富士山 Mount Fuji

Let me start this out by saying that nothing that you are about to read will do anything that has been done, seen, or talked about justice. There is no way that any of it can be reproduced by the 10-45 minutes it takes for you to read this depending on your distraction level. This is also me trying to make up for ten days of not writing. They happen to be ten days in which everything under the sun did happen, so here we go…

Last Friday I didn’t have school because of school on the previous Saturday. I spent the morning at home and then took the bus into town for a Rotary meeting. The meeting was fun. I was able to communicate with people more than usually, so hopefully that gave some of them the idea that they want to maybe do something with me. That day there was a new Rotary member that was being acknowledge as now being a full member. He sat at the guest table with me and it was fun talking with him. I was able to use my Rotary business card to show them where in the US I come from (on the back is a map of the US)! Thanks Rotary! I also had a nice long chat with my next host father. He is a busy member of Rotary and is very excited to have me coming. Yay! I told him a little about what my daily schedule is like, so hopefully that will help with the transition. I will moving there in about a week (Sunday, November 17). It will be a very short week as I pack up my room and spend as much time with the Tani family as possible.

After the Rotary meeting, I decided to explore Kawachinagano a little bit, seeing as I really don’t know where anything is or how anything connects. It turned into a three hour expedition that was super fun and helped me figure out where some stuff is. I started out by walking to the library and checking out a couple books. We’ll see if I can actually get through them very fast. They were Eragon and DUNE. My next destination was Teragaike Park just uphill from Nagano High School. It was beautiful!

There were fountains and a large pond. I made my way around the pond and investigated a bunch of spider webs with really spectacular spiders in them.

In the pond there were a bunch of turtles that must have been  habituated (if turtles can be habituated…that’s seems like an odd thing to say…) because when they saw my shadow the call swam over and poked their heads out of the water expectantly.

Sorry, guys. No food! There must have been some elementary school field trip because there were a ton of elementary school kids in the park with their teachers. As I passed, some kids piped up and said “hello” to me. I responded with “konichiwa” and proceeded to watch and laugh as their eyes got as big as dinner plates and starting whispering to each other about how I could speak Japanese. My favorite part was when their teacher told them that not all foreigners speak English. That teacher deserves a ton of respect!

My next point of exploration was Nagano Park. I was about two kilometers away, but it was worth it! It covers this small mountain right next to the train station. The view was incredible!

There was a really cool playground and some very decent open and flat space. It made me wish I had a Frisbee! When I left the park, I headed south and walked around through a large neighborhood. It was very pretty and the sun made it all look San Francisco.

I think the hills were the main contributors to the feeling. I ended up walking to Mikkaichi station which is one station south from Kawachinagano station (2 kilometers). There I randomly ran into Jaimee, the exchange student from Australia. She had to go to school that day and was just returning home. We talked for a while and then I took the train back to Kawachinagano station. That evening I went to aikidou and then returned home.

The next day was pretty relaxed. I thought about blogging so you wouldn’t be reading so much right now, but then I decided to make you all suffer. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!... Anyway… I went to to lunch with Nanako, Mitsuki, and Mama Akane. The restaurant we went to has an all you can drink bar, so I made sure I became very hydrated. The highlight of my hydration was this bright green drink. It’s melon flavored Fanta! In the US, we only have orange flavored Fanta.

On Sunday morning Baba, Gigi, and I all got up and left the house at five AM. Why, you may ask, would someone in their right mind get up at five AM on a Sunday morning. Well, there is only one good reason for that and that is that we went to see Mount Fuji!!! WOOOOOOOO!!! I’m going to start this off by just stating how grateful I am to Baba and Gigi for taking me on such an incredible trip.

Right, we left at five AM and picked up my host uncle, Yu-chan, and host cousin, Rene-chan, and then started the six hour drive. It was a beautiful drive. I’d only ever seen the Kansai area, so seeing areas that didn’t have ten people per square foot was refreshing. There were mountains everywhere as well as ocean views. At one point we went past this famous name.

That is the actual city where those cars are made. Yay!

The prefectures that were new to me that we traveled through were Mie, Aichi, Shizuoka, and Yamanashi. That means that I’ve been to ten of the forty-seven prefectures in Japan. That’s kinda cool!

When we first saw Mount Fuji, I almost fell out of my seat in the car. It was so impressive! When you see pictures of Mount Fuji and think “Where are all the other mountains”, that’s exactly what happens in real life. In reality, there are some pretty tall peaks around Mount Fuji, but they really don’t compare at all. Fuji-san is breath-taking, jaw-dropping, pant-wetting, and brain-busting. I can’t really describe what it was like. It was just so big. 3,776 meters (12,356 feet) tall to be exact. No other adjective really describes it’s size better than abso-ginourmously massive. Yes, that is right out of my Japanese-English dictionary. In fact, that’s what the direct translation of 富士山 (Fuji-san) is. I fact-checked with multiple sources, too, and the only difference was whether they chose to add “-freakin-“ in between “abso-“ and “-ginourmously”. Ok, I’ll get back on track now and keep what little credibility I have left.

We worked our way around the south and east sides of the mountain to get the where we could drive up it. As we got closer, we were able to see some significant snow on the top. We finally left the cities on the south and east bases of Fuji and began to work towards the north side. We went through what had to be a five to six kilometer long tunnel and emerged into beautiful countryside. All the trees were changing to orange, red, and yellow. It was gorgeous! At some points the trees gave way to fields of Susuki grass (Japanese Pompous grass) and the view was even more impressive.

On the north side, we got onto the road the goes up part of the mountain. At the entrance they had this song that played as you drove over different sizes of grooves in the road. It’s a little hard to hear because the GPS is talking and the car was speeding up, but it’s a song about coming to see Mount Fuji.

We passed through the entrance gate and began the thirty minute trip half-way up the mountain. Along the way there were places to rest at certain altitudes. They are the traditional heights for hikers to stop at. The road stops at the fifth out of eight resting spots (2,305 m). There are a bunch of restaurants and gift shops.

It was also a mite big chilly and Rene-chan ran around trying to stay warm. We had lunch in a little cafeteria and then Gigi and I went for a two-hour hike. It was easy going because so many people hike the same route.

There has been a lot of work done to prevent erosion, so a lot of the walking is not at a very extreme angle. There is also a lot of infrastructure to prevent more erosion during the spring melt. Erosion is a huge problem on the mountainside because it’s all volcanic rock-crumble and none of it sticks together well. You could push your index finger all the way up to your knuckle right on the mountainside.

Because of volcanic soil, there are very few varieties of plants that grow there. The only ones that can are these. This also includes the few animals that adventure the harsh terrain.

Gigi and I climbed up into the treeless area of Mount Fuji and made it between the sixth and seventh stations before having to turn back because of time. You can’t go to to top of Mount Fuji between September 2 and June 30 because this sign says so.

It was so gorgeous! The summit always had a hat of clouds sitting on it while we were there. We were also able to hear the wind from our position a thousand meters below it. I was sad to not be able to get to the snow, but the fact that I was even on the side of Mount Fuji is enough for me. It was so kind of Gigi and Baba to take me.

When we returned to the fifth station and had snack. I was able to consume all of Mount Fuji while we sat there at 2,000 meters on it’s slopes.

After quite a bit of souvenir buying, it was time to head down. The surrounding landscape had begin to fog over and the surrounding midget-mountains were poking up out of it. What a fantastical wonderland!

Since Mount Fuji has a welcome song, it was only appropriate to have one the way out to say goodbye with. Again, a little hard to hear because of the GPS. It was also an amusing rendition because we had to slow down for some bikers. The road really had it’s key changes down!

We drove to our hotel. Japanese hotels are quite fancy and incredibly hospitable. The only curious thing was that check-in time starts at five, so the lobby is full of families waiting for their rooms until then. It was worth it, though. We had this view of Mount Fuji from our balcony.

This is what a Japanese hotel room looks like.

The platform has tatami mats on it and a short table to sit around on cushions. The closet behind it is full of futons that can be put down on the tatami for more sleeping places. Other than that, everything is the same as an American hotel room. EXCEPT: There are little chocolate cookies provided to eat with morning tea/coffee. OH! They also supply these cool sleeping gowns. This picture makes it look like a hospital smock, but they are like light-weight kimonos.

Dinner was all-you-can-eat and all sorts of delicious Japanese food. I might have eaten more than my fair share, but it’s a buffet. What do you expect? Rene-chan had quite a good time at the dessert table.

After Gigi and Baba went to bed, Rene-chan, Yu-chan, and I explored the hotel. We first went to the gift shop and snooped around. There was Fuji EVERYTHING. Here’s a small list.

Fuji soda

Fuji KitKat

Fuji Hello Kitty

Fuji Sake

Fuji Chocolate

Fuji Swim Suit

Fuji Towel Holder

Fuji Carabiner

People are willing to buy anything. Next, we went to the hotel arcade. There were many different ways to through your money out the window, so we did some of that. I think my favorite machine was this rock-paper-scissors game. There were many people who were in the arcade alone, but I don’t think any of them were so lonely they would play it.

This was a “big prize” you could win.

In the morning, the weather was rainy and Mount Fuji was not in the least visible. We had all-you-can-eat breakfast of everything under the sun (or rain, as it turned out). We then visited the hot spring at the hotel. It was outside and beautifully decorated with trees and rocks. If it were not rainy, we would have had the perfect view of Mount Fuji. I would have taken a picture, but there were other people in there when we were. Here’s a substitute for it just outside!

Mount Fuji has five decent-size lakes around it. We drove around one and stopped to look at swans investigating their older cousins.

Rene-chan was brave and investigated a little more closely than I’m sure any of the adults felt was safe, but they were extremely used to humans and just wanted a little bread.

We also saw the older cousin’s older cousin. Apparently the price for riding the oldest swan cousin is half when you can’t see Mount Fuji, so we went for it!

It was a fun ride around Yamanaka Lake and we had some great views of the surrounding hills.

Near the end of the ride, some mountains began to peak their heads out. At one point a whole bunch of dogs got on. It was hysterical to see them all in their sweaters and shirts!

In the water by the dock were a bunch of koi that we bought some fish food for. They were very ravenous and did not hesitate to pig pile on one-another. They were huge!

Next to the koi and minding it’s own business was this beautiful swan.

It was enjoying the fish food. I think it’s ok that all this wildlife was being feed this food because it is all one size and highly unlikely for the animals to choke on them. It’s much better than them eating any random food that people want to give them.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting the other four lakes. They were all beautiful and would have had magnificent views of Mount Fuji had it been visible. The sun was out where we were, but at the top of Mount Fuji, that was a different story. Here’s the last lake we stopped at and ate lunch at.

In the little store connected to the restaurant, I found this box of Fuji chocolate.

By loving people, you too can continue to have symbols from ancient times.

That was pretty much our trip to Mount Fuji. It was so nice of Gigi and Baba to take me! I can’t believe how nice it was of them! It has been the most incredible experience I have had so far in Japan.

Ok, so now for a quick thought: traffic signals. They work exactly the same as they do in the US and all the colors mean the same thing. The only difference is what they are called. This signal right here means “go”.

The Japanese say that the color of this signal is blue. Yes, they do realize that the color of it is green, but they call it blue. I’m not sure at all why. Is it called that in Europe, my Rotary friends? It’s a mystery to me.

I decided that I wanted to run from the Tani family store in Kawachinagano to the Tani’s house in Takihata (8 km away). This morning I walked with Gigi to Tani Tool so I could see the route. It took an hour and a half to walk, but was through beautiful forest and small neighborhoods. After school, I ran it. It was a really fun run and I was happy to be outside and in the forest. It’s sad that I won’t have another opportunity to this because I’ll be switching to Michimoto-san’s house next week. L I’ll have to come visit the Tani’s by running there!

Thanks for putting up with my ultra-long post. I hope you’re still awake or actually reading this! The gaps that I didn’t cover during the week were filled up with school, soft tennis, band, or eating, so you didn’t miss much. I’ll try and post a little more frequently so you die from boredom or have cobwebs growing on you.

Again, I’m so happy and thankful that Gigi and Baba took me on such a great trip. It was such a special experience that I will definitely remember it as one of the big parts of my year.

またね！

Wes