So, I began traveling in a direction I usually go for various shopping/paying bills errands, but I went much further than usual. The road changed and became much smaller, no traffic due to the time of night but, the sidewalk changed significantly and became smaller and closer to the traffic. Eventually, I saw a small mountain off in the distance…..it got closer and closer as I continued down the road I was on. I was a bit excited upon seeing this, not having realized at this time how mountainous Sendai is if you look in the right places. After a while….I saw some trees and houses and as I looked up I saw that it was that same small mountain behind those houses. I was rather surprised when I got to that point, amazed to see that the mountain was so accessible. I dismounted my bike and climbed up a small concrete ramp to ascend to where the houses were. It was just barely getting light at this point from the infant sunrise, so the area was essentially deserted of people. Also, at this point in the year, it was pretty cold….meaning all the insects were dead….but I had a good jacket on so regardless of the cold weather my personal body temperature was quite comfortable. Basically, it was the perfect time to start climbing….no insects, not too cold, enough light from the rising sun to see where I am going but so early that no one else was around to see me climb (in Japan, I guarantee they would have called the police immediately and a search party would have scaled the mountain to remove me as soon as possible so they could tell me how absolutely against the rules that is). So, I walked over to the bottom of the mountain, which was located in a residential area. I was essentially directly behind a line of houses. Of course there was no trail (it wasn’t really a mountain made for climbing). It was a pretty small mountain actually, maybe even considered a large hill (I really don’t know what the specifics are on separating a mountain from a hill)….but it had lots of foliage and trees on it.

It was one of those things I had some decisions to make as far as where to start climbing…..there was some kind of huge irrigation or stability system that was made out of concrete….tried that first with little luck. It consisted of very large concrete squares and as if that alone isn’t difficult to climb, it makes the fall very dangerous and was speckled with long sharp branches coming out which got in the way. Then some really thick foliage area….which I couldn’t really get my way through. So finally I found a small concrete irrigation run that had apparently mandated the clearing of some of the foliage so it was a perfect starting point.

It was a lot of fun to climb. Slippery, steep, and difficult to find good footing so it was mostly grabbing onto trees and branches to climb. At one point I had to break off a branch and actually jab it into the ground like a knife in order to get friction, because some parts of the hill were so frictionless that I couldn’t get a good foot hold to push myself up. I don’t have too many pictures except of the general plant life around the area:

Anyways, it was a cool experience to climb alone and I really liked it…when I got to the top I even saw several stone tablets, literally in the middle of no where connected to no path and with you real way to reach them other than climbing randomly up the mountain like I did. Took several pictures of them because I thought they were interesting.

The first big rock I saw

This is a close up on the text of the first big rock.

The first Kanji in this one is “Sendai”, the city where I live. Don’t know the rest.

Never really figured out exactly what they said, I need to ask a Japanese person about that, now that I think of it. Maybe they are grave related.

I remember getting to the top and feeling such a surprising sense of freedom when there. Like I was set free from the annoying little things that had annoyed me that day – as if I had suddenly realized their insignificance….almost immediately upon thinking of them. It’s funny to me how one of the things I preach the most and always try to consider when making all my decisions is the relativity of our world in its current state. The way things seem to be approximately the same no matter what decision is made…..whether I break up with a girlfriend or not…..whether I win the lottery or not……it seems that if good things happen a lot than that person can be brought down into a depressed state by things that wouldn’t bring a normal person down, and the opposite of course is true as well. In other words, the more happy you are the more sensitive to depression you are, and the more depressed you are the more sensitive to happiness you are. Even realizing this on several levels….thinking about it a whole lot and even writing about it several times….I remain depressed by certain insignificant things from time to time. I have managed to get rid of those useless, wasteful feelings for the most part but…I can’t deny that they still come back and haunt me from time to time, taking control of me and stripping me of my wits to some extent. Being on top of the mountain that I climbed for no reason other than to prove to myself that I could somehow set me free completely, but temporarily, from these feelings. I remember feeling a kind of elation that multiplied quickly, almost exponentially, as I came to understand more and more that I could chase away these annoying feelings using logic. As I realized I had this power I became happier and happier. I didn’t worry about anything….about getting down the mountain, about the insects crawling on me, about the cuts on my hands from climbing a nearby tree. I wouldn’t say it was enlightening by any stretch but, it was a really nice feeling that I was a bit surprised to feel.

I climbed down and took a video at the end that shows some of the area where I started and exited so you can get at least some idea of what I am talking about. You can see it using the link below.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-580579522961414383&hl=en

Truthfully, I was a little delirious when I climbed I think. It was very late, and I had been up for quite a while, and as I said I was also feeling a bit down when I went. However, even after climbing down and going back to the dorms I was kind of excited and felt many times better. It was great being at the top all alone. I think it would have been even nicer if I wasn’t relatively close to houses which took away a bit from the nature feeling of the experience but, it was still a nice feeling of isolation that helps clear the mind. I also felt like I had distinctly done something only for my own desire. I didn’t climb the mountain for any other reason than I had saw it and thought it would be fun and interesting. And I took some chances too, climbing in places I had never been at before….on terrain I didn’t know well that was slippery and filled with insects. And for no particular reason….pretty much just pointed out the mountain and said “I want to climb it”. And alone. It might sound stupid to you now but, it was really great at the time and I hope that at all stages of my life I will have at least enough courage to do things like that. I used one stick in particular a lot to climb up the mountain and especially to slow my fall as I slid down – so I took this stick home as something of a souvenir. It’s still in my room right now .

Anyways, this is only the first part of the story, so I will hurry to explain the other part. On my way home from here, I saw that there was a river down below. A few weeks….maybe even a month or so went by and suddenly it was getting warm. On one of the first very nice days where I was free, I went back and down there to check out the river. This was another really cool and random day, but I will be brief about it since I have 0 pictures to supplement the story due to my forgetfulness of bringing a camera and inability to take digital pictures with my eye balls.

When I first arrived at the river I looked for a while to find a way down. Eventually I found a ridiculously steep road that went down, so I went down this with my bike at approximately 300 miles an hour, and this road took me all the way down the hill (this was so steep that on the way back up I literally couldn’t bike – I had to walk my bike. Just didn’t have the strength to fight gravity at that angle). I found a nice river, which was still absolutely freezing cold at the time. I started to follow it and although pretty close to houses and random people walking around, it was still a nice environment. After a while I found another great walking stick, it was a bamboo stick. I didn’t realize how ridiculously awesome bamboo was until I got here in Japan. Some bamboo sticks can grow 2-3 inches per day – I’ve heard that there are some exceptions that are even faster than that. Apparently it’s the only plant you can actually SEE growing if you watch it for long enough. Additionally, it is a brilliant climbing tree (I’ve been to a few bamboo forests here in Japan and I certainly didn’t pass up the opportunity to climb some trees).

Also, the shoot, when it first grows, is edible and is used in many Asian dishes, I have eaten it here before and it’s nothing special but it’s not bad. Kind of like a potato maybe. I’ve even heard that in some Chinese medicines it can be used as a disinfectant, or something. And most importantly when broken off and left to dry, they become extremely light and extremely strong sticks, perfect for a lot of things, including making it a great walking stick. So, me and my trusty bamboo stick got to hop around on rocks, wade through practically a forest of super high grass and other plants, and in general had a nice little hike together for a half an hour or so before I saw a small island positioned in the river. It was big, as large as a full house…and after seeing it I knew immediately that I needed to get on top of it. I surveyed the area, however, and it turned out to seem much more difficult than I had thought. Not only was it cut off by water on ALL sides (and trust me, I looked) but additionally in no places was the water separation short enough to jump. A few places might have been possible but I would have gotten my lower body wet. After walking around for quite some time….I realized I was in someones backyard, essentially. Was a pretty cool place, they had their own little garden and a small bamboo forest that I assume was also their property. They had cut down many of their bamboo sticks and let the dry, and then used them to make fences sectioning off the different parts of their garden. The whole place had a real homey feel to it and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was romping around through someones precious gardening experiment, so I was careful to stay clear of all the things that it looked like I might be able to ruin.

I determined that a place just before this persons backyard was the best way to get across to the island. As mentioned, there was no way jump or just walk across land, so I had to walk across the river. This would be no problem, just take off shoes and socks and go for it….and that’s what I thought and did but, the water was moving pretty rapidly. At first when I saw it I thought I would barely notice it once my feet were submerged but wow, that is some powerful water. I guess it’s my first experience with that type of natural phenomenon so I assume that’s why I underestimated its power so blatantly. It was so powerful that I had to use a bamboo stick that I had grabbed a while ago for balance and, without that I feel I likely would have fallen. First of all, the first step into the water was ridiculously cold and my feet were numb before long. Doesn’t sound like too big of a problem maybe but, feeling in the feet is quite useful when you are trying to feel out the best rocks to step on. The rocks were covered in moss and although not sharp or dangerous since the water had battered them down to a smooth finish over what is probably decades or much more of work….they were quite slippery and covered in some kind of moss that made them feel like they had even less grip than ice does. I moved slowly and, eventually, finally made it to the island, climbing up and cutting my feet a few times in the process (now I know to sit on the side and put my shoes on first instead of trying to climb up to avoid getting my shoes wet….stupid).

This actually just got me to a piece of land that I could jump from and make it to the island but, it was easily close enough for a jump without getting wet so was no problem. I was really happy to have succeeded in making it to the island since it turned out to be such a chore. A bit odd that when tasks are more difficult they are immediately more fun to complete. I also felt happy that people had seen me do it, because a group of guys doing work by the shore first saw me looking at the island and running all around trying to find a way to get to it. Then I disappeared from their view and 15 minutes later suddenly appeared again this time on top of the island. I got some applause from them and we made some friendly gestures at each other, it was good fun and we were all smiling and laughing. One of the few times I communicated with Japanese people without any barrier of language, since we were too far to speak. I left my mark on the island by building my initials with rocks and concrete stones and managed to take a picture with my crappy cell phone camera but, unfortunately, I don’t know where that one is. If I find it I will edit this post. I remember the island had a small beach, which was cool. The island was very small so, so was the beach….but it had a lot of sand and some scattered rocks so, I thought it was interesting. I wonder how all that sand was created on such a small little island. I guess it’s just an extremely small version of everyday beaches…..they have to start somehow, right?

Maybe the coolest part of the trip was on my way back. I walked back to my things (I had left my jacket on the other side of the stream) and I saw a Japanese man who was walking his dog standing over my jacket. He was looking at me with a big smile, which is very uncommon and not at all what I expected from a Japanese. He was older but, not too old, maybe 60′s or even early 70′s. He smiled and laughed a bit trying to ask how I got over. I pointed to the place where I crossed and the old man walked around for a few seconds in thought and then pointed to a better place for me to cross saying something in Japanese like “maybe better here” or “try here”. It was so relieving. I had certainly expected him, being Japanese, to start freaking out and screaming “FORBIDDEN….THAT IS FORBIDDEN” and looking at me with no smile but a look of horror or hatred. Then walk away shaking his head because of how rude and stupid foreigners are, and how they could do something so absolutely crazy. But this man was different, and I can’t explain how much I was relieved to not find the average lifeless Japanese man. I think maybe it has something to do with him living in that sort of place, having his own garden (I assume that house was his…I was on his property when I crossed, probably), he was dressed as if he was ready for nature. I think he had done his share of hiking as well.

Anyways, I tried his way and, what do you know it actually was a bit easier. He watched me the whole time with a smile and laughed a bit when I made it over, nodding at me maybe with a bit of approval. It was one of the times in Japan that I have wanted to speak Japanese the most. He spoke no English and I tried to say some things in Japanese but think I just sounded mostly like an idiot, not able to communicate even a percentage of the things I wanted to say. I would have asked him about the stream, about the small forest of bamboo nearby, about his garden. I think I would have made a really interesting friend that day if I could have spoke Japanese well or if he could have spoke English well. It really is too bad that it couldn’t work out like that.

So, I left that day and told my friends about the place….and eventually summer came, and with it a plethora of those hot days that are good for hiking and exploring. One day, we were eating at one of our favorite restaurants, and I realized how nice of a day out it was so I explained to them about the island. I said I would hike there and, my friend Eric was immediately on board to ditch his lab and come with. I am glad he has his priorities straight! I dislike it when people choose to do the boring, mundane safety shit consistently over the interesting, developmental shit that they will almost certainly learn more from and enjoy more. After some small amount of convincing we as a team got Andreas to come too.

So we all went down to the same place and I showed them everything I had fun with – and I told them about the island and how I got there. They, like me, were a bit annoyed that this awesome environment wasn’t in the middle of nature miles away from any other person but, quite to the contrary was right next to some houses and minutes away from a road. But, we got over that and enjoyed the day. I took them to the island the same way I had went before – but this time I didn’t forget my camera! Here are some pictures of the stream and the island in general:

Found this thing on our way to the island. An interesting little contraption someone built to take the water away from this small pipe and into the river without creating a slippery and/or visually unattractive wet spot. I like the picture because I think it’s pretty interesting how much work someone went to seemingly in their spare time just for the hell of it to solve this problem.

A picture from the island.

My friend Eric in the stream. You can see the power of the water from this picture.

Another picture of him in the stream, putting his shoes on before climbing up onto the island….I was sure to give him that advice so he didn’t make the same stupid move that I did the first time.

This is Andreas about to cross the stream, hitting the water with the bamboo stick we were using to cross.

This is a picture of the small beach area of the island and some of the background. This is not a portion of the beach, that is pretty much the whole thing – that’s why I mentioned that it was so small.

Another picture of the shore of the island.

I liked the way the ripples looked when I took a picture of this phenomenon. When just watching with the eyes, it didn’t look anything like this….but when taking a picture it would capture the water that had smashed into the rock, bounced back directly away from the rock, and pushed more water in that direction to create a ripple that is outwards and in the exact opposite direction of the direction of flow the water is taking. Thought it was kind of interesting.

You can imagine why it was slightly difficult to keep our footing when crossing.

On our way back, Andreas dropped his shoe in the water. IDIOT.

Here is a video of my friend eric crossing the stream that I talked about: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4219459705322829649

One of the most interesting parts of this trip was that when we got there, I was so surprised to see a Japanese kid standing on the top of the island! This was not a normal Japanese kid – I think he was one of the “cool” kids in school, the ones that have a lot of friends and all the girls like because they’re so confident and funny. Maybe still in high school, maybe new to college – I would guess around 18 or 19. He was standing up on the island where we were before and was in a bathing suit. I realized that they didn’t come out way, they had just gotten into the stream from the shore, where it is less powerful, and swam up to the island from the other side. Awesome . We looked down and saw that he had two friends in the water waiting for him to…do…something. When we came up and started a small conversation he said in “daibingu….daibingu!” and apparently this is the way they pronounce the word diving. I couldn’t believe it! It was a pretty far drop and you couldn’t see if there were any rocks or how deep it was – definitely not the kind of thing a Japanese would have the courage to do on average. Maybe he was a very unaverage Japanese, or maybe, much more likely, he had done it before or seen someone do it before and knew it was safe. But still, I was impressed that he jumped in. He screamed a few times and finally went for it. Rest assured, I have a video .

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9181107703744326441

Afterwords, as mentioned in the video, we needed to try. So, me and Eric took off some of our clothes and went for it. Andreas didn’t want to get wet. It was higher than it looks – haha, I was a bit hesitant to jump to the right spot because I felt I was so high that if I picked a bad spot I might hit a rock. But, after getting in the water I could tell that pretty much the whole area was deep enough to be safe.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1215238391132588880

I love the feeling the goes along with the words “fuck it”. At first I was measuring all the variables and trying to judge perfectly whether or not it would be OK. I was looking for rocks, trying to judge from where the kid who jumped before us fell to make sure I followed exactly, and tried to examine the way the water was moving to see if I could figure out how deep or shallow certain areas were. It’s why I hesitated to jump in the video at first. But then I realized I would never perfectly figure out if it was 100% safe or not, so I thought “fuck it” and suddenly felt so nice after that. It’s a feeling described by the words “well, now I don’t have to worry at all because I am doing it. If it’s safe it’s safe, if it’s not it’s not….no use in worrying about if it is 100% safe or 100% unsafe now….it won’t change anything at this point since I’ve already decided to jump” and when thinking these thoughts suddenly worry goes out the window as there’s no logical reason to experience that feeling at that moment…especially when there are much more important things to do. Like have fun .

My friend Eric also jumped, and this video ends with a video of me with the Japanese kids so you can see what they looked like. We are in a much more shallow area of the water at that point.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7407041469913027640

This is a general video showing the layout of the island, from the top, and some things around it. After starting this video me and my Andreas started talking about some foam we had noticed was trapped in the water, so part of our conversation is included at the end. When I took the video I had forgotten that I was recording for a bit and then realized and turned it off. I thought it would be a pretty dumb and boring video but, after watching it I’m really glad I video taped it. I wish I had more random videos of our conversations to remind me of the way we talked to each other and joked with each other. Maybe you will find it interesting or funny, too

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-988092804157736619&hl=en

Well, I think I should end the post now but, here are some various pictures to wrap things up. I forgot to mention that we found a much bigger bamboo forest before we went down to the river, and played around and climbed trees there, so I have several pictures of that:

Trust me, I was climbing too, but since I had the camera most of the pictures are taken by me, not of me.

When sliding down the above tree, my friend actually slid his leg in between two strands of barbed wire. He was ridiculously lucky to only have a few scratches – what are the chances that a.) He would slide down the one tree with rusty barbed wire at the bottom and b.) That he would slip his leg perfectly in between two pieces of barbed wire while only getting a few small scratches? I have a picture of his injuries:

I feel like, in a lot of ways, the native Japanese people are something like children when it comes to consumerism, advertising, and the like. Not meant to be particularly insulting but….a Japanese person seems to really take things at face value, without looking any deeper or asking the seemingly forbidden question “why”, as a child might. For example, advertising here tends to be pretty straightforward along the lines of “BUY THIS IT WILL MAKE U KOOL”. There seems to be little imagination used, because there is little imagination necessary to sell these types of things. That advertising technique seems to be all that is necessary for brand name clothes and watches and jewelry to be sold en masse. I feel as if I could start up a company with the knowledge I have now in Japan and sell things exclusively by exploiting them psychologically, regardless of what the product actually is. If one tries hard enough to make dog shit look cool in Japan, people will be buying it left and right and comparing the biggest, curliest pieces of dog shit with their friends in an effort to show them how much better they are than the others around them.

It’s funny to me because they seem to be spending so much of their time thinking…for instance when they are burdened with the completion of their fantastically boring jobs (i.e. the tasks where they have 99.99% of their brain power available for use as they teach the other .01% to stamp paper after paper in a pile of 15,000 identical papers. This leaves that remaining 99.99% to efficiently daydream themselves into the life they wish they actually had in lieu of their current extraordinarily lackluster job)…..or when they are walking on the streets staring straight down at the ground, completely unable to see me coming on my bike until at the last second they come back to the real world and look up…suddenly frozen in a state of absolute terror and surprise that there’s a bike coming at them on the sidewalk….or when they are waiting at the crossing lights not making even the slightest effort to use their brain to check if there is traffic or not but instead following the indisputable rules of the crossing light so they can continue to “think”…etc. And with all of this time and energy spent thinking, they still don’t look past the bright and shiny outer flesh level of advertising, even though we all know there’s an incredibly complex smorgasbord of organs, bones, muscle, veins, tendons and so on beneath. It just seems that they are doing a whole lot of the wrong kind of thinking. To elaborate, I will use myself as an example.

I used to daydream a lot, (and still do a lot more than I should, coincidentally, however after experiencing the soon to be mentioned revelations thankfully I do this much less than I used to). Regardless, when I used to daydream pretty abundantly, I would sometimes think along the lines of “well, daydreaming is the mind conjuring images and stories…playing out conversations and measuring variables and performing social interaction experiments….this must be mentally challenging and therefore an exercise for the brain, right?! Like any other muscle it should continue to get more powerful with this exercise and…in time….I won’t have to bother going to school or motivating myself to build up a career or business but instead can just daydream my way into being a genius, and then use that super brain to do whatever I want”. Alas, this seems to have been a severe rationalization to justify the pleasure of daydreaming, and the Japanese people are a good example of why I think this is so. They can pretend all day, pretend to be the Samurai’s who fight in anime’s, or the muscle bound K1 fighters in ultimate fighting competitions (ultimate fighting is very popular here in Japan, I’ve found…actually that applies to fighting competitions of almost any kind and I think they are so popular for these very reasons). You can pretend to have the balls to tell someone of the opposite sex that they are attracted to them, pretend to be tough enough to take failure instead of just never trying in order to consistently avoid it (a thought process which, of course, also consistently avoids real success)…..they can pretend all of these things in their mind but, that apparently never results in it exercising itself even enough to figure out that in reality, all that pretending still isn’t doing anything of note and results in something much more along the lines of wasting a life away. Ironically, in reality, they even seem to be almost the exact opposite of all of these things they daydream about being, at least on average. Maybe, then, daydreaming is just the opposite of useful?

However, changing subjects, there has been a beacon of hope that I’ve found in Japan….recently, I’ve been climbing a lot at a climbing gym here. The place is called B’nuts (which is a play on the English phrase “be nuts”). Almost everyone has absolutely no idea what the name means. Even the managers there weren’t that sure…I love it when Japanese people use English sentences, phrases, or words…especially slang…having no idea what they mean and not really caring that that is the case. Then again, I guess it’s like an American buying a Japanese vase or fan with Kanji on it and having absolutely no clue as far as what the meaning of the Kanji is. But in Japan this is so popular…with amazing frequency I see a Japanese person wearing a t-shirt with English words on it like the all too common American philosophical phrases of wisdom “Take love of life, live again freely!” or “Beauty in this world…makes happy. Amazing!?” etc. But anyways, back to the subject at hand.

B’nuts is a place where a lot of cool Japanese people have hidden away. I have been going almost every day with my Swedish friend Andreas (we both bought a monthly pass there so we can go as much as we want) and we have made some really great friends. Amazingly, there are a lot of hot climbing girls at the gym, and somehow they all seem to be the ones that speak some English. Man, I never realized how lucky that was until I typed it just now…but yes, there are several cute English speaking girls there. And ridiculously, most of them are better climbers than me. Man, I thought I was a good climber because I have strong arms in comparison to my body weight but, I have really been learning in this place that climbing is something like 70% skill and only a measly 30% strength, contrary to what I had thought before. But the people here – they’re just great, and perceptibly un-Japanese. Me and Andreas wanted to learn how to lead climb, which is climbing up and clipping a clip ever 10 feet or so as you go. Usually, there is a rope holding you the whole time, but this way is a little more dangerous because it doesn’t have that, and at any time, if you fall, you fall to the distance of the last clip you clipped. It’s particularly bad since most of the time people fall when clipping because it takes one hand to clip so you can only hang onto the wall with one hand…which means that they will fall the distance to the last clip they clipped, and then that distance down again since there is extra rope that has not been clipped (I feel like that didn’t make any sense but I’ll leave it in just in case it did).

Anyways…we wanted to learn this so we asked, and they told us in broken English/Japanese basically how to do it. They told us to clip a practice clip 200 times with both hands so we would have it down pat when we were on the wall, and we did that about 20 times and said “Ok, I think we’re ready” and miraculously they set us all up and let us climb by ourselves without even a word of warning. You can’t realize how refreshing this was in a place like Japan unless you’ve lived here or talked a lot with a person who has lived here. The first time I went up I decided to take a hard route because I wanted to really challenge myself, so I took a 5.10d which is pretty difficult. Basically it means I was going to fall a lot. I climbed up miraculously 75% or more of the way and then I lunged for a hold and missed, and it had been a while since I clipped, so I fell pretty far and Andreas ended up catching, for his first time ever, my weight falling like 20 feet. This was all in good fun and of course not seriously dangerous, but the really crazy part is that it happened in Japan. The country of the golden rules that no one except Buddha himself can break. The country where they don’t let you do anything that’s even remotely fun because it could be dangerous and they enjoy masturbating to making millions of useless rules and regulations. Maybe this has something to do with them feeling powerless in their life, and wanting to enforce rules to try and make themselves feel the have more power and can effect other people (i.e. Why most of the policemen who are assholes became policemen). In a country like that….we got to learn how to climb in 15 minutes or less and then decide ourselves when to go up and try out a few relatively risky climbs.

Later, we saw someone climbing while clipping but also being held up by a safety rope as he ascended. He is a better climber than both me and Andreas, and he was climbing up one of the routes that was much easier than the one that I did, meaning he almost surely would not fall. We asked one of the English speaking girls what he was doing and she said “he’s practicing lead climbing”. We both looked at each other and then back at her and said “uhh, we never did that. Why does he need that safety rope?”. She explained to us by saying “he is weak…here” and then pointed to her head. Haha sometimes I love you, language barrier (but most of the time I fucking hate you) but the important part of this story is, usually they use a safety rope to teach lead climbers how to lead climb for the first time but because we seemed confident and didn’t ask for one, they didn’t bother us with it. This place is truly a cross dimensional portal that allows us to temporarily travel to some interesting place in another less rule oriented country just by walking through the door. Unfortunately when we come back out of that door we are again trapped into change is bad, be fearful of everything, never challenge yourself, never advance quickly, and especially never have interesting fun in any way shape or form safety land.

Here are some Hubble telescope pictures through worm holes that can see into the alternate universe:

This is Yuri (in the black) and Andreas’s friend Heejin (who we brought that day to try out climbing). Yuri is one of the cute girls mentioned who is a better climber than me (but not by much, I think I will surpass her soon). I have an interesting story about her I will post about later, I think.

This is me belaying Andreas (basically holding the other end of the rope so when his weak ass inevitably falls he doesn’t hit the ground).

This is what is happening on the other end of the rope.

Preparing for one of our first times trying lead climbing.

Climbing up the somewhat difficult route.

I think this is after the big fall I had – you can see how much slack the rope has.

Kind of unrelated but MAN I wish my eyes were that color…haha looks like superman charging up the old laser eyes. Also in the background you can see the upstairs of b’nuts. It is a small place with only 3 walls downstairs, and then upstairs one big horizontal wall that basically goes around the whole room and has lots of holds. These climbs are very short, usually 4-8 holds or so, and they are a lot of fun and good for testing out different tactics. Some of these are really, really hard.

Andreas doing one of the more fun climbing routes using kind of a cool climbing technique. This is the first time he completed an H, I think (H is a pretty advanced difficulty level).

And last but certainly not least – this is one of the cutest girls at the gym punching me, and she is a WAY better climber than me, not to mention most of the other people there, too. She’s really, really good….and that’s partially because she’s so ridiculous small…I think she said she weighs about 38 kg….that’s less than 84 fucking pounds! And she’s 26 years old. She’s a pretty awesome girl overall, actually – it’s not often to find girls like her in Japan. I’m really a little bit pissed that I found this gym and her with only a short 3 months remaining in Japan.

Speaking of her…I’ve learned an interesting thing about women who have a language barrier with your native language in such a way that they know your language somewhat, but not that well (although still much better than you know their language). Obviously, I come into this situation a lot, as a matter of fact almost every girl I have had relations with here in Japan has been along those lines. The problem occurs with me learning Japanese. I have learned what Japanese I felt is useful but haven’t really delved into a serious study of the language, because I just can’t justify spending a lot of time and energy in seriously learning a language that will soon be so useless to me. I can’t remember meeting even one person who mentioned that they spoke Japanese back in the U.S. in my whole life…and I fear that when I get back I may almost never speak Japanese until I come back to Japan (which I might do sometime in the future) but until then it would be of almost 0% usefulness.

Anyways, my current level of study leaves me at an acceptable Japanese level for what I particularly want (being able to get around, make very small talk, etc.)…but still at a lower level than most of the people here. Of course this is also due to me coming here without as much of a specific interest in Japan as many of the people here (some of whom have studied Japanese, Japanese culture, Japanese music, Japanese anime, etc for years just out of their own curiosity) but, to avoid straying from the point, for the sake of the argument let us settle on the theory that I may be now, at least to some small extent, poorer at Japanese than more than 75% of the people I have met here. This positioning leaves me in kind of a bad situation when it comes to women for something that I’ve just recently fully realized. When I am alone with a Japanese girl and some friends, practically all of whom speak noticeably better Japanese than me, it damages my image to the girl almost irreparably. Because they are unable to speak English fluently, I cannot try and convey to them my personality or intelligence – it is difficult to talk about philosophy, political ideals, or pretty much anything that takes some serious thought when they do not know English anywhere close to a native level. I think that it is possible to connect to them on this level, but it takes a lot of time and explanation to get these advanced ideas across. In a social setting, where conversation is supposed to move quickly…there’s just not enough time to bother to explain those types of things with her limited vocab.

I have noticed recently that this basically means that all of the girls look around the table and judge the Japanese levels of foreigners, the only thing they can really judge effectively, and this counts as 90% or more of their judge of that persons overall intelligence…maybe it even accounts for 30% or so of their personality as well. In general, it seems that being able to say “Oh, that meat is tough compared to that meat over there” in Japanese without skipping a beat is much more intellectually impressive to these girls than discussing Plato’s theory of the forms and how those ideals apply to our lives in depth even though the later is obviously indicative of a more impressive intelligence than the former. For instance, me and a friend went out with the girl from my climbing gym recently and, because I am a pretty good climber, but do not know Japanese that well…..I think she actually got at least the beginning of an impression that I am some kind of stupid jock who is only worried about being strong and is basically an idiot, or something along those lines. Not to that extreme but I noticed that to an extent she is possibly thinking along those lines.

Now this is amazing to me, as it might be to you if you know me well. I never thought anyone would think I was a stupid jock. I’m not big, I’m not an asshole for no reason, and I’m not stupid. And those are basically the three cornerstone personality traits of the jock. But somehow my inability to speak good Japanese in comparison to my friends can actually impression this view of me onto others. Man, kind of annoying…if I could just get them alone or at least out of the fast paced “in between drinking” environment and have the time to talk more deeply with them, and explain to them some interesting ideals or observations using basic English I know I could prove it wrong but, it’s surprisingly difficult to get that especially if a girl thinks you are stupid and uninteresting. But, I have worked out some solutions so, I don’t think it will be a problem for long if I really want to fix it….however I thought it was an interesting observation so I decided to blog about it.

Anyways, more later. For now I think I’ll go to sleep!

We got up early the next morning, before the sun, and before we left for the “peak” of the mountain that we had found the other day….Olle (who hadn’t brought nearly enough clothes for the frigid temperatures) took one of the blankets and wrapped it around himself for extra warmth:

After explaining to him how much of an idiot he looked like (15 to 20 minutes later) we took a final picture in front of the alter and headed out.

The first thing we noticed when we walked out was that, although still cloudy…it was starting to get a little bit light, and this made our environment look completely different than it did before. It allowed me to get a surprisingly decent picture of the place where we stayed and the skilift mechanism from the top as we left.

Walking outside in the light was, first off, a bit disheartening since part of our plan had been to try and catch the sunrise from the peak. However, it was still so cloudy that this really didn’t matter much. The picture above is surprisingly clear….for the most part it was much more cloudy than that. We never would have been able to see a good sunrise. It was interesting to see the whole world brighten up around us even though we couldn’t see the sun, or even more than 15 feet or so in front of us. Just lots of light refracting through moisture in the air.

Now that it was brighter, we were able to get a good look at a statue that was within 20 feet of the place we stayed. We had seen this the night before with some flashlights but it was much easier to see now and, like all religiously based statues or temples in Japan, it was asking us for money. We dropped a few coins in….damn, conned by the system again.

That reminds me of a story I forgot to mention. The night before, while we were checking out this statue in the pitch black foggy night…we started to walk out toward the top of the mountain…and all of a sudden we heard this scampering noise, like an animal got startled, spun around, and then ran away. Now, you have to imagine the situation of being only the two of us in the darkness hearing an animal that we pretty much couldn’t see at all run around. We both froze in our tracks not able to see anything, although I think I caught a glimpse of something as it ran…..maybe about the size of a medium sized dog. We both kind of froze and you could almost hear our brains processing what was necessary to do next in the silence…it was pretty startling. Eventually I asked what the hell that thing was, Olle said he didn’t know but he hoped it was the fuzzy playful kind of animal and not the other kind (the blood soaked fanged brain eating kind I guess). We continued since the thing was apparently 10 times more horrified of us than we were of it (it really ran fast after it sensed us) but, I guess we were more on our toes this time.

Additionally, the brightness allowed us to read a map posted in the ground that we couldn’t quite read the night before. This was a bit of bad news, actually, since we looked at the map and quickly realized that the peak we had reached last night, the one we meant to get to to watch the sun rise (which had already risen anyways at this point) was actually some kind of fake peak. Like a mini peak or something that was just along the way to the real peak. What we found was that…in reality we had to go much further to reach the “true peak” of this mountain. It was a little dispiriting to know we had so much further to go when we thought we had already reached the peak but…we weren’t really that upset about it. Somehow, I wasn’t tired, even though I got very little sleep and had been climbing a mountain and traveling on buses most of the day before. I love doing something interesting that one really wants to do, because the resulting (seemingly boundless) amounts of energy are impressive. Reminds me of the idea of a business man or woman staying up for 3 days and nights to solve an important business problem and somehow seeming energized and sharp minded the whole time. Strong interest in the task at hand can result in nearly inhuman power, sometimes. This expansive energy reserve being available to us (at least to me…I think Olle probably felt the same way) we didn’t seem very upset about the mountain being higher. I have a cool video of when we actually realized we had to climb much higher to get to the top….instead of having dashed hopes we both kind of just looked at the map and then quickly agreed “Oh well….let’s get moving and climb this bitch”. One of the reasons I was happy Olle was the one to come with me on this trip is that he’s the (very rare) kind of person that doesn’t complain or bitch about this type of situation. This is contrary to most people who usually complain in a comparable manner to, say, a 6 year old girl complaining and bitching when her favorite Barbie doll accessory breaks. Anyways, we got our stuff together and got to climbing, taking a different fork in the road this time (since we knew going the way we went last time went to the mini peak and not toward the real peak). Looking back it’s hilarious to think we thought we were already at the top at that point. We still had a long way to go .

Regardless, it’s worth posting some of the pictures that the limited visibility offered us. Remember, we hadn’t started climbing until after dark and…frankly I was amazed at how beautiful the scenery looked. For some reason I didn’t expect fall colors until I saw them – so regardless of the fog it offered some nice pictures:

This is a double whammy picture of the path we were following (it changed from scattered rocks to a rather nice wood board system with grips on them)

We mentioned several times how nice it was to have a path. This path was painstakingly laid by someone or another…and it couldn’t have been easy….we saw hundreds and hundreds of those boards and that’s not including the stone path….those stones must have come from somewhere and I don’t know how the hell they got them into the path format….it must have been a difficult task though….so I’m quite thankful to someone. I wonder how old the path was….it seemed to be in a state of being repaired from time to time since some boards were newer and stronger than others. I’m still a bit confused concerning who handles the upkeep of something like that. It would have been cool to just climb along the rocks, and a lot of the climb was like that. I think I might have enjoyed that part more since it takes a little more thought and is more interesting then just walking over thousands of sloped boards but the boards offered a nice directional guide and I’m sure they were a lot safer, seeing how it’d be pretty hard to twist an ankle or trip onto your face when walking on boards but on rocks it’s a different story.

This is another picture on our way up – gives you an idea of how foggy it was.

After climbing a bit we found a ledge that we hadn’t noticed the night before….so we went to check it out. Actually, I almost fell here! Walking up to the ledge I slipped on some rocks fell backwards in such a way that my leg extended off the ledge a bit. That was….er….exhilarating. After that we took our mountaineering poses checking uh…weather and altitude pressure levels and other stuff that we totally know all about.

That pole in my hand was some metal thing used to hold up a sign that had fallen down, and it made a heavy but useful walking stick.

We saw something else rather memorable as we went a bit further. The following picture doesn’t do justice to how awesome the view looked in person. There was a very large cloud hitting the side of the mountain which caused it to rise and flow quickly over the top….the cloud flow was increased as if it was being bottlenecked. It was pretty great…you could obviously see the cloud flowing over the top of the mountain.

The fog on the mountain that day and the night before was bad, but offered for a lot of interesting sites and experiences. I’m glad we got to experience that part of nature like we did. We stayed and watched that cloud sight for a while before we continued on. This following picture shows two things. The first: some interesting berries we found…

And the second thing you might notice if you look closely is….*gasp* some snow. If you remember the crazy bus driver that took us up part of the mountain, the one who told us we would die because of the snow….you can realize how horrified we were of this. I mean, we were essentially walking into our inescapable doom, fated to be murdered at the hands of heartless snow crystals. But, we somehow felt we had to continue regardless of this risk.

At first we weren’t sure how much snow we would see but….it turns out the crazy bus driver was right about there being decent amounts of snow. Not too long had passed when we saw this type of environment:

Followed quickly by

The snow was obviously gathering and preparing to launch an attack on us. We didn’t know what kind of weapons it would use to kill us but we remained vigilant and always kept an area of cover in the corner of our eyes so we could dive if the snow decided to launch some kind of deadly projectile weapons at us.

And finally, we were completely surrounded (and subsequently figured we would be dead within minutes according to the heedful advice from the bus driver):

This is actually a bit close to the top. I remember we saw one big temple like statue thing and I thought that was the top for sure. “YES WE MADE IT, WE ARE SUCH BADASS’S” and after about 5 minutes of that during the climb up to this temple thing we got there and found that the trail continued up as far as we could see behind it. We were quite close at that point, though. Man, this mountain was way higher than we thought…and we were getting cold, hungry, and tired. Interesting though, I remember near the bottom feeling the pangs of hunger and tiredness….but near the top I didn’t feel anything. Thanks adrenaline!

When we finally made it to the top it was pretty exciting. Such a great feeling to accomplish something that you worked hard for, was difficult, and many thought you couldn’t do. Where there is a will there’s a way. May sound cheesy but, I can’t help but cite that phrase all of the time due to its consistently proven truth value. Many obstacles confronted us in completing this task but because we wanted to and stayed focused on it we did it. I really believe that nothing could have stopped me from climbing the mountain and, I think there is power in that belief and the resulting confidence.

Our victory poses:

– Olle

– Me

– Together

This is a cool picture at the top of a metal post that, because it was so cold and windy, had formed a horizontal icicle.

Notice how the icicle gets bigger as it gets further from the ground. I guess this is because the wind is stronger and blocked by less the higher up it goes from objects that can obstruct it. Interesting .

This is a good demonstration of how ridiculously cold it was at the top. It was colder than any other part of the mountain, regardless of wind….and the immense winds at the top (so strong because they were not blocked by anything around) were an additive force that made it pretty dangerously cold. We didn’t stay for long as it was so extreme – I took my gloves off a few times to set up the camera and they would nearly loose feeling as soon as the wind hit them for 5 or 10 seconds or so. I’m always impressed by the fearsome power of nature when things like this happen, and that makes me even more impressed with the human ability to, so far, tame this wild, seemingly untameable beast (in most cases we do pretty well, at least).

I have to mention that it was really captivating to be somewhat isolated on that mountain. There wasn’t anyone for miles pretty much, and it was a unique feeling to have the whole mountain essentially to ourselves . It was one of the few times I thought it would have been awesome to go alone…I love that Olle came with me and when I climb another mountain I’ll bring friends again but, it would have been pretty intense and I think an enthralling experience to be completely alone on the top of the mountain outside of climbing season meaning there’s absolutely no one around. That kind of isolation doesn’t come easy these days, and it’s a great way to prove to oneself survival skills, fearlessness, etc. Maybe it would be unnecessarily dangerous but, I just believe it would be a really fascinatingly and absorbing experience.

Also this is a video of when we were at the top. You can really get a
feeling of how windy it was here. This was us talking at normal or
above normal levels and we simply can’t be heard over the wind in most
cases. It also gives you a 360 view of what we saw at the top.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3752811182434224945&hl=en

On our way back down the mountain, we ran into the first group of people we have seen yet climbing the mountain…..and within it we met this pretty amazing old man who was climbing the mountain:

He told us he was 80 years old, and he’s climbing a mountain in the frigid cold. Didn’t even seem that tired, either – he was very energetic and talkative, making jokes and talking more than anyone in his group. Think about that next time you think to use the excuse “I’m too old to do that…” just because you’re lazy .

I would have loved to talk to him more but, very unfortunately, I don’t have a command over the Japanese language at the level necessary to hold an interesting conversation.

Eventually, after climbing back down for a while (all the way past almost all the snow, as you can see in the below picture) we came to a fork in the road:

…and ended up taking a different way down so we would end up climbing down a different mountain which was connected to Gas-san – that way we wouldn’t see the same stuff on our way back down.

There’s a lot more nice pictures from the way back down, since the clouds had parted at that point and allowed for a much better view in the day time. The Autumn colors were showing beautifully and it was an especially notable nice view the whole way down. If you follow the below link you can see all my pictures – go down to the picture of the old man and after that you start seeing some of the resplendently scenic mountain pictures I took. I’m no photographer but there were some great sights that even the worse photographers can take nice pictures of .
http://picasaweb.google.com/Scatman4/MountainClimbingGasSan

On our way down we found these cool steel ladders that were put in place because it was too steep to just let ourselves down normally. Some places this was bullshit, and you could climb down yourself if you tried hard….but other places it was really necessary, like here:

I decided it would be a great idea to try and keep the camera running on video mode as I went down to get a first person view….and because I had extra unused space on my camera that I thought I could/should use . So, I took this video and….well it didn’t work out exactly the way I thought it would – instead I was awesome enough to drop my camera accidentally while it was still running. Luckily it got perfectly balanced on a life saving stick and didn’t fall more than a few feet….makes for a somewhat interesting video though: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8206140330594641510&hl=en

At the bottom of one of these ladders I looked up to Olle and said “Hey, Olle, man I was thin” and then I just started coughing and gasping because as I tried to suck in air to utter the rest of that phrase I inhaled a small insect. It was really in there too, not just in the mouth but jammed back into the throat….I could feel it moving a bit and was coughing like crazy. For about 10 minutes I coughed a lot, then started getting control of it. When we met another person further down the mountain and talked a bit I could get more than 3 words out without coughing….must have looked like an idiot. The interesting part is, after about 15 minutes or almost constant coughing and hacking I finally managed to fire this loogey out of my mouth with bug intact (it’s a lovely picture):

The bug actually died of suffocation, I suppose, inside of my body, and finally I was able to choke out the dead body. Man, that was pretty messed up, had to climb down a mountain for 15 minutes while nearly choking to death with an insect trying with all its might to stay in my throat (for some reason?).

As we got further down, we came across some waterfalls and rapids which were nice. Finally when we got to the bottom, we came across as mall village apparently built there. There was an area where you could take off your shoes and go look around a garden area that apparently had some holy significance and several statues, but it cost some money and we were pretty tired having very little sleep the night before and after climbing one mountain and descending another….so we passed on that…but this is what the general area looked like:

The meal after this was one of the best I’ve had in quite some time…we hadn’t eaten good food for two days at that point and were really expending our energy so…man this was beautiful to see:

You can see there are some bites taken out of that food because although I wanted to take a picture my body urges just took over and I started eating immediately when I saw the food before I could gain control of myself and stop for a few seconds to snap that photo.

There was also a huge Torri (holy gate?) at the bottom. This area (and the mountain we climbed) definitely had some religious significance.

And finally this is the redness on my feet after the climb:

When I got back I really just wanted to collapse into bed but, unfortunately I was very late for a lab party that had essentially been held in honor of me joining the lab group….so I had to ride my bike over to that at high speeds so as not to be late…..during the process of which I hit a curb going way too fast and my bike popped the back tire and I almost wiped out. After regaining control it was approximately 15,000 times as hard to pedal and I had to run with the bike to the meeting location then walk it all the way back….and that was the start of many problems for that bike since I decided to take it apart myself to change the tire and I think I messed something up . Needless to say returning after all of that crap it was really nice to be able to get to sleep and finally rest for a bit….it had been a taxing few days and I was glad it was over….but even more glad I had done it.

Anyways, there are other nice pictures but I have a few things to do today, so I’ll end the post here. Please feel free to check the album for more pictures that tell stories of their own – I suggest at least looking at some of the picturesque photos of the colorful mountains I was able to take once the clouds vanished. Again that link is: http://picasaweb.google.com/Scatman4/MountainClimbingGasSan.

I’ll be posting again soon since I’ve been traveling a few more times and have some interesting trips to talk about. Check back every once in a while, sometimes it takes me some time but I’ll get posts up about this trip eventually, it’s not something I want to forget and I think it can offer interesting and possibly even valuable information at least to anyone who is interested in Japan, traveling, or (best of all) traveling to Japan .

Thanks for reading.

Someone unrelated to me commented a couple posts ago and mentioned that they were hoping I would continue….and that was good motivation to me, so thanks for that.  I’m glad to know some people are still reading, so because of that I”ll continue to try and post my stories and insights (if that is what they can be called) of Japan.  The more people I know are reading the more motivated I will feel to post often .  So, soon.  Now, off to study for a business test I have tomorrow morning.  It’s probably about time I start…..

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Traveling back to and from America was an interesting experience – I felt a little annoyed that I had to go back at first, and didn’t want to bother going through the trouble of traveling just for the end of seeing my family for a short week during the holidays and then coming right back, this combined with me missing out on several traveling experiences in Japan (traveling around the country is something I have yet to do nearly enough of) and missing some of the friends I made here and I was not terribly excited to jump on a 20 hour  traveling odyssey.  However, I am happy to report that it turned out being a nice, relaxing break, and it was pleasant to see certain friends again.

I found it noticeably odd, though.  When visiting friends and family, I often found myself not speaking much, only thinking a lot.  This is partially due to my time here in Japan reminding me that I probably talk too much, and that I should choose my words more carefully, but I feel as if it was deeper than this simple conclusion.  It seemed to me that, especially when I met with my friends, I felt as if I was different from the people I was sitting with.  Like, as if I was some kind of third party sitting in on a family dinner or a poker game with friends, just viewing the experience as a temporary guest.  Maybe it had something to do with me knowing I was soon going to be traveling back for such a long period of time….but maybe it was something else, too.  I feel that traveling Japan allowed me to try out a lot of new personality traits that are usually quite difficult to change.  Often, people develop an initial personality within their families or groups of friends, and then it is extremely difficult to change this personality, no matter how much that person might actually change, since everyone expects that personality from you.  Any change is considered “weird” or startling to your friends and family, and often change is considered a scary thing to people – so maybe that’s why they seem so defensive about their friends personalities changing.  Moving to Japan allowed me to actually change since I went completely alone and had no one to remind me of or pressure me to fill the shoes of my old personality, except for myself (which I did accidentally to some extent).  I think this was great.  However, it left me a bit confused when I got back, because here I am now getting used to the slightly different personality set I created in Japan and then I get back to America for a couple of weeks and bam, I’m suddenly expected to act the same way I did before I left and make the same mistakes.  This is something I didn’t want to do,and didn’t feel was necessary, so at times instead of speaking out which would cause confusion (i.e.  Make people nervous and think “Why is he not acting just like he used to?!”), I would just stay quiet.  This seems to be easier for several reasons….if any change would become apparent to them, there are no awkward silences as those people try and figure out why you don’t fit the previous set of characteristics they had applied to you for so long….and it is generally just a decent way to change (by being more quiet) in a way that everyone knows and isn’t surprised by.  Being more quiet isn’t a startling change, it’s a kind of submissive, nonthreatening one.  The change to becoming quiet can be analogous to knocking down a house, destroying all of the important parts so you can begin rebuilding once everyone adapts to the quiet, “destroyed” you.  When I get back, maybe I’ll be able to continue being quiet for a while, and then rebuild a new personality that has both good things from my old America created personality and from my newer Japan created personality.  Maybe I’m making too much of it or thinking too hard but, that’s just the way I feel and I thought I would mention it, for the record .

Back to the visit to America – of course, the food I missed.  On my way home from the airport the first thing on my mind was to make an emergency stop at Chipotles Mexican grill for a long yearned for burrito….but my family had made me dinner and I wasn’t so obsessed with a burrito to dismiss the dinner they made for one.  However, the next day I got my hands on one, and if possible, I would like you to see this picture and attempt to imagine the blissful experience:

Granted, if you fail at imagining such euphoria, don’t feel bad, it’s a feeling that must be experienced.  And this was only after 4 months or so without a burrito, I can only manage what it will feel like to have one after being off burritos cold turkey for almost 9 months (which is probably the length I will remain in Japan until returning to the U.S.).  And yes, if I have not mentioned this already, real Mexican food is seemingly available NOWHERE in Japan.  Maybe I’ll find a place someday but, until that day, I will cry every night.

Speaking of food, right before I left from Japan at the airport in Tokyo I saw a sign, in both English and Japanese, that said “Last place to get good Sushi before you leave Japan”.  I’d just like to compliment the advertisement agency of this sushi shop, as that sign was pure genius, and was a variable that lead to me getting to turn this:

into this:

I mentioned a minute ago that I’ll be off burritos for 9 months….maybe you noticed that this doesn’t sound right, since I believe I mentioned earlier a few times that I was only staying in Japan for 6 months all together.  However, I’ve decided that: traveling is a hell of a lot of fun.  And so I want to stay longer, and requested this, and was granted permission to stay the entire year.  So now, after 3 months or so of being here – I have about 9 left.

Truthfully, I have been slowly realizing that I do not believe I am made to fit in with the Japanese life style well…and I don’t think that this place is any better for me than America (which is a place I also feel I often times don’t fit into very well).  But the point is, I probably fit into America better than Japan.  Regardless of this, though, I am here to experience cultural differences, and to learn about different people, myself, change in general, traveling in general, and lots of other related subjects using the tool of changing my environment and experiencing the results of these changes.  This, combined with the general useless NCNL (no change, no learn) feeling I experience when in my school back in Chicago, is why I chose to stay.  It has nothing to do with Japan, but instead the ideals behind traveling and experiencing new things, and inevitably learning from them.  I think it is an experience that everyone should emprise, regardless of their age, job, or any of the myriad of other excuses people generally use to not travel when in reality they are too lazy or scared to go through with it .  Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have the motivation to travel, then maybe it’s not a decision you should make since you obviously don’t want it all that badly, but carefully examine the many benefits of this experience before you push it aside.  Just think about it!

Anyways, summing up, I just found it interesting and worth mentioning that I don’t think I fit into this country at all, however, for the more general purpose of being able to travel I am quite interested in staying here longer than I originally planned.

Speaking of interesting topics such as this, I saw a sign that really caught my eye at the airport, one that details one of the ideas I’ve seen over and over again in my life experience:

“Know risk, know reward”.  It was some advertisement for financial advisement I think, hehe, however, I think it details the important, ever present, even inescapable relationship between risk and reward.  No risk, no reward…etc.

I got another cool picture out of the side of the airplane on my way back to America:

Well, I’m still a bit jetlagged (as it is 6:35am and I am up even though I don’t have class until 8:50) but I need to try to get to sleep.  I never really got over the jetlag in America, because I simply didn’t need to (no concrete schedule means getting up at 5am every day and then taking a nap in the afternoon is not that difficult) but now, I feel I have gotten onto a schedule of getting up very early and then napping later, and I’m not sure how easy it will be to live with this when I have classes .

So, thanks for reading, and I’ll work on the mountain post as soon as I can.  Keep your eye on the blog until then.

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For a long time now I’ve wanted to climb a mountain, and it wasn’t until I got to Japan and looked into climbing Fuji-san that I realized how easy it is – it seems that just about anyone who’s in decent shape and is motivated can climb Japans highest mountain…leaving other mountains on a level of difficulty that’s even easier to climb.  You don’t need thousands of dollars worth of gear, and you don’t need to train for months or weeks or even days before hand (at least, we didn’t, and we aren’t super athletes or anything).  Also, in most cases, the rather shallow (and subsequently, more unfun) parts are able to be covered by paved road and driven up in a bus, leaving only the steeper, more challenging and interesting parts for you to climb.

Some background:  the mountain we wanted to climb I had read about earlier in a guide book that my sister thankfully purchased for me as a gift before I left America.  It’s called Gas-san by the Japanese, and is part of a long trail that spans across a series of three mountains which, together, compose a holy pilgrimage from Haguro-machi (which is the starting point of the pilgrimage, a village at the bottom of Mount Haguro, by far the smallest of the three mountains at only 419m) to Mount Yudono (the ending point of the pilgrimage).  The three mountains together are called Dewa-Sanzan.  San is three in Japanese and I’ve been told that zan can mean mountain (even though the word I’ve learned for mountain is “Yama”….this language is so weird) so:  Dewa-three mountains, I guess.  Gas-san is the tallest of these three mountains, reaching a peak of 1984m.  Of course, being the tallest, this is the one I wanted to climb most.  Originally, when I asked around, there had been a few people that thought this would be interesting to do with me – but since we had to wake up at 8am on a Saturday morning to have enough time to travel to the mountains – only me and my friend Olle ended up putting forth the effort to actually get our asses up and go.

After waiting in the lobby for 10 minutes or so before quickly realizing that a couple of people who said they were going to come were sleeping in and weren’t going to make it to the top with us (we were all at a party the night before and I suppose I can’t really blame them too much) me and Olle set off to Sendai station in the hopes of blindly finding transportation, our only guide being the….well the guide book…..and a few pieces of advice people had given us before hand.

Most of the advice, however, was along these lines:  “The mountain will probably be mostly closed since climbing season is over – and it’s going to be very cold once you get high off the ground – just wait until next season”.  However, there is a chance that I am not still attending university in Japan by the time the next season rolls around, and climbing a mountain here is something I really wanted to do.  This is why, even though we went to a party on Friday and I had to get back by Sunday afternoon to try and catch a welcoming party that my lab members were throwing for me, I decided to try climbing the mountain instead of waiting until it was even colder the next weekend, or colder the one after that, etc..

So, when we got to Sendai station – we really had no good idea of what to do.  We went to the subway thinking we might be able to catch a (cheap) subway ticket to Tsuruoka (this is where the bus to Dewa-sanzan leaves from) however, when we asked the Japanese ticket vendor how to get there by train, his answer was “Busu”.  So, we had to go back up and go to the bus terminal and ask them, and let me tell you, we had absolutely no idea how complex traveling to this mountain was going to be.

It is not climbing season, as our friends who have lived in Japan for a while told us.  And, just as they warned us, this means that it is very difficult to find transportation there…although it turned out to not be as impossible as they had suggested.  While, in the middle of summer, there might be Buses leaving from Sendai station directly to Tsuruoka or even directly to Gas-san….this late in the year the buses are essentially non-existent to these areas…but, and thank GOD Olle knows good Japanese for this one, we were able to compile a convoluted route to a place that was kind of close to Gas-san with the ticket vendor:

So that was our general route, and this still left a few open ended questions since he didn’t know if the smaller buses to take us to the climbing routes were going to be open.  I still truthfully don’t understand what the hell we were supposed to do, but whatever it was, we were devoted to doing it , so we payed for our tickets and jumped on the first bus.

Actually, I am remembering more specifically now, what happened at first was that we got a route to a place where there would be buses to Haguro-san, but the ticket vendor was very clear that there would not be buses to Gas-san from there….so we figured we’d take that and if we really couldn’t find ANY way to get to Gas-san, that we’d just take a different bus and climb the small one (Haguro-san, which is much easier to get to) and it wouldn’t be a completely wasted effort.  So, we got on the bus to Yamagata and then another bus to Tsuruoka from there.  This was about 2 hours or so of driving all together (finally, some sleep).  I remember we just barely caught the first bus from Sendai station, too.  We had just gotten our tickets in time, and people were loading into the bus.  Me and Olle were both starving at this point, and knew it would be at least 2 hours before we could eat again…so we both kind of looked at each other and then at the bus, and then at each other again and then across the street and the convenience shop….and just started sprinting.  I practically threw my change into the face of the poor convenience store vender and ran out with a bag of one of the small rice meals, a sandwhich, some chopsticks, a juicebox, etc.  Literally the three items of food I saw first I just snatched and threw on the counter and Olle did about the same.  We then sprinted back across the street (which is ridiculous to most Japanese people since Jaywalking is almost unheard of) and managed to (although barely) make it without being killed OR missing the bus.  Yessss, double victory!!!

So, we got to eat on the bus instead of starving for the next few hours, so that was nice .  When we got to Tsuruoka, we got off and went around asking for Gas-san instead of just taking the ticket vendors advice and buying a ticket directly to Haguro-san (the smaller mountain).  Yet again this was a great situation to remind me that, even when a situation seems completely barricaded with obstacles so high that they are unsurmountable….trying hard enough and over and over again will always, without fail, yield success.  After asking around, we found that the man who originally told us we could not obtain a ticket to Gas-san was wrong, we just had to go to a different place and then take a bus from there.

Along the way from all these buses, you could really tell as the scenery started to change to a more mountainous, less populated theme:

and etc.

We also got this kind of cool picture of the sun setting behind some mountains:

Now, take note of exactly what this sunset means…we woke up at approximately 8am at our dorms and, although it admittedly took us a quite a while to get all our gear together and prepare for the weather and whatnot…along our way to Gas-san, before we even got there or started climbing, we watched the sun set.

I’m not positive what the original plan was…..but one of the preliminary discussions (which we mostly had while trying to buy our ticket or on the bus) mentioned getting to the mountain early enough to try and climb relatively fast to the top and then watch the sunset and climb back down with flashlights through night.  That one was obviously shot at that point (we had our doubts about being able to do this so quickly from the beginning, but now I find it funny we even considered it).  Another plan that we discussed when we realized how late it might be when we got there was climbing up during night, watching the sunrise at the top, and then climbing back down and catching the earliest bus back home so we didn’t have to pay for or worry about any lodging.  I think that the original plan might have even been to arrive there early enough to climb both up and down in the daylight and then either catch a late bus home or get lodging and catch an early bus the next day.  Needless to say, of course none of these were what actually happened.  I tend to be a somewhat spontaneous person because I realized long ago that any attempts to make specific plans are usually foolish, since there are simply too many variables to fully understand without really spending days upon days carefully planning.  For a bank robbery or war strategy maybe that’s acceptable but, when planning to climb a mountain I really think spontaneous might be better.  And it worked out just fine this time.

Anyways, the overall moral of the story is, we took a lot of buses .  But, I am happy with the experience, because although it cost us probably about 10 dollars or so in bus fairs, it was a great way to prove that we can do something that at first seemed nearly impossible.  Just breaking up a difficult problem and solving it piece by piece without being overwhelmed by it seems to be the best way to handle these situations….if you have the motivation to complete the task, and follow this tactic….you are bound to succeed.  As a matter of fact, the whole trip to the top of the mountain, not just the buses, was a great example of this, and I am ecstatic that it turned out the way it did.

Speaking of this – I had mentioned that many people told us, since it was outside of “climbing season”, that we would not be able to climb the mountain.  Well, when we were on the final bus up Gas-san, it was a very small and fast bus, that was flying around corners and almost haphazardly speeding up the thin, barren mountain roads.  And the driver was, as you might expect, kind of insane.  He was easily in his 60′s and had probably driven this road a couple million times.  He kept screaming back at us, trying to speak over the ridiculously loud, dilapidated bus, trying to make conversation mostly with Olle, because he didn’t speak a word of English and I couldn’t understand almost any of his Japanese (according to Olle he has a certain accent or something along those lines that makes it even more difficult than usual).

As we were heading up the mountain, we were trying to figure out exactly how to get to the trail and where the bus would drop us off.  At this time, it was about 6 pm or so and the sun had just gone down.  As we asked some questions about how to get to the trail to climb the mountain, the man all of a sudden realized we were planning on climbing that night, and subsequently became completely and utterly devoted to restricting us from climbing, demanding that there was no way we could possibly climb the mountain that night, saying things like (translated) there was “no way” and that we “couldn’t”.  The Japanese are not a race that breaks or even bends rules very well….so it was outside of climbing season, and that meant absolutely NO climbing.  Finally the bus came to a stop before this hotel at just about the top of the road (this is after we argued with him for 10 minutes or so already) and, since we were the only ones on the bus save for one other person, he spent about 15 minutes arguing with us, telling us that he would not take us any further to the trail (there was still a stretch of road left), and that we should stay at the hotel instead of climbing.  At one point, after we said we wanted to try anyways (God forbid you try something even slightly against the rules in Japan…), he turned around with an unbelievably serious face and said something in Japanese I didn’t understand, and Olle laughed a little and then translated for me: “there’s snow – you will die!!!!”.  Ohhhh no….ANYTHING but deadly, vicious snow flakes!

I don’t know if this was some deep seeded plot he had with the owner of the nearby hotel or what but, he went into the hotel and came out a few minutes later with a piece of paper that said something around “9,000 yen” on it, which is approximately 85-90 dollars for ONE NIGHT….first of all this is ridiculous if you ask me.  The other hostels I stayed in were no more than 20 a night at the most.  Second of all, we really wanted to climb….but this man was really wholeheartedly motivated to keep us from climbing, it was really kind of dumbfounding.  He walked us into the hotel and shut the door behind us and ushered us up to pay quickly.  When I refused he started saying that we had to pay for the night and couldn’t climb some more.  We eventually said we were going to go take a walk and think about it, and he kept saying “why don’t you leave your bags here!” because we were taking all of our stuff and he was worried we were going to ditch them and climb without permission.  *gasp* WITHOUT PERMISSION?!  HOW COULD ANYONE DO ANYTHING WITHOUT PERMISSION?!  Anyways, as we left, fully intending to go climb the mountain, he looked helplessly out the window and just shook is head at us and pointed at the mountain and made an “x” sign with his arms (which Japanese people always use to say “No good” or related phrases) and then pointed in the opposite direction and urged us to go eat that way.  We didn’t want this crazy man chasing after us so, we walked toward the direction he pointed and then ran back and snuck past him using a big rock as cover .

After crossing past the ridiculously expensive hotel, we were free to walk up toward the mountain.  We didn’t know how far we were from the trail, since he had refused to drop us off there, but we figured if we followed the road that we would find something.  And sure enough (again, keep trying for something; eventually it will be yours) we came to the end of the road and what looked like, apparently, the entrance toward the trail:

As you can see it was already getting quite dark (I still don’t know where all the time went), but I had resolved to try out climbing this mountain, and sleeping at the foot and not climbing until the next day would have left me with not enough time to make it to the lab welcoming party they were throwing for me around noon the next day…so me and Olle decided to try climbing it that night.

After a while more of walking somewhat aimlessly, toward what we figured was Gas-san, we ended up coming across this odd looking building:

…so we went over to explore it.  Turns out it is actually a ski lodge that is connected to a huge ski-lift that goes pretty far up Gas-san, and is used deeper in the winter when snow covers the entire mountain (I guess?).  Well, we explored a bit and after we couldn’t find anybody to direct us to the real trail (the whole place was completely closed, probably because there was no snow at all on the bottom).  So, we ended up just sitting at the foot of the ski-lift and finding some barrels that we could eat on.

As we ate, we finally decided on a course of action.  We purposed to climb up the mountain, which we were almost positive was Gas-san at this point (but I think it’s kind of funny to note that we weren’t 100% sure) underneath the ski-lift, following it toward the top, since we couldn’t find the trail, and see what we found when we got to the top of the ski-lift.  Most of the mountain was full of fields of long grass (which can be dangerous if there are unseen rocks or ditches) and/or trees and thick brush that we couldn’t easily bypass, so it was just lucky we came across this ski-lift, which had relatively smooth ground underneath it that we could climb up without worry of broken ankles or anything like that.

So, we started to climb….

This post is already quite long, and miraculously I haven’t even started talking about climbing the mountain yet , so I think I’m going to stop here for now, and split it up into a few pieces to tell the whole story of Gas-san (probably no more than two, maybe three pieces in total).  It was a really great experience, and I got some nice pictures of the mountain sides and other random things, so I will be sure to include these in the following posts.  I still have to explain how we managed to get free lodging, how we got food, some people we met, etc….so try and catch the next post .

I will try and post these essays more often.  I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but I won’t wait nearly this long to do the next one.  Thanks for reading.

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When I finally got to the extravagant finale of the Asakusa shopping run, I was presented with the entrance to a shrine for my troubles. And not just any kind of entrance either, this entrance had several attractions and “make yourself more holy” points positioned around it before you could even attempt to enter. For instance, right when walking in I immediately wandered over to an area with many small drawers and a canister of chopsticks. Not really knowing what to do, I managed to find two other helpful Americans, one of whom spoke pretty good Japanese and could read some Kanji:

This picture didn’t exactly turn out like a normal picture since I happened to be telling a joke right when I took it….OMG I AM SOOOO FUNNY!!1!!11!  Anyways, these people were a big help as far as explaining the process of selecting your personal fortune, which went something along the lines of shaking the canister of chopsticks until one came out, which had a number on it.  Then you would find this number (in Kanji) on one of the many small drawers, and pull out your fortune.  This is the successful product:

One of the things that I found interesting about these fortunes is that they are not like the little ones we find in a fortune cookie…they are much bigger, more specific, and can be horribly bad.  Mine was actually pretty good (entitled “Good Fortune”), but some of them, for example the fortune that one of the other Americans had lucked out with, are pretty atrocious.  Things like: building a house is bad, you will have trouble in the near future, a sick person will become more sick, etc.  However, of course, conforming to the unending optimism of human superstition, they had developed a system to “wish away” this bad fortune.  I think I posted a picture of this from another Temple on my last post…apparently you could tie the fortune around a rope that was hung in the air to allow the bad luck to dissolve naturally.  Or something like that.

Anyways, like I said mine was actually pretty good!  I’ve got a picture of it here:

I especially like the “Making a trip is good” part of it.  Apparently I’ll be satisfied with a better position and wealth, as well.  Sweeeet .

Then, parting ways with my newly made friends just as quickly as we had met in the first place, I walked closer toward the entrance to this temple to be presented with two stations of purifying yourself before entering.  One is described in the below picture….there were dozens of sticks of burning incense in a large bowl of ashes which you were to walk up to and, apparently, wave smoke into your face and body, breathing it in to purify your lungs, I suppose.

The second station consisted of a large fountain, similar to the dragon fountain I took a picture of from that smaller temple, with holy water that you would pour over your hands and then even drink a bit of (and spit back out) to purify your hands and mouth.

And I guess after all that it was finally acceptable to enter and throw money onto this praying shrine after wishing and hoping for whatever it is you want:

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not but, I see this a lot in Japan…it’s funny to see money so closely tied with everything religious, especially when we’re dealing with eastern religions which seem to be based on the morals of separating yourself from and transcending material items.  Yet without fail, every place you go to that has a temple or even just a praying statue has a place to put money and even sometimes holy documents or whatever to purchase for a surprisingly high price (500-1000 yen, or about 5 – 10 USD).

I suppose it makes sense when considering that religiously affiliated places, although closely connected with a God or set of Gods, is still vulnerable to normal building decay, feeding of the priests, and all other earthly difficulties that Gods don’t need to deal with.  Consequently then, these mostly cost money to take care of, so I’d like to note that I guess there’s some explanation in that.

Also, I found this great candy in Asakusa that I bought – like a breaded outside filled with sweet bean paste or something that actually tasted really good.  This is a picture:

And this is a picture approximately .0024 seconds later:

You know food is really good when you eat it so fast you start to choke on it, but then instead of looking for someone to do the Heimlich maneuver you find your body just buying more of the food with your last breaths of air.

Also, Jesus, on my way out of Asakusa and back to the hostel I saw this:

What the shit is that thing?!  I was so startled seeing it, what could that possible be used for.  Notice I didn’t end that last sentence in a question because I feel confident no one can possibly answer it.  I think one day they should break it off that building and plant it and maybe a beanstalk will grow high enough and we can all climb to heaven.  Oh well, that’s not much more ridiculous then breathing in special incense or eating the flesh of our savior to get there.

So, today I was asking around trying to get some paperwork completed, and I was sitting in an office waiting for someone to get off the phone, and while doing so I was watching a Japanese lady stamp a pile of papers.  There must have been at least 100 papers here, and she first spend a good 60 seconds setting up her work area….stamp here, ink pad there, papers here, discarded paper area there – everything was spaced as perfectly as could be.  And then the stamping began.  Tap, tap-tap-tap.  Tap, tap-tap-tap.  For a full 5 minutes while I waited she would tap the stamp on the paper, then three times on the ink pad, then on the next paper.  It was crazy!  She got through 30 or so in maybe the first 3 or 4 minutes.  Come on man, 10 per minute?  What is wrong with this country!!  I would, as I’m sure a lot of the readers of this blog would, be practically shaking with boredom, trying to develop ways to stamp faster, and probably messing up 20% of the papers in the process.  I’m sure all hers will be absolutely perfect.  I still think my way is better.  Work is considered much different here than it is where I’m from.  It’s on a much less individualistic level, it seems, and it isn’t about developing new ideas, but more about putting more hours in and performing jobs that bobo the trained monkey and even his less trained friends could perform with approximately the same amount of efficiency.

In other words, in Japan, it seems the amount of work you put in, and how well you work, is what is important.  Efficiency or the end result are not all that important, apparently, when compared to time spent.  In America I think it is more along the lines of “Do whatever it takes to get this done by this time” instead of “make sure you work hard for 12 hours a day”.  The only difference I would hope for in the future of America is expanding the horizons of the workers, or at least the ones that want it.  So, instead of “I need this bug fix of the OS available by this time” why not something like “We need to deliver this OS product to this distributor by this time and it needs to fill these requirements.  Since one of the requirements fails due to this bug, please fix it – as you can see it is very important to our companies success.”  This information delivered in a way that the employees who WANT to know more can easily find out, but the ones who don’t care can continue along their monkey way without becoming confused, I think is maybe best.

Anyways, I’m off subject.  I should end this post.  I want to post about the mountain me and a friend climbed next time.  More things happened in Tokyo, but I think I’ll just get back to them later – right now I’m missing a lot of media (pictures and especially videos) from Tokyo that I don’t want to post without, so hopefully I’ll be able to find them or get copies of them.

I’ll leave you with this which is, a bit cheesy, but after seeing all of this stuff I turned to walk away and right in front of me there was this girls shirt that I happened to see and I thought was picture worthy:

There are a surprising amount of English shirts here, and a surprising amount of that surprising amount revolve around optimism and how happiness can be found everywhere.  I can truthfully say that, after being in Japan a little and seeing the working life of many of the people and their inability to deal with emotions but simultaneous overflowing containment of them…..I do not wonder why the suicide rate is so high or why they choose to wear shirts that talk about being happy no matter the situation – they need the moral boost most of the time, I’d say.

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Anyways, so the next morning I woke up and rented a bike (coincidentally for much cheaper than what they charged at the hostel I stayed at in Sendai…half the price at only 500 yen) and went down to Asakusa, which is apparently a long shopping run that comes to a memorable end at an immense hanging lantern that sits over the entrance to a gigantic temple. Actually, even on my way I saw a temple randomly just along the street not more than 3 minutes from the hostel….man, these things are everywhere in Japan:

From Japan

So I went to check it out.  Temples in Japan all seem to follow a kind of cookie cutter design method.  Their architecture is obviously temple like, of course….and then there’s another thing that I can since say I’ve seen in almost every temple I’ve visited in Japan so far….these things:

I’m not exactly sure, but I believe they are an integral part of a method to wish away bad luck or fortune. When I saw one in Asakusa someone told me that if I got a bad fortune I could just tie it on ropes that looked like that and it would go away. Oh well no problems, my fortune was pretty good. But I’m getting ahead of myself….back to the small temple.  Another interesting thing that is always found at these temples is the fountain that spews holy water.  I thought that the little guy at this small temple was an interesting example of this:

That’s a pretty badass looking statue.  I don’t think children could pray at this shrine, they’d be scared shitless.  Most representations of God(s) in statue/picture form seem to be an all knowing, elderly, white clothed, glowing human like form spreading open arms to accept all living beings into its bosom.  Although I admit this image kind of makes some decent sense due to the rumored omnipotence of a God…it was something of a relief to see a small ferocious dragon that seems  like he’s just about to spit flesh burning acid into your face representing a God, for once.

Further down the road I found something that I have a little more difficulty locating in Japan – a good fruit shop:

And even this one didn’t have things like pairs, peaches, plums. I can’t find these things ANYWHERE in Japan. And fruit can be pretty expensive, as you can see from the signs (for currency conversion, it’s about 115 yen to the dollar right now, I believe).

However, walking deeper into this same shop, I saw a few things that are muucchhh more common and cheap here in Japan:

and

I don’t even know what species that last group is from, and I had no intention of finding out either. Man, cold fish wrapped in plastic just doesn’t look appetizing.

But anyways, there may be temples scattered all over the country, but it’s only every once in a while that you come across a big and famous one like the temple and humongous lantern located at Asakusa:

I was just standing around looking at the lantern and all of a sudden this overly helpful Japanese guy who (I suppose) wanted to practice some English or just be helpful or something came up to me and said “Ahhh I’ll take picture!”. So then I was like alright great, thanks, and he ushered me into a good picture spot underneath the lantern and then preceded to count down….but somehow he hit the button before he finished counting because I remember distinctly giving a thumbs up before the picture was supposed to be taken but….apparently my timing was off so now I’m just kind of working through the process of getting my thumb up. Ah, oh well, beggars can’t be choosers .

That girl standing next to me is a pretty good example of some of the hot Japanese ass that is easy to find around these types of heavy foot traffic places. The problem is that English is very hard to find out here, especially (of course) with the locals, so all conversations I try and start up with them mostly end in me awkwardly trying to put together a sentence that sounds like “Sorry, I’m just learning Japanese” and then she laughs nervously. HOWEVER, there is kind of an upside to this English thing…because although I may not have my choice of all the Japanese women here since a lot of them can’t speak more than a few words of English (or, maybe are just too embarrassed to?) every once in a while a Japanese girl who has some guts will randomly approach and try and test out her English, and that’s a great conversation starter. It’s as if, since it’s somewhat rare, the simple fact that we can both speak English is easily enough to start and continue a conversation. I’ve noted something similar to this with some other international students, too. When just walking around Japan, sometimes I will see another foreigner, and we lock eyes and nod and sometimes even start up a conversation all because we create a small relationship based on similarities. This is why, I think, it’s so much easier to meet people when you go to meetings in your area of interest…like going on that climbing trip back in the states, or for someone who likes art to go to an art class or for someone who really likes computers to go to a DEF CON meeting or things like this. In that case, everyone you see almost by default has some type of relationship with you due to similar interests or skill sets.

What I find most interesting about this type of thinking is how this is not done automatically in all situations. I mean, considering humans against all the other animals and insects and plants in the world, we are a.) heavily outnumbers, and b.) very unique in comparison to anything else. Whenever we see another human, I wonder why we don’t think “well, that person is also a human being” and nod at them or smile or start up a conversation due to this. Sometimes it seems, to me, like too much is necessary to forge a relationship. I think this has to do with some issues that have been developed since the advent of organized society. Some ideals have slipped into place that seem to make everyone think that relationships are much more difficult to start up than they should or at least could be, and that after they are created they are very difficult to destroy….I guess I would submit that it’s possible that people just put too much stock into these relationships. Maybe they (relationships) should be more of a flowing entity….created and, if necessary, destroyed on a whim in order to further ourselves with no heavy repercussions. If we meet someone who might be a great friend and help us learn a few things about ourselves and/or about the world, then be friends with them….this type of relationship should be forgeable with real meaning within minutes. However, I guess it then comes with the territory that it is just that easy to realize that this friendship is no longer mutually beneficial and to destroy it. This seems to be the way things should exist naturally. Relationships in general exist only to help us further ourselves and our understandings of the world, do they not? Why else are a slew of emotions that push people toward forming an organized society created except to give rise to an organized, efficient way to trade information, advance technology, and overall procreate and develop the species? It seems, though, that for some reason this basic logical assumption about human existence and in particular human relationships has taken a back seat to almost magical explanations that say that relationships were meant to be since the beginning of time, and are fated to succeed or not succeed based on things like whether or not the love fairy kissed your cheek three or four times on the second full moon after your birth. Relationships should be examined by all on a less emotional level and, I know this sounds almost ironic but, they should be seen for the logical reason for their existence instead of any thought processes that are emotionally based. At least, that’s my opinion.

So anyways, back to Asakusa . It was a lot of fun.  Walking through the ridiculous busy streets filled with words from a foreign language and hundreds of Japanese salesmen/women selling little nicknacks and foods and….swords….was definitely a memory to be kept:

The sword selections were pretty crazy there, also:

And this was only maybe 1/4th of the window that contained only some of the swords at this store…and there were multiple shops of this kind, so the selection is pretty big.  If you want a sword from Japan, it’s already been requested of me by a couple people – let me know and I might be able to purchase something and mail it.

This will seem a bit off subject at first but, I have been using a new blog editor, and I just wrote about double the size of this post and was about to post the finished product, but my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on a different button to try out a new feature and, it reverted back to a backup it had saved, I guess, and now I apparently have no way of getting all the other stuff I wrote back.  So, I decided to split this post into two, since I really don’t feel like retyping everything that I just finished typing 5 minutes ago .  But, since it’s fresh in my mind, I’ll make the rest of this post tomorrow, or sometime soon.

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Well, I suppose I’ll start with my transportation….the bullet train! First time I ever got to try riding one, I had heard a lot about their speed and look, and was excited to check it out. First off they really do look pretty awesome:

From Japan

- and that’s just a single decker. There are double decker’s (that I think are more expensive to ride) which are HUGE and awesome looking and I assume go very long distances (I saw one of those right as I came up to my train stop but didn’t have time to take a picture of it).

I actually wasn’t quite early for the train (surprise surprise). It just so happened, as a matter of fact, that I was JUST on time for it. And I was talking to a friend who happened to be taking the train who I met at the Hostel I was staying in as they were calling for passengers to board before I realized that we were chatting in front of door #6 and I had to get to door #14. “No problem”, I thought….just 8 doors. So I started walking and after about half a minute I reached the next door, and realized that each door was this far apart.  I had maybe….one minute left before they took off, probably less at that point.  So I started jogging with all my luggage, passing up each door more quickly now, and every other door or so I would see some Japanese man dressed in conductor like clothes checking his pocket watch and glancing up at me, and I knew the bastards were just waiting for the second where they could close the doors on me.  Anyways, I ended up making it just about to my door, it was in my sight, when all of a sudden I heard a horrible buzzing noise….and then the door started to close. So, I did the only thing I could do, and I threw myself half way into the train as the sliding door shut on me, thinking I’d easily be able to push it open. MAN these doors were intense….I had bruises on my left arm it hit me so hard and it was practically crushing me. I had both my hands on it pressing with all my strength and it was still difficult to pry this thing open. It was truly man vs. machine for a few seconds there as the ridiculous buzzing noise continued directly above my head and I battled for the pride of humanity (how can we have pride if humans are overcome by sliding doors?). Finally, I was able to use my legs and throw my body against the door to stretch it open and wedge the other half of me and my backpack (somehow the backpack got through, I don’t know how) through the gap.

I had built up so much force battling the door, though, that I kind of popped in and fell down amidst dozens of Japanese people as the buzzing finally stopped. Now, this is a perfect example of something in their culture I’ve definitely noticed as being true: the politeness and fear (I think) of making people uncomfortable by staring at them or laughing at them. I tell you, I collapsed into this train after an epic battle with the mechanical doors and not one Japanese person even looked at me, except for the lady I almost fell onto, who only did it for a second or so and probably just to avoid being hurt by my projected body. I looked up at the rows and rows of people expecting to see some smiling faces and they were all just looking down or off to the side so as to avoid eye contact with me. Oh well, stupid gaijin like me must do things like this all the time in Japan.

Death doors:

From Japan

But it really is amazing the way they feign ignorance toward situations like that. I was impressed but kind of confused at the same time….are they afraid of making me feel bad or thinking more along the lines of “let’s not encourage these actions by giving foreigners attention”? The whole idea of them pretending to not see me after that was kind of ridiculous I thought, and trust me I would have felt a lot better if someone laughed along with me and broke the tension instead of everyone practically shivering and staring blankly out their windows as I kind of chuckled and then just walked silently to my seat.  It made me think of when I talked to someone who lived in Japan before I came here and I asked “So, I’ve heard that people in Japan are so much more polite than other places, is it true?” and she responded “well, yes, I think that Japanese are worse at asserting themselves than foreigners”.  Interesting way to answer that question.  I feel like if this happened on the L in Chicago (although the doors are not nearly as powerful, since I’ve held those open before with little problems) the reaction would have been quite different, and in a sense people taking notice of things like that and laughing instead of obviously trying their hardest to pretend to ignore it would make the situation easier for everyone to deal with.

The ride was pretty cool though. Via GPS I got a disappointing speed reading of only 160 mph or so, when I’ve heard they get to speeds of up to 300 mph….but I didn’t have it running until the end of the ride so maybe they go slower for the last 15 minutes or something. The whole ride was only 1.5 hours so, it was pretty fast from Sendai to Tokyo. I thought that a few pictures I took while riding the train offered a good visual description of the combination of Japans bustling city life matched (sometimes) simultaneously with the flowing, natural, tree filled mountainous background:

From Japan

On my way out of the train and up to the ground floor I also noted another great example of how orderly and polite the Japanese are. A few people have told me that they see this in the states here and there too but, I notice that in Japan they always leave room on the right of escalators for people who want to go faster than just standing there:

From Japan

I feel like the way someone uses an escalator says a lot about their personality and the way they live their life. If you’re given help or an extra speed boost in life, do you just sit back and lazily accept it, allowing the extra speed to move you at the speed you would have been at previously anyways, or do you move in addition to the extra speed? In other words, would you rather go just as fast as you would be going except not have to expend the energy, or expend the energy in addition to the speed boost and go twice as fast?

When I got to Tokyo I found the hostel and it was an interesting place. I remember being so surprised when the lady at the desk spoke perfect English…for a few seconds I didn’t even know what to say since I had been confronted almost solely with bad English while at the other Hostel.  In Sendai native sounding English is really difficult to come by, as a matter of fact that may be true when conversing with Japanese people (who live in Japan) in general, at least in my experience.  But the Hostel was weird overall – it was like a mini America in the middle of Japan.  There was something quite unnatural about it.  I remember mentioning to the woman at the front that I was happy she could speak such good English and she’s like “yea, some people come in here and say that it isn’t like cultural enough but, like, what the hell?!  I mean, they’re usually big dorky looking guys, what do they want some girl in a Kimono to wait on them hand and foot” or something along those lines.  Hah, first of all, I think she didn’t realize that she was talking about me.  Second of all, I guess it’s ridiculous to want to experience Japan when you’re in Japan.  This hostel offered a big screen TV, rentable playstation & games, rentable movies, a massage chair….I mean seriously – which of those things can you not do back wherever you came from?  I don’t travel half way across the world to watch TV, play video games, and otherwise experience no change whatsoever.  Oh well, this comment was coming from a girl who had apparently lived in Japan for over 2 years and knew absolutely no Japanese.  That’s absolutely amazing.  Or maybe the word I meant to use there was pathetic.  Anyways, after hanging out for a while I wanted to go out and see some sights of Tokyo. It was already night and I had napped on the train so, I was ready to roll. I asked at the front desk where to go at night and she said there were two main night areas….one where mostly Japanese hung out (Shinjuku) and one that was kind of the foreigner hang out (Roppongi). I decided to try the Japanese hang out that night. So I went, and man, when I got off the train, the endless hordes of people were almost ridiculous. I could see why Tokyo was known for its population. I went quickly from waiting for a train in an almost barren train station:

From Japan

To suddenly seeing one of the busiest places of one of the busiest cities in the world:

From Japan

That picture is hundreds of people waiting to cross a street.

A couple of times before I left I vocalized my worry that Japan would be kind of like the starbucks of the world. Well, some places in Japan definitely aren’t of that type but….let’s face it, if anything is the starbucks of the world it’s this:

From Japan

that’s one humongous starbucks that sits in the middle of the biggest intersection of walking traffic in Tokyo (at least, somebody told me it was the biggest).

Oh by the way, one of the great things I see on the trains here is this:

From Japan

That’s a visual representation of which stop you’re at and which stop is next as represented by LED lights. Man, every train in the world should have that thing, so useful! Unfortunately, only the “commonly used by foreigners” trains seem to have them in Tokyo, and I haven’t seen any in Sendai (where I’ll be living).

Well, it’s getting late, so I think I’ll end the post here. I have a lot more to say about Tokyo though, I’ll post soon. The posts will come a lot more often now that I have internet. Thanks for reading .

 But, I have a lot to post about, and will do so when I get my internet connection back.  See you then .