But you can come too, seeing as I have way too many grapes to eat by myself.
So let's all eat Japanese grapes and watch the sun set over the Seto inland sea. Deal?
Some people see such a magnificent thing and contemplate some sort of god or life's meaning or something philosophical. I think about what alternative dance moves I want to master. Thanks youtube!
I went out to Tokyo this past weekend. There was a sayonara party for Tara, who I had only met once before, but it should be fun anyways. And it was. Also, I wanted... nay needed to get my motorcycle. I'm like a fat kid without cake... I need to ride!
So Sunday was spent doing this and that in Tokyo. Some good food at this place called Chopsticks, kind of an izakaya but a little nicer, drinks at the rock and roll bar in Shibuya (it has a real name but no one knows it), some bad karaoke (is there ever good karaoke?), some ugly clubbing. ***BEGIN RANT*** Clubbing in Tokyo is epic. Seriously, there are some amazing places. But if you don't plan ahead of time, it sucks balls. Just randomly saying, "Let's go clubbing!" means you will end up in some dank place with bad music. Been there done that. Many times. It's just not fun. Give me a day's notice, lets check the lineup at Ageha, Milk, and Nuts. We can actually have a good time and not end up at Gas Panic or some hole in the wall Roppongi spot. **END RANT**
Monday I went back to Kawagoe, and rode the 12 hours back to Kure. It was overcast and rained off and on the whole time. My ipod ran out of batteries with about 20 minutes left on the trip. That's my story. I would have loved to take 2 or 3 days to take the scenic route... but this English ain't gonna teach itself!
I passed some amazing places where I would would have for sure stopped if I had the chance. Fuji, Nagano, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji... I enjoyed these wonderful places by looking at the exit ramp flying by. Also, I left kinda late due to the desire to sleep in the morning, so these wonderful destinations weren't even visible in the least. Shogunai I guess.
Charred mackerel. They charred it with a blow torch at the table.
Beef stew type stuff on toast. This food was great, Japanese Western fusion type thing. So that just meant lots of sushi, and lots of cheese.
My new students in Kure are starting to spurt out some random shit. As always, a lack of fluent Englishness and little kid antics make my day.
Homework for a 15 year old girl was writing about personality traits of people. The book is pretty advanced, and she was fine with words like energetic, egotistical, and earthy. So under the "think up your own" section, she wrote, "Komo is an alcoholic, she drinks beer every day." I didn't know exactly what to say. My response, "Who is Komo?" Her response, "My mom." Errrrmmmm. Luckily she just didn't really know what alcoholic means, she was relating it to workaholic. And the workaholic in question is her dad... go figure.
A class with four 5 year olds. They are all very fluent, having spent time in America. At one point during coloring time, one little boy jumps on another's back. He says, "Don't worry, Shintaro, it's relax time!" Then he starts giving him a full back massage for the next 10 minutes. And he actually knew what he was doing, like leg stretching and what not. "It's relax time!!!"
Another class has, among it's students, a troublemaker and the cutest little girl around. By troublemaker, I mean kind of a jerk, very mean to both me and the other students. During some challenging color this thing red session, she realized she didn't have a red pencil. He says, "Don't worry, we can share." He then snaps his red pencil in 2, and gives her the good half. Thug with a heart of gold.
Lastly, I have a little 3 year old who is obsessed with Lazy Town. I watched a lot of Lazy Town with my niece back in America, so I know most of the songs. Today we sang this one like 5 times off the CD she brought in.
She actually yelled at me one time to stop singing along, I guess I was getting too into it. Then when I started miming instead of singing, I noticed her trying her best to copy every action I did. It's also funny cause the other girl in class has no clue what Lazy Town is, but she totally wants to be Stephanie when she grows up. I'm totally gonna pick up pink wigs at the 100 yen store next time I'm there.
... is a mountain with a white... thing on it. I figured it would be fun to hike up to that... thing. Various maps and atlases indicated that there was some sort of trail up the mountain, so I set out to find it. One crappy shopping bike and one Jurassic 5 album later, I got to a trail head.
The kanji on the bottom sign is pointing to the mountain I want to climb... I think. Let me stress that all of this is based on a whim and shoddy Japanese maps that don't actually recommend anything about this hike. The concept of "climb higher and you will eventually get there" was in effect.
The trail starts out light, going along family burial altars. Most hills in Japan have burial altars on them, so this was nothing new. But then the trail split, and the choice was left or right. Left, of course! When you do a lot of random exploring, you have to have a set choice for situations like this. No debate, no coin tosses, no random number generators. Anyways, I always choose left. Today I chose wrong...
As you can see, this is what I came up. You don't see a trail? If you doubt me, check the sign.
So it was rugged, to say the least. But rugged also directly correlates to the amount of nature you will encounter. And encounter I did!
A few snakes. This one totally stared me down. We're cool though.
Snake #2. Good luck on your snakey adventures, and thanks for not trying to kill me.
This giant spider had a fresh butterfly in it's web. There were TONS of spiders. On the path. I got a face full of web at least 20 times. Then I started carrying a big stick in front of me as a preemptive measure and things got better.
Then I came across... something. Something evil. I was in a very remote, very quiet part of my hike, and I heard a noise. I stopped to listen. Then I heard a growl. Like nothing I've ever heard before. I'm serious it sounded like a jaguar or something. I stopped moving. I heard a growl again, from what seemed like the other side of the trail. "God damn homey, my mind is playing tricks on me". I have no idea what it was. Wild dog, bear, maybe a wild boar. It's low, throaty growl let me know precisely where I should be... be the fuck out! I wasn't too scared though. I mean, I had my anti-spiderweb stick on me. I could totally fling some webbing at him.
Not soon after my encounter, I came across an overgrown gazebo and benches. This whole route was overgrown, and I don't think many people hike here. I didn't see any other person until the top.
I made it. Here's the white thing that you can see from the city up close. Some sort of sciencey thing. Either that or a giant metal soccerball. And here are some shots of the 360 degree view.
This is the town of Hiro I think.
The city I live in, Kure.
After soaking up the views, time to head down. Took a different way, a very well maintained (relatively) way that put me to the right of that fork I was at earlier. Dondake!
Something about water. The katakana reads "Sapoto. Torekkigu. Guruppu." Sport. Trekking. Group. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I guess people do trekking courses up here.
In other news... It's October! Will Batman make another appearance? I still have the suit... and the skills.
And on a random note, I love this comic. From www.gregnog.com's comic about his year working at an Olive Garden.
I'm here in Kure now. My month in Maebashi is up, and I'll be finishing out my contract in Kure, Hiroshima prefecture. This shit is heeeeeeeelllla far from Tokyo.
Over 7 hour train ride from Maebashi. I broke up the ride with a bottle of wine in Ueno park, in the middle of Tokyo, so I was nice and relaxed for the 5 hour shinkansen ride. I was sure to pick up some omiyage before I left though!
I've seen these things for sale in Tokyo train stations ever since I got here. I guess banana's grow in Tokyo? Well, whatever, I got some. I thought the idea of banana's from Tokyo would be a funny ice breaker with my new staff... but they didn't seem to find any humor in it. Actually, it's been 3 days and no one but your's truly has sampled the Tokyo Banana. Tastes like a Twinkie with banana filling. Yum.
What is Kure like? Well, so far it's...nice. It is kinda a cove, surrounded by lush mountains on 3 sides, and a bustling port on the other. I have heard of nice beaches nearby, and some good hiking in the hills. I don't know what social life is like here yet, since the other teacher here just started last week. I can easily see myself relaxing for the next 3 months, saving some money, studying some Japanese or whatever.
But maybe I'll discover some way to spend all my money.
Some totem pole from Kure's sister city in Washington state.
Next: Gotta explore the west. Hiroshima, Miya-jima, and Shikoku are a couple of the tourist destinations. Also, Osaka and all that shit is fairly close, maybe a few hours away.
It's the iconic symbol of Japan. The perfectly shaped conic mountain that is on every foreigner's list of things to do. I had planned to climb it a few times, but plans kept falling through. There is only a short 2 month season where it is readily accessible. Outside of the hiking season, the huts on the mountain close, the buses stop running, and the mountain becomes very cold and dangerous. We decided to hike it 2 days past the official end of the hiking season. This meant that there were no crazy lines to get to the top, no really young or really old folks, and a more relaxed hike. But on the other hand, it meant we had about 24 hours to do the hike instead of the 7 that we needed. The bus schedule just didn't work out to our advantage. We took it really slow. You may think this is better, taking it slow and easy. But in reality it just meant a lot of time freezing our asses off when we weren't moving.
Famous Mt. Fuji peach ice cream.
The shadow of the mountain as the sun was setting. As you can see, the weather up on the mountain was clear and perfect. There was a sea of clouds covering everything in the distance. Beautiful.
The route we took up, on the north side, still had plenty of omiyage shops open.
You can buy a crappy wooden hiking pole and get stamps burnt into it at every station. I'll settle for a photo of some random person's.
So we passed hut after hut, stopping at each one to rest and chat with other people. It was hot and we were feeling good. Then the sun went down. We kept warm by hiking, but the top wasn't far away. This was a very easy hike. Not technical at all. The lack of oxygen is noticeable near the top, but not enough to warrant the overuse of portable oxygen containers that every Japanese person had with them.
We tried to sleep for a bit around the 8th station. You can actually sleep in any of the many huts along the way, but we were being cheap, and $60 to sleep for a few hours didn't seem worth it. To sum up the night... it was very cold. But we did get to see a red moon rise, and we had a nice time with some astrophysics grad students trying to point out the different constellations.
On top dawn was spectacular. Like a rainbow on the horizon, a few hundred people lined the rim of the mountain's crater to watch the sun rise. Screams of "Banzai!" were shouted when the sun finally rose.
A short hike around the rim to the actual highest point, and the ups were done.
Time for the downs.
Taking a southern trail down held the promise of a giant volcanic sand dune that you could literally run down. I couldn't pass this up. But apparently everyone else could. I saw a total of 4 other people on the whole hike down. And then at the bottom we found out the bus wasn't running. But luckily we ran into 2 other foreigners with the same problem and we split a cab. We got to the train and I had a lovely 6 hour train ride back to Maebashi.
That's the sand dune in the distance. It was pretty amazing. You could run at full bore. There was no one around, so I was being dumb and doing tricks off of the larger rocks on the side of the trail. I had my hiking pack on, and was filming with my camera. All this and a little dehydration led to me slipping and eating it pretty hard. I managed to save the camera by sacrificing the skin on my forearm.
The huts on this side of the mountain were closed I think.
Over a month ago, but here's what I got into in Okayama.
Weekdays were spent dodging hostess bar touts on my bicycle as I looked for somewhere interesting to eat. Lunches were good, for some reason there was an abundance of French cafes. But come dinner time, nothing was to be found. Rumors of an awesome burger place just led to me exploring the seedy downtown area. What is seedy? I took some photos:
This is of course a place where you can go to find info about various hostess bars, snack pubs, etc. Basically just info on the working girls.
I tried them all.
???
A normal sex information booth. But check out this next one!
If you live in Japan, this is funny. Here's a photo of a very popular nation wide convenience store.
I wanted a rice ball but came out with a cheap hand job...
Moving on... I went to the Okayama Digital Museum. Very strange place. The top floor permanent exhibit was a huge aerial photo of the city, with computers on wheels you could roll over and get info.
My company headquarters.
On the lower floor was this really really strange exhibit. Nonsense Machines are 26 different apparatuses, each one inspired by fish. Things like a machine that bruises you with fish scales to make a temporary tattoo...
to a fish looking bow...
to a fetus shaped talking gun.
It was humorous and the exhibit was well displayed. No photos allowed, so I had to sneak these. The fish typewriter, where a fish swimming would control a typewriter to create a book written by the fish was brilliant.
Kurashiki
I spent half a day in Kurashiki. There is a quaint little canal area with tons of omiyage shops. But the real draw here is the Ohara Museum. Japanese art person bought up a good collection of western and Japanese modern art. Lots of French Impressionist, Italian Renaissance, and a good showing of what was important in the 20th century art world. No photos, but I managed to ninja some anyways.
