Climbing Mt. Fuji

We climbed mount Fuji Wednesday night..
Since it seemed like the only best weekend to climb it because the designated climbing season was ending soon.. It was a mistake to take the chance even though the weather forecast was 40% thunder showers.

The round trip cost of going to mt fuji was 6000 yen. PRicey :(
I packed my gloves, wool hat, scarf, the type of pants you wear for snowboarding/skiing and such, rain jacket from daiso, food, water and other miscellaneous things.

We started climbing at around 8pm and we took a few wrong turns.. it was pitch black so it was really hard to tell which way to go. At one point, we took the path of a bulldozer and the other time we walked up the path in which people were supposed to come down from... No one was on the same path as us before we reached the 7th station, that's when we went back to the real path. It was crazyyy, because my camera sucks, i couldn't capture the amazing view of the tour groups and whatnot carrying their flashlights/headlights walking up the long winding path up mt fuji. It's something you'll have to see for yourself. As we climbed up the temperature dropped as expected... it also started raining a bit but we had our rain jackets. But we were also sweating from before so I was soaked in sweat cus my sweater sucked like that :S. Anyways... I was getting really tired.. I was constantly lagging behind and wanting to get this over with.. Breaks were very frequent.. and the air was getting thinner.

Before we knew it, we reached the top, drenched from rain and sweat, exhausted and cold, we huddled and shivered. It was around 2:30am when we reached the top and sunrise wasnt till 5am... There was no form of warm shelter until about 1 hr later when the shop opened its doors.. they sold ramen, udon and other various warm things.. I think it saved my life.. saved us from freezing to death that is. Seriously.. Around sunrise time we felt it was time to walk to the place to see it which is around a 30 min walk from where we were resting. When we went outside, it seriously felt like we were in a blizzard.. I started to shiver violently and knew that it was impossible to go any further.. we all decided to screw the sunrise and made our way back to shelter. Our lives were more important than a sunrise. (that probably couldn't be seen due to all of the clouds and fog..) We were tired, sleep deprived and cold.. realized that we needed to get going and staying longer wouldn't help us if the rain was coming. Going down would be worse if we waited it out. One of us in particular did not feel well and feared hypothermia.. we had to get outa there. We ran for our lives (literally) raced down the mountain. We began to feel warmer from the movement and away from the summit of Mt. Fuji.

Down the moutain was 100x easier than going up. We no longer needed our flashlights because it wasnt pitch dark and the sun helped a lot. Going down the mountain the landscape was completely different from what we had seen while going up Mt. Fuji. It was really neat seeing the tour groups go down with us too, they were all really prepared and had the correct gear.. After getting back to the 5th station, we quickly changed and got outa there.

After thoughts:
Never go up mount fuji or any other mountain if the weather forecast says there's a chance of thunderstorm/rain...
IF you decide to go, be prepared, get the right amount of  clothing. Even if it's friggin hot anywhere else in japan, up the mountain is completely opposite.

Weekend July 13-14

Weekend
Ramen Museum
Saturday, we headed for Yokohama for some trip planning in August... We went into some random university's library and got kicked out... haha s'alright. At least we have our night bus tickets booked. After that, we headed for the Ramen museum since it wasn't too far... It was pretty cool, could've been bigger. Inside the ramen museum was a recreation of... old school japan I guess. It seemed like we were outside on the streets at night with many ramen shops around. We didn't try the ramen though, they were a bit expensive. One of our travelling buddies has an authentic ramen shop near his apartment so we decided to eat there instead. Before we went we thought we would check out a garden at some station.. but turns out it was closed.. :( The ramen was really salty as warned by my friend, we had many cups of cold and refreshing water afterwards. It was great actually! The soup was really rich and I don't think I've had such great ramen before! =D

The guys that made the awesome ramen

Odawara Castle
On Thursday, we went to see Odawara Castle. It wasn’t what we
expected, wasn’t as grand as we thought it would be… The trip was a
bit expensive too. Oh well. Haha. Got a few pictures and lounged
around on the bench things on the top floor of the castle for
approximately 1 hr to get our money’s worth. XD Again, I marveled at
all of the cute souvenirs you can purchase – special souvenir hello
kitty pens are available at every touristy spot you can think of in
Japan. They’re quite expensive though – averages to about 7 – 8 bucks
CAD per piece. We all got ourselves 100 yen ice cream instead. There
were a few shrines and other spots in the area but we didn’t really
feel like seeing them so we headed for Shibuya, Tokyo – a 76 min train
ride worth 1400yen. This castle certainly punched a hole in our
wallets.

Odawara Castle

Tokyo
Compared to the quiet, serene, foresty area of Odawara, Shibuya was
its complete opposite. Crowded, loud, buildings at every corner, sales
people yelling in your ears, advertisers, and flashing lights. It was
around 5pm when we arrived and everyone has just gotten off work. We
had no idea what to do so we walked around and window shopped mostly.
We visited Shibuya 109 a huge department store filled with clothes
shops for women and girls. It’s not uncommon to see sales employees
dressed extravagantly in the specialized type clothing of the shop
that they work in. It’s also not uncommon to see them yelling into
cones to amplify their voices to advertise their shop. I noticed that
this one sales girl was nearly losing her voice. But she still kept
going! This reminds me of the lunch lady at my cafeteria at work. She
would say the same phrase over and over again (arigatou gozaimashita
onegaiitashimasu!!!) with the same enthusiasm everyday at lunch,
pausing only to help another employee having trouble with returning
their plates… I admire her, to some extent. Haha…
We were all getting tired I guess, we didn’t have a normal lunch, just
made a quick stop at the convenience store in Odawara before heading
to Tokyo. After walking around a bit we had a quick dinner at …
Yoshinoya I think. It is one of the very common and popular Japanese
chain restaurants that sell relatively cheap meals. It’s typical for a
Japanese restaurant to be crowded and small. We sat the the counter
and the employees were in front of us quickly preparing meals as
customers come in every minute to get their dinner.
After dinner we felt unsatisfied at how little we accomplished that
day so we decided to head for some karaoke. Karaoke is everywhere in
Japan. It’s probably more common than Starbucks here. Groups with more
than 5 people have discount and it’s 300 yen per half hour, that’s
around 4 CAD. We stayed for about 1.5 hrs and left satisfied.. I
think. Although I think we could’ve stayed a bit longer. One of the
conclusions I made ages ago and just confirmed again last night is I
cannot sing unfortunately. It was fun nevertheless. Headed home on a
crowded train and fell into a deep sleep.

Hustle and bustle in the world's busiest intersection

Garbage, Farewells, Heat, New weekends

Garbage:

It drives me crazy. It's just so much separating the garbage :( and I feel guilty for not doing it properly. Just recently I found the schedule for the types of garbage collected everyday...  Oh well. I don't have much garbage anyways.

Farewells:
There has been big changes in our company this July... change in directors, half the people on our floor moved to different floors... and new people have moved in... currently I'm being very stubborn about it, depressed that my fave co-workers are going to the third floor and I won't be able to talk to them as often as I would have if they were still sitting across from me.. I've only known them for 1 month, but they've been the most enthusiastic, kind people I've ever met! The ones that talked to me the most actually.. Anyways I know it wont be the same anymore but I'm sure the new group members will be great as well... Yesterday, we had a farewell party at a chinese restaurant. One thing I realized about japanese people is that they like their gyoza and fried things. lol.

Heat:
Tsuyu, "raining season" in Japan, apparently from the month of June till mid July, was not what I expected. I barely rained, and it's never cold. Wow lol. Always humid. I was silly to think that Japan rainy season would be the same as vancouver rain. I swear it only rained like... maybe I dont know but never three days in a row or something. It just rained really hard for the whole night and the next day it would be super humid... Right now it's ..  really hot. :S I don't remember feeling such heat in such a long time... my advil and other food things are melting Noooooo...

New weekends:
Sooo, in efforts to reduce energy consumption, we're going to start having our weekends on wednesdays and thursdays instead of Saturday, and sunday. I'm not sure how I will survive this. I'll probably forget one of these days and go to work on wednesday or thur and realize when i get to work.. Fail. This will go on till the end of september gahh.

Tomorrow I'm going for a BBQ party at a park just outside my dormitory, and then a cooking party right after. We're going to make pasta and tiramisu, STOKED!