hey all,
So things are busy. I guess one of the nice things, about myself at least, is that when I'm busy I generally keep my room clean, organize my time a bit better, and don't waste it on stupid things. The downside is that I'm busy, so I don't have relaxation time or even enough time to fit in errands sometimes.
Take today for example. My one errand that I wanted to get done was to do a wire transfer to the US. But we had a 3 day holiday, so when I tried in the morning before class, I couldn't get through because I bet lots of people were trying to get their own bank errands done before the weekend. And between 1:30 and 6:45, I had 30 minutes of free time, split up into ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, which is not enough time to prepare for the next class
and make a phone call.
In any case, Ogawayama was...dramatic, to say the least. On the first day, Michi and I went to a rock in the Family Rocks area, called Mara Iwa (Mara Rock, or something like Penis Rock in old Japanese). This is a rather tall pillar of rock which features a lot of slab climbing: smooth, almost flat and featureless rock walls. We climbed a few routes there but most of them were out of our league.
The next day we had a climbing lesson, but...that's where the drama comes in. For now, I'll just say that we finished the lesson early, and went hiking around the Rooftop Rocks area.
The last day was lots of fun. We went over to Mother Rock, again in the Family Rocks area. Most of the routes on Mother Rock are 5.8, 5.9, and a few 5.10's and above. We climbed almost everything that we could, something like 8 or 9 routes in 6 hours. With a really satisfying day of climbing in the bag, after two days of frustration and disappointment, we went back to Tokyo.
And back to work. Monday was a normal day at work, more or less. But Monday night, we left for our second trip, to Michi's second house near Mt. Asama. We got to check out a field strewn with volcanic rock, a shrine where Masayuki Sanada is buried, Ueda Castle (where the Sanada clan ruled), and also a waterfall. Of course, there was also the usual gardening and yard work as well, but for the most part, fun stuff prevailed.
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| Mara Rock on the right, and Older Sister Rock on the left. |
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| A strange indentation in one of the rocks in Rooftop. |
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| Our lodge seen from the top of one of the routes at Mother Rock. |
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| Mt. Asama |
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| Entrance gate to the volcanic rock field. |
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| Me doing the demon rock thing. |
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| Cookies made to look like volcanic rock, supposedly with some of the rock ground up inside them. |
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| A cherry blossom tree near the Hasedera in Ueda where Masayuki Sanada is buried. |
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| One of the remained turrets of Ueda Castle. |
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| A waterfall we stopped by on the way back to Tokyo. |
And then today, Friday, was of course another normal work day, but it felt like Monday. I kept on commenting on it during the day, but none of the kids got the joke. The parents did, though.
Cheers,
