Well, I think it's always important to begin with first things first. In case you haven't heard, there were circumstances, and I came to have a mohawk briefly (for a little less than a month). Brace yourself...
You only live once, right? We had a good time, my mohawk and I...
We met a Maiko-san! (A geisha-in-training). Maiko-san are very young, they start at age 14 or so, this girl was 17. She was very awesome. She did traditional dances for us and answered our nosy questions about what Maiko life is like. They only get two days off from work a month. Our Maiko-san usually goes to the movies. My impression overall was that Maiko/Geisha have a serious dedication to their art.
We also went to one of the monthly markets! There were tons of very Japanese things there. Here I am picking out a frosted glass bead that I haggled down to 200円. If you have any specific requests for souvenirs, by the way, now would be the time to get those in! I'd like to try and bring back everybody at least a little something. :)
We journeyed together to a very big castle called Himeiji. It was quite pretty. The train ride there actually cost more than entrance to the castle, though...
I also have gone out for some beers with friends! Look at me, I'm legal! :) In any case, shortly after this was taken I said goodbye to my mohawk. Sufficiently less cool, I decided to try to remedy my awesome index with a trip up Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan! (Well that wasn't the real reason, but it does score pretty high on the awesome index I think).
So! The tale of Mt. Fuji. We started out at the train station, looking and feeling alert, even though it was about 7:30 AM on a Saturday. We took a very long bus ride out to the mountain and up to the "5th station", a little less than halfway up. We started climbing from there at about 6 PM in the evening.
It was pretty rough going. The beginning of the trail was made up of "switchbacks", or gravel paths that switched back and forth like a zigzag so you didn't have to climb straight up. Darkness fell pretty soon after we started, and we all whipped out our various forms of light. And yeah, I know you're pretty jealous of my LED headlamp.
At about 10 PM me and my climbing mates reached the first "8th station" (roughly three hours from the top, yeah!). We were supposed to stop here and rest for a couple of hours, but because there are inexplicably three different stations called "8th station", we forged on to what was called "the original 8th station". (By the way, for the Americans in the audience, 3,250m is about 10,662ft!)
Well, in the end we were wrong about the "original 8th station". We were supposed to stay at the first "8th station", but by the time we realized our error we were about an hour and a half of climbing up rocks too far afield. Sad that we weren't going to get our power nap on the floor of one of the mountain huts (Mt. Fuji is all about the splendor), we resigned to waiting until the rest of the group caught up to us in the next couple of hours. We made a nest, but no one really slept. We just kept warm for a while, entertained ourselves, and drank some hot cocoa to keep warm. Finally, when the group caught up to us, we began the last stretch up to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise (scheduled for about 4:30 AM).
And we made it! About 10 min. before sunrise everyone was awake, alert, and at the top of Mt. Fuji, all 3,766m of her! The sunrise was breathtakingly beautiful and made the whole 9 hour climb worth it.
Predawn...
The sun creeps up.
In all its glory.
After watching the sun come up (and waiting 20 minutes to use the only toilet on the top of the mountain), we made our way down, which only took about 4 hours, but was incredibly painful. (This photo was taken before we really started...) By the end of it we were exhausted, sweaty, dirty, sore, and ready for some new feet. I climbed on the bus and passed out almost instantly. On the way home we visited a hot spring, which was lovely for my poor blistered feet, and then made the rest of the epic bus journey back.
And I believe that's all the photos I have for now. This past week has been a couple of final exams and projects, interspersed with extreme bouts of sleeping in an attempt to recover from Mt. Fuji. Last night was our first official "goodbye party". :( We went out to eat at a restaurant where they showed a slideshow of pictures from this semester and the previous one, then we hung around by the river. It's still early for true goodbyes, but in reality we really don't have much time left. I'm uncertain what's in store for me in these last few weeks. (Aside from the inevitable pain of finals). I'll try and keep you updated, but I can't make any promises! (Such a terrible blogger...) Peace and good will from the land of watching the sun rise from above the clouds...
1 comment:
LED headlamp == new hotness
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