Two Trips, Lost in Translation

hey all,

I wish I could take credit for the picture below, but it is not mine.

The peak in the middle, after the steep drop coming from the right, is the first peak of Kaerazu no Ken. Then there is the double peak to the left of that, and then the triple peak to the left of that.

Those peaks took us about 3 hours to get through. But I get ahead of myself.


View September 2012 Trip in a larger map

The first day was pretty similar to the last trip, but with a much shorter hike the first day: only about 1hour. The next day, we woke up at 5, and hiked for about 8 hours before reaching our lodging for the night.

(I should warn you that there is some profanity on one of those videos.)





Then a nice long rest, a good meal, and then we were up at 4:30 for the last day. Another 7 hours or so took us back to the gondolas, buses, and trains headed back to Tokyo.

The hike was pretty unremarkable, except for that 3 hour stretch of Kaerazu no Ken. That was some white knuckled, if-I-slip-now-they-won't-find-my-body climbing. It was really foggy, so visibility was low, plus there were the extreme ascents and descents and strong winds to contend with. The fog also kept condensing onto the chains and nearby plants, which the wind would whip and splash into our faces. Thankfully we had decided to stay at the lodges instead of camp, so our packs were relatively small and light, since we weren't carrying tents, sleeping bags, gas stoves, or dinner supplies.

I wish I had some good pictures of us going through this area, but it is not the kind of place that you just rest and stop to smell the roses. But here is one I took.

The fog makes everything hard to make out, but behind Michi there is no or less a straight drop. Behind me is a narrow rock face (which on the other side of that there is a sheer drop), and that rickety steel ladder crosses a straight drop.





Last week was also relatively uneventful.

This weekend, we went to a famous resort on the beaches of Zushi, which is just an hour or so away from our apartment. Her parents belong to some club, and we were able to stay there really cheaply.

Earlier today, we watched The Dark Knight. I kept glancing at the Japanese subtitles below, and they seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping up, except in one place.



In the subtitles, it says "You know what chaos causes/makes happen? Fear"  instead of "You know the thing about chaos? It's fair." In other places, such as the end where Harvey makes a speech about fairness before Batman takes him out, the translation follows the English pretty well. Not sure why the translator chose to do that, but hey.

One more week, and then we will head over to a zoo at work.

Cheers,

We have returned from...Sword of No Return

hey all,

We're back. More info coming later.

Cheers,

Sword of No Return

hey all,

That is where Michi and I are going this weekend. It is a hike very near where we went last time, and the Sword of No Return (Kaerazu-no-ken) is this knife ridge of steep drops and rises that runs south from Mt Shirouma.

More later. Still need to pack.

Cheers,

Trip to White Horse Mountain

hey all,

Like many of our trips, this one was transportation heavy. It involved taking a train for 3 hours, a bus for another 30 minutes, and riding various ropeways/gondolas, before we even got to hiking.



View July 2012 Trip in a larger map

The map shows our route from Tokyo to Mt. Shirouma, which is one of the 100 famous mountains of Japan.

Getting to our first camp site involved about 3 or 4hours of hiking, some of it through snow fields.








We think that Michi got a little altitude sickness on the first day, which I can tell you from my perspective was frightening as anything. She seemed to recover pretty quickly, and we got some of the staff of the lodge to help us to get there. They even gave us free food and put us up in the staff room for the night.

This flower is called Mizubasho in Japanese. I have no clue what it is called in English. It is ridiculously popular in Japan.

Crampons!

First big snow field

Me at the summit of Mt. Shirouma

mountain flowers!

Part of the hike back to the lodge.

Part of the hike back to the lodge.

The next day, Michi decided to rest, and I went on to climb Mt. Shirouma by myself. It had started to rain the night before, and it kept up for part of my hike. There was also a lot of fog/low cloud cover, so the views were nonexistent. On the way back, however, it started to clear up.

The original plan had been to camp at the big pond, hike Mt. Shirouma, then camp at another spot just on the other side, then hike across to another ropeway/bus stop and then head home. So instead of camping on the other side of Mt. Shirouma, I hiked back, we made dinner, packed, and went to bed.

The next day, we hiked back to the ropeways and began our trip back to Tokyo.

The new hiking shoes worked out really well, and the crampons were definitely needed.

I've got the rest of the week off, so I have a whole laundry list of things to get done.

Cheers,

Return

hey all,

We're back safe and sound, and as usual, a full update will have to wait until tomorrow.

Cheers,

Trip

hey all,
Michi and I are on our way to Mt.Shirouma. Should be back on Monday.
Cheers,

And...We're Back

hey all,

I'm still kicking around here in Japan. Yes,I know it is now July, and no I didn't really do anything special for the 4th.

Michi and I are planning a hiking trip to one of Japan's 100 Famous Mountains. Length-wise, and fitness-wise, it does not seem too bad, but we are going shopping for crampons since they are recommended for this mountain. Oh, and Michi still hasn't gotten her foot x-rayed or spoken to a doctor to see if this is a good idea. It seems like her ankle is doing OK recently, but still. She didn't wear the brace as long as she was supposed to, and she had a resurgence of the pain after our last hiking trip to Aomori, which was somewhat lengthy but only involved walking along a river trail with no serious ups or downs...and for this climb we will need to be walking on snow/ice and using crampons. Sounds like it will do therapeutic wonders for her ankle, doesn't it?

At work, we're still training one of the teachers, and we've started having another one come in to see how he does.

I finished Infinite Jest the other day. I'm a lot less satisfied with the ending this time around, and I find myself wondering about the meaning of the eponymous film in the book and the meaning of the main character's loss of communicative ability. I'm back to reading my teaching books sporadically.

Cheers,

Aomori, Part 2

hey all,

This is going to have to be rather short as well. I have about 500 things on my to-do list, and like the mythical hydra of yore...you get the idea.

Michi and I made it up to Aomori station where we parted ways. She went to the wedding, and I went to Hirosaki, to see Hirosaki Castle.

Some art/sculpture on the way to Hirosaki castle from the station.

A still blooming cherry tree near the castle.

Hirosaki Castle

This is crazily delicious! It is mango flavored soda/jello with chunks of nata de coco thrown in for good measure.

Afterwards, we met up again and spent the night in Aomori City. The next morning we traveled to the Towada Lake area, which is famous for the eponymous crater lake, and for the Oirase River, which has lots and lots of waterfalls on it. We spent most of that day hiking the river trail.

One of the many waterfalls along the Oirase River.

The view from the hot spring at our hotel. Can you believe we paid something like $70 per person for these views?

One of the views from a boat on Lake Towada

Yet another of the many waterfalls on the Oirase River

The next day, we took a bus from our hotel over to the lake itself so we could ride the boat across the lake. Somewhat stupidly, we took a taxi back to the river so we could hike a little more. (There was some confusion about the bus stop we wanted, since it was apparently so obvious what this one bus stop's name was that nobody bothered to label it on any of the maps.)

We then started the Odyssey back to Tokyo. Just after we had exchanged our train tickets at Hachinose station, the staff announced that there was a stop signal for our train and they didn't know when it would get moving. We had to wait for 40 minutes or so before we could get on, and then it stopped for at least the same amount of time at Morioka station. We got off there, and waited for a Yamabiko bullet train, because that bullet train starts at Morioka and it has three free seating cars. That meant that we actually had a chance of sitting down during the 4+ hour ride back to our place. Luckily, we were able to get seats and the rest of the ride went pretty smoothly.

We didn't get back until around 10PM, three hours later than we had originally planned, but we made it back.

Cheers,

Aomori, Part 1

hey all,

I'll have to just say that we made it to Aomori, got to see some great stuff and eat and good food, and made it back to Tokyo. It is almost midnight and I've been up since 4AM, so I'm going to hit the sack. The pics and story will be coming soon.

Cheers,

Typhoon

hey all,

Today and tomorrow are Japanese National holidays, so for today at least I'm relaxing at home. I went over to a coffee shop this morning and got some typing done for one of my Eiken Pre-2 classes, and I also got some more work done on a lesson plan on the six kingdoms.

Tomorrow, Michi and I head to Aomori, where a friend of hers is getting married. Technically speaking, I'm not invited because I only know the bride and the bride is only allowed to invite girls, as the groom is only allowed to invite boys. Anyway, there is a castle about 40 minutes away in Hirosaki that I'll go see while Michi is busy. After the wedding, we'll do a little walking/hiking around a lake trail that is supposed to be really beautiful. Although here in Tokyo the Sakura season has already passed, in Aomori it will still be going.

Michi has been doing a better job of wearing her ankle brace, but I hope the walking will not be too much stress on her ankle.

In other news, I seem to have gotten Tagged Frog working better. I gave up hope on Nemo Docs. Any program that can't even complete a proper string search is too dumb for me (i.e., that can't even find all the files that have "Jackendoff" in the title). Even Windows Explorer can do that. For Tagged Frog, I think I was using some of the rules incorrectly, but now I have it set up OK.

Cheers,

Nara Story and Pics

hey all,

The story of Nara goes like this.

I had wanted to check out various places in Nara in 2010, when Brian came and visited me in Japan. However, he was pretty worn out from tramping around Kyoto, and really just wanted to head back to Yokohama and chill. So I didn't get to do any sightseeing that time.

Last year, Michi's parents visited Nara during March and went to see a festival called Omizutori. They gave us a few sprigs of semi-burnt pine branch as souvenirs. Her parents explained what would happen during the festival, most of which I didn't understand too well, but it sounded interesting and Michi was more or less determined to go.

So we booked a really nice ryokan, and started looking up places to see. The festival is held at night, so we got to spend a whole day and a half sightseeing, and of course got to see the festival as well.

Kofukuji's 5 storied pagoda was actually visible from the outdoor hot tub at the ryokan. We got to take in Todaiji, Horyuji, and one other temple whose name I can't remember right now.

Nara is famous for these deer, among other things. They're viewed as messengers from the gods, and are quite tame. In my view, they are really boring creatures. They just stand there in the middle of the streets and sidewalks, waiting for people to give food to them.

Todaiji, which houses the biggest bronze Buddha in Japan, is also the largest wooden building in the world.

In Todaiji, there is this pillar with a hole in it. Those who are able to pass through it are supposed to achieve enlightenment in the next life. So it looks like I'm set.

Some early cherry blossoms at Horyuji with a 5-story in the background.

You might want to view the video I took of part of the ceremony. It is not the most riveting but it does have its moments. I have to apologize for the really annoying Japanese people from Hiroshima that you can hear commenting on everything. I wanted to tell them to shut up, but...


The main "snag" is that I forgot my glove liners and winter hat in the bathroom at Nara as we were waiting for the train to Kyoto (and from thence, by shinkansen to Shinagawa). I don't know if I'll be able to get them back. If not, I'll just have to pick up a new pair of liners and a new winter hat.

Cheers,

At last

hey all,

A bunch of my preparation time at work this week has been taken up with extra private lessons, teacher's meetings and meetings with the boss, plus doing an extra job or two for the boss. Which means that I've spent a lot of time after hours typing up tests, making worksheets, and making the schedules for my classes next week.

I've finally caught up on all of that. So the news about Michi is that she has a stress fracture in her right ankle. That pain she's been experiencing ever since September? Yep, stress fracture. Apparently they don't show up on the X-rays very frequently, so you need a CT or MRI scan, which she only got done a few weeks ago. And then she had to wait a week and a half to see a doctor about the results of the scan. She's got an ankle brace coming in the mail this weekend, and she's been ordered to take it easy for the next 4 months or so. She's pretty upset about it. It will be a difficult few months ahead, since we won't be able to go rock climbing, hiking, or backpacking.

In fitness news, I joined Fitocracy, which is an interesting take on keeping fit. It was featured on xkcd (warning: mature content) a while back, and it looked fun. Basically, it turns keeping fit into a role-playing game. Each exercise has a certain number of points attached to it, and after you accumulate enough points, you level up. Getting to the next level takes more points each time. It kinda makes me want to find a pool that I can go swimming to again, although this time I'll make sure that I don't jack up my arm like a few summers ago.

Cheers,

What?!

hey all,

First some A Dance with Dragons stuff. I read a bunch of it while riding the shinkansen and at Michi's family's second house, since there is little to do each day after dark falls. I actually stayed up until 2AM last night to finish it, and I need to go to bed early today to make up for the lost sleep.

It was a pretty good book. It is certainly up to the same high standards as his previous releases, and as ever the tone, description etc are on target.

Some of the plot devices seem to be getting a bit stale, though. A character thought to have died before the first book even began is brought back and his existence is explained by having been switched places with another baby. A similar ploy was used in the second book, where two characters are "executed" for trying to escape, when in fact their executioner was unable to find them and used some poor peasant bodies instead. And actually, another character was pretend executed, with yet another body double taking his place in the current book. And in the previous book, another character's place is taken by a look alike, and that look alike continues her role in this book. And yet another character is "killed off," only to have it later revealed that he is still alive, and a sorceress used magic to swap his and another character's appearance (so that the other character was actually killed). I think you get the idea.

From reading his blog, it seems that timing and pacing were major troubles for him in the writing of it. At the end of book 3 and/or 4, several characters were all making their way toward one of the main characters, and it seems that GRRM sweated the details of who would arrive when, in what order, and what the consequences would be of arriving at different times and in different orders. As I read the book, I could almost feel this. The same storm or set of storms messes with the ships of several characters, causing them to arrive earlier or later than they had planned. Some characters encounter mishap after mishap, only to finally make it within mere feet of their goal and still not quite accomplish it. Some make it to their goal, and arrive too late to achieve it. Half of them haven't even arrived, but are still en route or have abandoned their quest as of the end of A Dance with Dragons. I suppose he got the timing he wanted, but parts of it feel very contrived. Perhaps the delays of some characters will be given meaning in the later books.

Lastly, there are the cliff hangers. As a fan who has waited 6 years to find out what happens to his favorite characters (all three were excluded from the last volume), the prospect of facing another 6 years waiting to see if some of them have really truly been killed off is not high on my list of things I want. One of my favorite character's last chapter ends with him being stabbed in the stomach and between the shoulder blades by some of his own men-at-arms. This character has been in the books from day one, and to me at least, I had always envisioned him shacking up with one of the other major characters and ruling the world together in happiness and peace. But now it seems he is dead, maybe.

This should not have surprised me. Other characters were growing more and more frustrated with his actions, and some of them warned him to keep more protectors around himself. Like other characters that GRRM has killed off in the past, most notably the blood bath in A Storm of Swords, where several major characters were killed. And of course even in the first book, GRRM infamously pulls no punches and has the central character executed, as many of you will have seen in HBO's adaptation, Game of Thrones.

I can only hope that he will be rescued and healed in the mean time.

Oh well. The 3 day weekend was pretty fun. We did some gardening work, which for me involved pretending to be a squirrel and cutting off more branches that were shading the backyard. And after than we did a BBQ on Saturday which was delicious: grilled strips of beef, chicken, onion, eggplant, carrot, and potato. Sunday was devoted to hiking up Mt. Azuma. I got sunburned on my hands, my upper arms, the back of my neck, and the lower half of my legs, despite slopping on plenty of SPF 50 sunblock before we even started. Some of it must have sweated or been rubbed off, because the sunburned areas are only in patches. I also got bit on my ribs by some crazy insect. As I was hiking, my left ribs started to hurt when my backpack strap pressed against them, and I figured the bag was just poorly designed. Turns out there was a bug which was biting my skin there and I didn't notice until I had to pull the thing off me in the shower. It refused to let go and I had to try three times to get it off me. It looked a bit like a small spider, but I'm not sure what it was.

That night, we also watched Norwegian Wood, a movie based on the partly autobiographical book by famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Nowhere near as compelling as the book, but compared to the usual mess that the Japanese make when making a movie these days (and especially when compared to the crap is gets produced when adapting a book or comic into a movie) it wasn't bad. Not as compelling as A Dance with Dragons, which I also brought along with me to read on the shinkansen and when we'd finished the day's grilling, hiking, and gardening. But still decent.

I got to play with my new Android phone a little bit, but it seems like other smartphones it can't hold a charge for longer than three or four days. I ask you, what use is a smartphone with a built in compass, GPS locator, and thermometer on a multi-day wilderness trek if I have to plug it in at night to be able to use these functions? Still, overall a cool tool.

Lastly, it seems we have the contract for our new place taken care of, so it only remains to wait a few weeks and then I move my stuff in, and the weekend after that, she moves her stuff in. We had planned to talk about house rules this weekend, but between me having my nose glued to A Dance with Dragons and the grilling, gardening, movie watching, and hiking, we felt that our plates were full. I will push for next weekend.

Below, please enjoy some of the pictures of the trip.

Cheers,

Really?

hey all,

The weekend was pretty surprising. It is still a little bit early to tell, but it looks like Michi and I might have found a place. The rent was in the range we could afford, the commute was decent for both of us, the size was really nice, the kitchen was excellent (except for the carpet...who puts carpet in a kitchen, anyway?), and in general it seemed like a good deal. We put down a deposit for it, but I think we still need to sign the actual contract sometime this week.

We also went hiking in Kamakura, which was fun, if a little hot.

The last bit of news is that I'll be picking up a new cell phone, probably on Thursday night. My cell company will be releasing a rugged Android smartphone, and as I've already used my present phone for 2 years and 4 months, it is getting a little beat up, and the battery life is dropping. Besides, the rugged smartphone will be shock, dust, heat, humidity, and water resistant in addition to running the Android OS and coming with some handy navigation tools (temperature sensor, compass, GPS, trip recorder, etc). If it isn't useful for someone who spends a lot of time in the mountains and climbing up rock faces, I'm not sure who it would be useful for.

Next weekend, we have a 3 day weekend and the plan is to hike up a mountain who name I can't remember with Michi's family. It is a pretty long hike, maybe 8 hours or so. Also planned for the weekend is an "expectations" party, where Michi and I will be talking in detail about what we expect of each other when living together (chores, sleeping schedule, alone time, bills, etc).

Between Michi's classes starting at the end of this month, my own classes starting at the end of September, and then the curriculum planning, the moving, and the trips that I'll have to make to the city offices in Yokohama and Tokyo, it promises to be a busy time.

Cheers,

Today

hey all,

1. Got up
2. Made rice
3. Went to work
4. Received pay
5. Bought chorizo and mustard
6. Cooked chorizo
7. Bought laundry soap, razors, and shoe polish
8. Did laundry
9. Polished shoes
10. Watched Game of Thrones, Episode 8 (Still awesome, only two more episodes left...)
11. Ate chorizo with bread and mustard
12. Downloaded pics of Siberian husky and the Chukchi people for my PM class tomorrow
13. Checked weather for Matsumoto trip next weekend (doesn't look good: 60% chance of rain on Saturday, 40% chance of rain on Sunday...)
14. Took a shower.
15. Wrote this blog entry
16. Brushed teeth
17. Passed out.

Tomorrow, I need to finish that evolution presentation for my AM class so I can show them on Wednesday. It is about 12 minutes long right now, most of it narration by Carl Sagan, but I'm going to add a quiz at the end.

The weekend was great. We fought, made up, found a place to stay, decided against it, and went rock climbing at Yugawara. It is off season there, and the weather on Sunday was not great, so we almost had the place to ourselves. There were probably 20 people spread out among the several hundred routes, so we barely met anyone. Only one other time has that happened at Yugawara. We also encountered some monstrous bugs, like some centipedes twice the length of a pinky finger, we're talking like 5-6 inches.  The first one was half way up a route, and I had to wait for it to crawl away from that area, lest I be bitten. I wanted to get a picture of the second one, but I didn't bring my camera and Michi's camera's battery was dead.

Cheers,

Trips

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.

Mara Rock on the right, and Older Sister Rock on the left.

A strange indentation in one of the rocks in Rooftop.

Our lodge seen from the top of one of the routes at Mother Rock.

Mt. Asama

Entrance gate to the volcanic rock field.

Me doing the demon rock thing.

Cookies made to look like volcanic rock, supposedly with some of the rock ground up inside them.

A cherry blossom tree near the Hasedera in Ueda where Masayuki Sanada is buried.

One of the remained turrets of Ueda Castle.

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,

More Debuts

hey all,

While not strictly speaking debuts, my raincoat and rain pants have been getting used every day for the past 3 or so days. So far, they've stood up to the punishment and usage, as I expect of Columbia gear. My gloves, which are North Face, handle rain just fine, but the combination of rain and cold doesn't go over so well. The combination of cold and anything or even just cold by itself doesn't seem to go over well either. I've been eying a pair of gloves by Mountain Hardware, which are alpine rated. That is, I could take them to Everest or glacier hopping, or just skiing. Or, even just use them to keep my hands warm while riding a bike.

Tomorrow is Doll's Festival, which is a celebration for little girls in Japan. This whole week there has been a huge multi-level stage with dolls on it stuck in the office and getting in everyone's way. I think it will be put up outside somewhere, and then taken down again. A lot of effort, but maybe it will be worth it.

It seems like we've got a new part time teacher after all. He just needs a little training and the Dynamic Duo (myself and the other teacher) can take a break and not have to pull 6 day work weeks. I can't really complain because the other teacher has taken the brunt of them, but I'll be putting in two Saturday's this month to help train him and get him ready to teach on his own.

January and February didn't really feature any good games or movies coming out, to my knowledge, but we've got Dragon Age 2 coming out in a week or two, plus Game of Thrones on HBO coming out just next month. This year looks like it will feature some really cool movies and games, and of course Michi and I have lots of trips in the planning.

Below are some pics from the Yugawara trip.

Cheers,

Debut

hey all,

Been a busy week. Lessons are going pretty well, but I think my PM class is getting sleepier and sleepier every day. I have to have them go through an essay about designing stamps of all things on Monday, but hopefully we will have a new packet of material.

Yesterday went all right at work. A lot of baby lessons, but I got out at 5PM which was nice. Michi came over and we watched part of The Dark Knight, but the voices for the movie were really soft despite the volume being at 100% and we had to get up early for rock climbing anyway.

Today was the debut for my 70L hiking/camping backpack. It handled pretty well, and felt much lighter than my 46L. The bigger pack has more padding on the hips, shoulder straps, and back, plus it is actually designed for hiking as opposed to air travel like the 46L. But, I think I need to spot bringing all of my climbing gear on every trip though, because all those nuts, carabiners, cams, and slings really add up to a lot of weight that doesn't all get used. I think I'll really have to pack my gear carefully too, since it seemed...not full necessarily, but even with just my gear rack, water, rope, harness, and shoes the bag seemed like I'd have to start strapping stuff to the outside. Of course, I'll have to do that anyway for climbing/camping trips, but for just a climbing day trip it felt a bit strange.

We headed over to Yugawara, which I at least haven't been to for almost 4 months. We only climbed four different routes, but we climbed each one several times a piece, so we still got in a decent about of climbing time. Especially fun was a 5.10b called Christmas Rose which  I climbed 3 times. The last climb of the day was a frustrating 5.10b called Alibaba, which I had to down climb because I couldn't make it to the top. As the last climb of the day, I should have chosen a 5.10a or a 5.9 since I was already tired.

If you're in to flowers, Japan is not a bad place to live, especially since being in to flowers doesn't seem to have any homosexual or overly girly connotations. Most of the people stopping and taking photos of flowers are actually middle aged or retired guys with monster cameras. What I wanted to say is that right now is the ume season (the Japanese plum tree), and there was a whole field of them at Yugawara. And of course, for the next month to 6 weeks, we'll have the sakura season. Basically, if you aren't in to flowers when you come here, you will probably develop a major thing for them during your stay.

In the "It's a small world" department, in case anyone has heard about that earthquake in New Zealand, it appears that one of Michi's friends from yoga school might have lost her life in the incident. The name, age, and profession all match Michi's friend, and I don't want to to run the odds on there being another Japanese woman with the same name, age and job being in the same place at the same time as Michi's friend.

In about 16 days, I'll be looking at 2 years in Japan, not counting the 4 day romp I had in the US for New Year's.

Cheers,

Roasted Mountain, Mmmm

hey all,

Cheers,

Jogasaki Crack and Natural Protection, and Mt. Omuro

hey all,

Pretty good weekend. We ended up taking a lesson from our climbing teacher about crack climbing and how to use natural protection. I'm glad Michi brought a big roll of sports tape, because without it, our hands would have gotten all beat and cut up. As it is, they're just a little sore.

I actually left the lesson after an hour in order to see the mountain grass get burned. The were serving lots of roasted foods: roasted chicken, roasted octopus, roasted corn, etc, all of which probably go well with roasted mountain. Pictures coming soon.

After that, I headed back to the climbing spot and rejoined the lesson.

That'll have to be it for now. As always, there is too much on my plate for me to get through on any given day, so I'll just have to keep having adventures.

Cheers,