Where I've Been

Weather Games

hey all,

So as usual, when I decided that I should air out my futon, it promptly started raining just after I hung it outside. Why does the weather feel like my futon should be soaked all the time? Why can't it drop a beautiful Japanese girl into my lap once in a while, instead of dropping loads of rain onto my bed?

Apparently, it is resentful of all the bad things I've said about Japanese weather. To be fair, the weather when I first got here was pretty decent. Hopefully, after August has passed, there will be another bout of good weather before winter descends on us, and maybe another one after winter leaves. Although according to some people, winter is actually a pretty good time here. Supposedly, you can actually go outdoor rock climbing no problem in November, December, etc.

We'll see.

Cheers,
Dave

小田原=Odawara=small rice paddy plain

hey all,

Yesterday I met up with a few outdoor club members in Odawara to see a festival there. This involved a bunch of guys hauling around a small shrine on their shoulders, setting it down on a barge, and then waiting as another group of guys rowed the barge and two other boats across the bay.


After the festival, we checked out Odawara castle, parts of which are not even a year old. It was mostly demolished 150 years ago, then reconstruction started in the 1950's.

We also stopped by nearby Ninomiya Shrine, which dedicated to a man who was too poor to afford school, but read books while travelling on his job.Originally, more was planned, but the weather was a little bad, so that was all we did.

Cheers,
Dave

This Week, and Break

hey all,

I went to the outdoor club's social night last Friday. This time, it was held at a pretty good Thai restaurant in Kinshicho, part of Eastern Tokyo. Today, there was another hike in Okutama which I had planned on joining, but the big toes on my feet were bothering me a little, and I felt really tired this morning, so I've just been watching anime all day. The temperature is back around 35 C, so the air conditioning has been a blessing.

Tomorrow, I meet up with another outdoor club member in Odawara to see a festival where they float boats and shrines down a river. I think I will also try to see Odawara Castle, a temple, and maybe a traditional goods shopping district.

I can't really believe it, but I still have over one month of summer break left. I've already climbed Mt. Fuji, but now I think Hokkaido might be a bit much. I really don't know of anything that I'm dying to see there, except for the snow festival in February. Getting around seems like it would be a pain, and so would lodging. There is an trip being planned to Hokkaido by one of the outdoor club members, but it seems too expensive, especially considering the Spartan nature of the trip: camping and hiking for about a week.

I haven't been studying my Japanese since school ended, so I think I should be doing that for at least a few hours each week. I'm not sure what to do to fill all this free time ahead of me.

Cheers,

Fuji-san Hike

hey all,

So I've just returned from my hike to Fuji-san, or Mt. Fuji as the rest of the world knows it. The experience has been described by others as surreal, and like walking on another planet. At 3776 meters tall, the peak of Fuji can barely be considered as being in Earth's atmosphere: the thin air gives many hikers a difficult time, and many lodges along the way up sell canisters of oxygen, bottles of oxygenated water, etc.

From the 5th station.

The terrain itself seems otherworldly. You can see clouds below your feet, Mars-like red soil and rock, and bizarrely eroded volcanic rock formations.

Since this is a more touristy hike than the outdoor club usually organizes, I just asked around my friends here to see if anyone was interested. Several were, but had already made plans, but another ALT was available and interested, so I ended up hiking with him. We left Omiya around 9, took several trains over to Kawaguchiko, then took a bus up to the 5th station of Fuji. There are 9 stations on each hiking trail. We arrived at the Kawaguchiko 5th station around 3PM. The Kawaguchiko 5th station is 2305 meters high. From there, John and I hiked up Fuji on foot. From the 5th, it is around 5-6 hours to the peak of Fuji. Since we arrived so late in the day, we ended up hiking for 1.5-2 hours in the dark. I brought a headlamp for myself and an extra flashlight for John to use.

Sunset at around 3000 meters.

Part of the trail.

We stayed in one of the 8th station lodges for the night, ate a delicious dinner of curry rice, and then pretended to sleep until 1:40AM. The lodge was very crowded, so it is really difficult to fall asleep with that many people around you (unless you are Japanese, in which case you will sleep fine). Around 1:40, we all (John and I had met up with two random British guys who were pretty friendly) decided we should try for the peak in order to see dawn from there.

Thus began another night hike. The 8th station lodge we stayed in was at 3400, so we had the last 376 meters to go. Those last few hundred meters were rather difficult, due to the dark, the cold, the wind, and the fog/misty rain which normally shrouds the peak. We arrived well before dawn, but dawn failed to arrive, as the summit stayed cloudy.

Me at the cloudy summit. The sign says "Fuji-san summit. Please take your trash down with you."

The hike down took maybe 3.5 hours.

Cheers,

Return to Okutama

hey all,

I just got back from my second trip to Okutama. I want to say right off the bat that some how I lost about 30-40 pictures of Nippara cave. If you've been in Mammoth cave, think that except Japanese: smaller and more cramped. Still, it has some very interesting rock formations and a few big open areas.

Captured out the window of the bus from Okutama station.

From the peak of Mt. Kumotori: 2017 meters tall. That's Mt. Fuji in the background.
Sunrise at the lodge.

Mt. Fuji in the distance before 9AM.

I would give you a detailed narration of the trip, but basically it boils down to: hiked for 5 hours straight, stopped at the lodge for the night, ate dinner, woke up at 4, ate breakfast, hiked for 5 more hours, and walked around Nippara cave.

The one thing that makes for somewhat more interesting reading is I did get to try a real onsen. After two long hikes without a shower, both me and Louis both thought the onsen was a good idea. Basically, it is the same as the small private one I went to before in Nikko: you pay to get in, strip down, wash, and then soak in hot water that is pumped up from the ground. I asked if my tattoos would be a problem, and they said they were ok, so that was cool. We only got to soak for a little bit, as we had to make an express train and there was a half hour wait before we were admitted to the onsen (a lot of other hikers felt the same way as we did, but got there earlier).

While riding the bus back to the train station, an old Japanese guy next to me started trying to talk to me in English. After a few minutes, his wife looked over and then said "David-san?" I had run into one of my teachers from my junior high school. We talked for a little bit, and then parted ways at the train station.

Tomorrow, I recuperate a little, double check the weather, and get ready for my hike up Mt. Fuji Wednesday/Thursday.

Cheers,

Enkai, Weekend and Week Plans

hey all,

So yesterday my school had their enkai, which is an all you can eat/drink social affair with the school staff. For a lot of ALT's, this means you get to see your fellow teachers get drunk and work up the courage to talk to you for the first time.

For me, it meant paying 6,000 Yen for lots of pretty decent food and a little alcohol while playing several games. We did Bingo, and also a multistage competition between the first, second, and third year teachers, and the administrative staff (the group that I belonged to), that involved picking up dried beans with chopsticks (tricky even for people who use them every day of their lives), doing pushups, and drawing a picture. The games where pretty fun, but a lot of people drove to the restaurant, so most were not drinking very heavily. As at work, I was still ignored most of the time by most of the people.

After that, I ran into one of the new ALTs (the replacement for the replacement that quit before his first day of work), and we went over to the Hub in Omiya for a few drinks. Pretty good time, as I ran into a bunch of drinking buddies there and got a phone number from a cute Japanese girl.

A special trip to an island was planned for this weekend, but they left Friday night by boat from Tokyo, while I was drinking with my teachers. There is another trip that will take me back to Okutama, the first hike I did with the outdoor club. The plan is to leave tomorrow, hike for several hours, stay in a lodge for the night, and check out a cave the next day. We will be hiking the tallest mountain in Tokyo prefecture (Kumotori-yama), and visiting the largest cave (Nippara) in the Kanto region (which includes Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, and Kanagawa prefectures).

Tuesday I will rest up for my planned climb of Mt Fuji on Wednesday/Thursday. Fuji is so huge that most people climb all day the first day, rest in one of several huts most of the way up the mountain for a few hours, and try to reach the peak at dawn, which is supposed to be one of the most amazing sights you will ever see. A good part of the second day is spent getting off the mountain.

Next weekend looks free at the moment. The rainy season has, I believe, officially ended. Despite that, it did rain quite a bit yesterday. However, it brought a brief respite from the heat, which has been hovering around 35 C, or 95 F for most of the last week. I've been trying to get a weather widget to work on this blog, so you all can see how ridiculous the weather is over here, but so far it seems buggy and instantly reverts to the default of New York instead of displaying the weather in Omiya.

I hear that it will rise above 35 C for most of next month, in addition to being humid, which is why even Japanese people detest their summer weather.

Cheers,