoes, it was actually not too bad). It just got kind of tiring. I imagine, if I were the kind of person who just scrambled up rocks without being so concerned and worried about where I was putting what foot and falling off the mountain - some people would call this overly cautious - it would have been much easier and less tiring. But I'm not. Oh well.

This was the part where I abandoned my stick and relied instead on my hands. This is where having gloves and thick pants come in handy, because the rocks are rather... sharp sometimes. One girl actually ripped her pants in this area, so an underlayer isn't a bad idea either.

Have I mentioned how much I hate rocks right now?

A number of people passed us on the way up to the 8th station, and the cool thing about hiking Fuji is that everyone hiking it tends to be pretty friendly (at least, below the 8th station). We actually struck up a conversation with some of our fellow hikers as we rested and gawked at the rocks we had to climb. There was a man who was over here for business and had just decided to climb Fuji. There were some people our age from the Bay Area (small world!). Lots of Japanese. But everyone had this kind of fighting spirit and sense of camaraderie, kind of, that we were all going through this together.

As we going up from the final hut at the 7th to the first 8th station, we actually passed a guy from HiroshimaAJET who was heading down. He didn't look so great. He said that his climbing buddy was actually at a hut at one of the 7th stations, and that he had gotten a bad headache and felt a little nauseous so he was also heading back down the Rocks of Doom. I offered him some of my oxygen, since he had none, and he said after it helped a little, and then continued his descent downwards.

You could not pay me to climb down those rocks in the dark, especially after we spent all that energy climbing up.

This is about when my climbing partner's headache started to get worse. But, like I said, neither of us wanted to climb back down, and we wanted to make it to where we could take the supposedly easier path back down (little did we know!) so we started resting more often, but continued our climb up.

After what seemed like forever, we made it to the 8th station, and pretty much collapsed on the floor, out of breath and really really really tired. We actually ran into one of the other girls from Okayama pretty much right after that. She had also split from her hiking buddy, and was feeling really nauseous so was similarly heading back down. My partner wasn't feeling so hot. I decided to use the bathroom and put on my underlayer of pants while my partner rested and hopefully started to feel better.

Changing was a battle in itself. Hiking boots are a pain to take off, and there was noooo way I was letting my clothes touch the floor.

When I finally finished (out of breath), my hiking partner informed me that yeaaaah she really wasn't feeling good. At all. Like was not able to go on. So we stopped to assess our... options. We could continue going really really slow and try to get as high as we could by sunset (which was around 30-40 minutes away at that point). This would get us closer to the summit. We thought we would have to make it up there in order to get the easy path down... and at one point, we weren't sure if we would make it back down in time. Caroline suggested we email our leader and let him know that we won't be meeting them and that we would take a taxi or bus back to a shinkansen station and then shink our way back home. I told her that I was not going to miss our bus back, since I could not afford that (taxis are ridiculously expensive and Fuji is not super close to a shink station) and I didn't want her paying for me. I was in favor of the climb-to-keep-warm-and-get-as-high-as-we-can plan. We took one look at the path to the next station and my partner was like yeaaaaaaaah... no.

The other option was to stay at the huts, which, I found out after asking, was going to cost us 3500 yen, and we could stay until 5 am. Expensive. But she was in favor of this plan, since she didn't really want to split up. Don't blame her either. I feel like a bad friend since I was considering it. Since I didn't want to stay in the place, but she did, I figured that she could stay, I'd hike up to the next station, and I'd meet her on the way back down.

We had actually found out from the hut-dude (who spoke pretty good English) that once the sun came up, the short-cut paths that linked all of the huts on Fuji to the "easy" downhill path would be open. So we wouldn't have to go back down the rocks again (thank god). So I figured this plan of mine - meet her on the downhill path - would work out just fine.

Except, when she went in to pay to stay at the hut, she paid for me too. At this point, it was like... 4 am, and predawn was already giving us a fantastic array of colors in the morning sky. (Someone made the comment that now, they understood where those stupid rainbow gradients come from). We had like, 15 minutes til sunrise. And she had already paid and said not to worry about the money. I felt so bad since I was totally ready to just wait until sunrise!

So I got 10 minutes of sleep before I woke up to see the sunrise. And wow. Sunrise was GLORIOUS. One of the most beautiful I've seen in my life. Above the clouds, clear sky, gorgeous colors... it made me question if I truly loved sunsets best.


Really, I think what's so amazing is that we were above all of that. Far above that.

After we had our breath stolen by the sunrise and the lack of oxygen, we decided that it was better to head down sooner or later so we weren't left at Mount Fuji stranded without a bus. Cause who knew how long it would take to get back down.

Our climb down looked something like this, times 50, and less gorgeous the more times you zigged-zagged down it. It wasn't like it was a particularly hard descent; it was just monotonous, boring, hard on the knees and feet, and full of small-to-medium sized mars rock colored volcanic rock where your foot sank a bit every time it stepped. It made slipping really really really easy. If it weren't for the bends in the road that would have you tumbling down the mountain should you overshoot, I would have considered running most of the way down (cause let's be realistic, I wouldn't have been able to run the whole way down). Taking larger steps and going faster (and generally, not caring whether or not I slipped) made it much easier and less painful to go down.

The whole way would have been much more beautiful and much less annoying had it not been for the - I kid you not - swarms of small flies and wasps that were populating the area. I was already surprised by the vegetation that started about halfway between the 7th and 8th stations, but this? This surprised me much more. I had not expected bugs, let alone this many, to be up close to the summit! I mean, seriously, the area is mostly rock. What do these dudes eat? (Tourists, obviously). It's part of what motivated us to get down the mountain so fast. No joke. We would be resting at one of the bends and a wasp would come land on one of us... and I figured out early on that swatting at a wasp was totally not a good idea. So instead, I ran. Generally the wasp came off as I ran (silently screaming) down the hill to the next bend in the road, where the process would repeat itself.

The downwards path has exactly one toilet in between the summit and the 6th station, and they're biotoilets, which is code word for the water looks disgusting but is actually probably good for the environment.

Even after the zig-zag path ends, it's still quite a ways away from the 5th station. We continued to walk downward, realizing just how freaking far we had come. We went down at a pretty steady pace, and it still took us something like 3 to 3.5 hours to get back down all the way. There were a bunch of really cute small children who kept passing us and saying "OHAYO GOZAIMASU~" to which we were obligated to say "ohayo gozaimasu" back in a far far less genki and half dead voice. Not my first choice for what my precious oxygen and energy was going to.

So we were nearly there, at the bottom of the 6th station, when we came to this bend in the road. Both ways said Yoshida trail, and we had been warned earlier about making sure to stay on the Yoshida, since way way way further up the Yoshida trail splits into a completely different train that takes you to the opposite side of the mountain. This was not that split. This split was whether we wanted to go to the base of the Yoshida, or back to where the buses came. And clearly, we wanted to where the buses came, but my climbing partner wasn't completely convinced, so out came the direction paper we received on the bus... that was no help. We also couldn't find the name of the bus station on the map, though we did see the buses. Either way, the trails eventually connected. But the one that we weren't supposed to take was 10 extra minutes long. And I did not want to hike for 10 more minutes on top of everything (I was tired at this point, alright? Or well, I'd been tired most of the hike). We settled for asking one of the Japanese lady tourists we saw near the map, and she pointed down the path that a) we had come and b) that led to the buses.

Yeah... I'm still a little smug about that. That my directional senses weren't completely off. Cause I mean, I'm used to getting quite lost ahaha.

It was at this point that that early nice downhill part on our hike up started to become agonizing and annoyingly uphill. We were like whaaaaaaat. Theeeeeee. Heeeeeeeeeell. WORST PLACE TO HAVE AN UPHILL PORTION EVER.

But I mean, we made it, finally, to the end. And met up with the Hiroshima people who had also gone back, and sat on the ground, and were sorely tempted to just flat out lie on the ground. But we didn't. I had meat on a stick (that had been taken off the stick and cut into pieces) for breakfast. I thanked my hiking boots.

Eventually, people started to trickle down and unbeknowst to us, the others were regrouping at the drop off point about 50 feet away. One of the guys came over and was like "oh yeah we're meeting over near the drop off point, and glad to see you down here because nobody had heard from you guys and we didn't see you at the summit." I was tired, and pissy at that point, but I held back my reply of "yeah I know I didn't make it to the summit jerk, thanks for rubbing it in, but I didn't want to be left behind." Instead I imagined him tumbling down the mountain - wee!

Actually, not going all the way to the top turned out to be a prudent and responsible decision. We would have been very very very late, and probably left behind. Our leader wasn't exactly the sympathetic to being left behind type (wonderful guy though, don't get me wrong). As it was, there were two groups that came in behind schedule (but some came back before the bus was supposed to leave). One was my group of friends. We had gone back to the bus by then, and then they came back and we were still missing 3 people at that point. We were supposed to go to an onsen at that point, so people started to look a little annoyed and uhhh... uncomfortable about having to make a decision about whether or not to leave them.

Thankfully, right before we decided to leave, everyone turned up and we all made it to the onsen - hooray! The only thing was, that left us with like, not very long to eat, and not very long to shower and onsen. Like, by the time people were finishing their meals, we had between 20-25 minutes to shower and utilize the onsen.

...my normal showers take about 20 minutes to shower and then dry. The onsen meant we had to change into the robes, walk to the onsen, take off clothes, shower at the stall thingies, go back to the room, dry off, change into rental robes, walk to locker room, and change into normal clothes. At a minimum. 20 minutes was laughable. One girl decided not to shower because with her hair and everything, it would have taken far longer (though I don't know why she couldn't have just washed her body). But like, I mean, girls take forever. And as long as I wasn't amongst the last few... it'd be fiiiiine.

Unfortunately though, the showers were FULL when I got there and I was like OH CRAP. Embarrassment aside. But thankfully, a spot opened up, and I still had enough time to take a fast dip into the lovely hot onsen. And I still wasn't the last one out.

Seriously though, onsen are meant to be leisurely enjoyed. Like, 1.5 hours minimum for eating and onsen-ing. Silly late people.

Guess this means I'll just have to onsen again!

Maybe after the next time I try to tackle Fuji. I wasn't scarred enough from the first time, lol. I want to do it again, and reach the top, so that I can say I reached the top. Because I felt really really stupid as everyone came back and was like "hell yeah I made it to the top of Fuji" and I was like "...yeah I made it to the 8th station". Silly for me to feel this way, I know, since 8th is still an accomplishment, but I dunno, it just... didn't feel completely. I want to go again, but take more time to go up and not worry about rushing or about missing trains or what have you. Maybe go up for the sunset instead.

At least I won't have to buy another walking stick.

Miyagi-ken's JISHIN

It's been four days since the earthquake hit in the north-eastern part of Japan.

It was in the afternoon when it hit here; everyone was still at school, and I was killing time and correcting my brother's 12 page paper for his college writing course. Then, randomly, our school's PA system came to life, saying something in that calm, "I'm kind of panicking but my voice is completely calm because I've trained my whole life in Japanese society for this" Japanese crisis voice, all in Japanese, of course. There were a few things I could pick out. Evacuation center. Tokyo Dome. Several different prefecture names (including Tokyo). JISHIN, or earthquake. And the word for "emergency" (I had to look that one up).

It turns out that something basically hacked our PA system to broadcast an emergency message about the earthquake that had hit in Miyagi Prefecture, off the coast of Sendai. We were kind of like, "oh shit." The first place I turned to for information was the internet.

It's been so surreal the past few days as I've been watching the news, knowing that the northeastern part of Japan (roughly the size from NY to Washington, or so I'm told) was in utter chaos and had been partially annihilated. We've kind of been going about our normal lives down here. Okayama is blessedly far away from Tokyo (though the affected zones stretch down to Shizoka really). So I've been completely fine, and was somewhat amused when the first "OMG ARE YOU ALRIGHT?????" messages started coming in.

I was tempted to show them a map of Japan, but then I realized that many people, when they were watching the news, had it reported to them as the quake near tokyo since 98% of foreigners probably know where Miyagi prefecture is. So really, not people's fault I guess. Plus I could have been out traveling. I guess this is why they want you to tell your supervisor where you're going before you head out on long trips.

But this quake, unlike the other large ones that have hit, has hit a little bit closer to home. Literally. All of them, of course, have been tragic, sad, events. But this one in particular has hit the country I've come to call home for the past 7 months now. I could have been placed up there just as easily as I was placed in Okayama. I work with people who have relatives up there. My family members are in Tokyo, which, while not as bad, still got massive quakes.

So while Japan has been way better prepared and (hopefully) will result in fewer lives lost, I still can't help but worry. Entire towns got wiped out along the coast. Entire towns. Granted, some of these fishing villages can be quite small, but an entire town getting obliterated. That's crazy to think about.

It reminds me a lot about the global issues course I took a while back on The Scholar Ship. Prof. Gordon had talked about natural disasters, and how the worst ones in history weren't *actually* that bad as far as power and nature stuff goes. Most of it was location, and where humans had decided to build things. I suppose that's true, huh. But we can't really help where we build, since a lot of the places also are the most suitable for living, even if it means living near the river that's constantly flooding or living near the coast in a earthquake-prone (and thus, tsunami-prone) region.

I can't watch the news though any more. It just makes me too sad.