August

It's been a busy month. Beginning of the month involved being anxious about the coming 2 week vacation and trying to get things planned out. When vacation finally came (Aug 8 - 22) we were off to the Kansai region and surrounding areas.

Getting there
One thing we are always trying to enforce during our stay in Japan is to save money on transportation. The trains are efficient but also very costly. JR, one of Japan's train companies (there are many train companies in japan that operate trains in different regions of Japan) has this discounted ticket package called the "seishun juuhachi kippun" which translates literally to .. teenage 18 ticket. But you don't have to be 18 years old to get it. You can be a granny or grandpa or an internship student like me. There's a better deal for foreigners but we couldn't use that because ... it just doesn' t apply to us since we're staying more than a month. Anyways, I wont get into details but if you buy this ticket, you get a stamp for the day that you're travelling and you can travel anywhere using JR's trains with that one ticket and fixed price. The ticket is valid for 5 days. (doesn't have to be consecutive). It's a good deal but extremely incredibly slow, if you have the money, take the shinkansen. If you have time and want to save money, go ahead and try seishun. Make sure you know your schedule. Check out www.hyperdia.com best website ever if you want to get around anywhere using Japan's train system. After a full day of travelling, we finally arrived in the Kansai region, Nara where we stayed the night at the other co-op's apartment before travelling to Onomichi, our actual first destination!

Onomichi, Hiroshima
Long story short, we biked, we sun-baked, sweated, biked, biked, ferried, public bathed, and bummed on the streets for the first time in our lives. I'm pretty sure there were many more things to do but we were on a tight schedule and needed to head to hiroshima (main city) after staying one night and 2 days.

Nice couple we met on the train during our long journey

Biking in onomichi

 Choseikaku Villa, Setoda Island Japan

 Magnificent place, everything was blinding white. 

Still on our bikes.... it was a long, hot and humid day.

Manga cafe we intended to stay for the night didn't exist, all of the hotels ran out of rooms so we spent the night outside... Japan is a great place for bums imo. I felt totally safe with my bag out there. the only dangerous thing in the night were the mosquitoes. 

Watched the sunrise. I couldnt really fall asleep on the hard picnic table thing that we decided to camp out on.

Famous floating tori gate in Miyajima. Unfortunately I didn't get a very nice pictures. There were millions of tourists taking pics

Hiked up Mount Misen, highest point in Miyajima island 535m. It took us around 1 hr. 

After we got down, the tide came in and the tori gate was "floating" The sunset was beautiful.

We ate oyster okonomiyaki, it is the specialty food of Miyajima, either that or just Hiroshima..

The next day we went to Hiroshima (the main city) and visited the atomic bomb dome and museum which is highly recommended. Made me feel  like there's still so many things I'm not aware of... 

Hiroshima Castle at the end of the day

On the Sealiner to Takamatsu and tokushima, Shikoku!

 Finally arrived in takamatsu!!!

 After checking in our hotel in takamatsu, there was more travelling involved... went to Tokushima for the Awaodori festival!! dance for the fools.

 It was so lively, people everywhere. Festival food ftw. Didn't feel very good after trying the chicken skin dumplings tho...

 Famous dome thing in takamatsu

 Next day we went to the Shikoku Mura where they recreate a whole bunch of structures from all over shikoku island. This wooden bridge was super scary and dangerous

 um random bridge.

 Shikoku is known for their udon. It was pretty good for a reasonable price. You could also order udon in a tub!! it was really neat. But we couldnt finish that so we just ordered small individual bowls.

 Went to Ritsurin Garden afterwards. Beautiful but the pouring rain ruined half of our experience there.

 Next was Nara. Went to see the daibutsu!

 Daibutsu was ginormous!

The deer were everywhere. everywhere! You can buy rice crackers to feed them.

 We stumbled upon the obon festival. Festival for the dead. It was really beautiful. As we walked along the trail, we saw an endless trail of lanterns.

 Daimonji festival in Kyoto. We only saw two of the four (?) characters that lit up on the mountains...

 Kiyomizudera, Kyoto. Magnificent wooden temple. (above)

 Ginkakuji (silver temple) - the only thing silver was the bird thing on the roof. The garden was pretty nice.

 Kyoto, fushimi inari gates.... We went at night and were attacked by mosquitoes!!! Amazing place nonetheless

 Kinkakuji!!! Golden temple in Kyoto. Much more impressive than ginkakuji!

 Arashiyama, Kyoto bamboo forest!!

 Osaka~

 GLICOMAN!! 

There were crabs everywhere.

Osaka Castle, my favourite out of the other ones I've seen.

 Shinkansen back home.. We were exhausted.

The next weekend after our trip, we went on a 2 day trip to Hakone. That's another story.. I'm exhausted. Mann how does time go by so quickly! It's been a while since I've stayed in my dorm for so long. So far my dorm has only been a place I come back to eat dinner and sleep. This weekend will be my lazy weekend. Tomorrow I have to do some grocery shopping for my empty fridge though, and maybe do some preparation work for Friday. I have to conduct experiments to test my system.. can't screw up. I actually have to do some  quick implementation for the practice sessions... I'm not sure how well it would work X_X or whether it would work at all. I have to get to work 1 hr early to get it done tho.. Hopefully a couple of hours will suffice. *Crosses fingers*

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.

Ikebukuro, supervisor's place, life. 1 month anniversary in Japan lol

Weather: humid and hot

Well, days are moving along. Really quickly. I don't know where the time goes. I'm wondering if I'm being productive at work... Everything's a blur @_@. After I get back from japanese lessons, work or some event after work, I'm pooped, make dinner, pig out, internet, shower, and that's it! Weekends I go out but they go by really quickly too. :( I've been here for a month now, wahoo, it's my 1 month anniversary with Japan commemorating our first meeting. :)


It's what happens when I leave my blog for a while, I forget what I want to say. It's probably not too interesting anyways. Ikebukuro. Not bad. It's called Sunshine city but unforutnately it was raining that day. Still okay. We went up Sunshine 60, a building that has 60 levels. I loved the elevator ride up to the top floor. It was like we were in some mini planetarium! moving at... 600m/s or something like that @_@ forgot. Walked around, did some sightseeing. We also went to Namjatown, an amusement part in a shopping center. It was amazing. I could spend the whole day there ( i think) There's a lot to see and do especially if you speak japanese, there's all these areas you can go to and solve some puzzle... Saw some people going around to stations and doing other various activities. Went into this haunted house for 600 yen. Not sure if it was worth it but it was a new experience anyhow. Different from the type of haunted houses you see in Fright night. You go around with this scary skull like thing, take pictures at stations and you walk through dark hallways... Things pop up at you.. Much less scarier than the ones at fright night actually. XD There was also this area for desserts and another area with GYOZA tons and tons of gyoza everywhere. Apparently that's where all the top gyoza chefs make their gyoza. haha pretty neat. Both Namjatown and Sunshine 60 is a good place for couples to hang out ;). We went back to sunshine 60 at night to see the night view and there were soo many couples. We even spotted a couple making out on one of the couches with heart pillows... Moving on..
At night we were hungry, the guys wanted to check out an izakaya, found one we wanted to go, waited 40 min but they didn't give us a table (while the other people did, was it because our group was big? but stilll!) We left pissed and found a nice okonmiyaki place nearby. The waitress was kind and we had free vanilla icecream :D.

On sunday I was invited to my supervisor's place. His wife made us some good food and I learned how to play a popular game called Hanafuda. My supervisor remembered how much I loved matcha so he even got matcha warabi for us all to eat. How kind. Too kind. How can I repay him :( Oh good thing i bought that ice wine from the liquor store downtown before I arrived. They really liked the ice wine. The bottle was wayy too small though. There were 6 of us and all of us only had like... two gulps of it. eh.

The end. I feel exhausted. I didn't have a good sleep last night, couldn't fall asleep and slept around 2 ish... woke up at 5:30am thinking it was 5:30PM.. I was like "omg f** I missed a whole days of work" I think this is a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder from sleeping in and being 2 hrs late for work two weeks ago...

I was going to add photos but blogspot wont let me. Oh well. I guess I'll have to live with a chunk of text.