Goal #1 CHECK!!!

If you remember way back, I made a list of goals for Japan right after I got here.  I have revisited it a few times, but that first goal was always just hanging there, being unattainable.  WELL...I went last weekend and CLIMBED MT FUJI!  Goal #1, complete!

Let's go through the weekend.

Friday...I left school early and took my final kanji test.  And then Kim, Carolyn and I drove to Kawaguchiko.  There are a few trails that lead up Mt. Fuji, but we chose the most popular, the Yoshida Trail, which starts from Kawaguchiko city in Yamanashi Prefecture.  We stayed at a really convenient hotel right near Kawaguchiko station that had free parking for us.

Saturday...Fuji-Q Highland!  It's an amusement park with some crazy roller coasters.  I was too scared to go on most of them, but Kim and Carolyn convinced me to go on one that goes from 0 to 172km/hr in 1.8 seconds.  It then loops around, goes straight up and comes straight back down.  I screamed my head off, and I think every four-letter word I know came out of my mouth at one point.  But it was fun.  I am really not good at drops.  I prefer loops.  We also rode the log flume that has a splash so big, they suggest you purchase a poncho prior to riding.  I am very glad I got a poncho.  After FujiQ we went to Lake Kawaguchi to take pretty pictures of Fuji and the water.

Me with one of the FujiQ characters, "Blue"

The only ride I rode.  It was terrifying.

Fuji, Lake Kawaguchi and a swan boat.

 Sunday...check out of the hotel, bus up to the 5th station!!!  We started our climb at the 5th station which is about halfway up.  We ate lunch first, bought a few more drinks, cans of oxygen in case of altitude sickness, postcards and stamps to mail from the top, a few more snacks, and then we CLIMBED!  We started about 1ish, I think.  I had reserved us beds at a lodge at the 7th station so we got there at about 4pm and rested a bit, ate dinner, watched the sun set, etc.

At the 5th station.

This way up!

Our lodge, Tomoe-kan.

inside of the lodge.

 Monday...At midnight, we got up and continued our climb, using our handy dandy headlamps since the trail is not lit at all.  At this point, my left hip was not cooperating at all.  Like grinding and really, really, really painful, so we were pretty slow moving and did not make it all the way to the top for the sunrise, but we did make it to station 8.5 where we saw one of the most amazing sunrises ever.  We were incredibly lucky with weather, so it was dry and clear and not too cold, although it was really windy, like almost get blown off the mountain windy.  But seriously, we could have been climbing in the rain.  Or it could have just been cloudy.  It was neither.

8th station!

first signs of sun

more sun

and beautiful!

Monday (still).  After sunrise, we continued up to the top.  We probably got to the top at 7ish?  I wasn't really checking my watch, but sunrise was 4:37.  The top was SO windy!!!  It was sort of cold, but if we were moving, it was not a problem for me.  I bought a hot chocolate and ate my breakfast.  I also got some top of the mountain only souvenirs.  We checked out the crater, found the post office and mailed our postcards (we were lucky!  the post office opened July 14...we were there on the 16) and then began our descent.

crowded.

At the top!!!!!

Looking down at the people climbing up

I made it!!

this is pretty much everything on the top.  If you walk around the crater, you can get to a post office and there is some sort of building, but mostly, this is it.

crater

post office! 

Normally you have this kind of view from an airplane.  Well, I was on top of a mountain.

 Monday (still still).  We started down at about 9am.  We got to the bottom at about 1.  And let me say, those were quite possibly the worst four hours of my life.  The way down is just zig zags back and forth of rocky, slippery paths.  Thank GOD it was not raining at all because as it was, I fell at least 10 times.  My knees hurt a bit, but not nearly as much as I expected, and not nearly as much as my hips.  It was also pretty windy on the way down, so sometimes we just had to stop and protect our faces from the dust pelting us.  When I got to the bottom, my eyes, ears and nose were full of Fuji dust.

snow on the way down.

this is what the whole way down looked like.  rocky slopes.

 Monday (still still still)  So 1pm...been awake for 11 hours at this point.  We ate a quick lunch at the 5th station and then took the bus back to Kawaguchiko.  We showered at the hotel we had stayed at and then drove home.  I got home at about 9.  That is a long time being awake.

I am really glad I climbed it and all in all it was a positive experience.  But, there is a saying in Japan that translated roughly to you would be stupid to not climb Mt Fuji once, but you would be stupid to climb it twice.  I completely understand this saying.  I am not sure I would ever want to climb it again.

Some other things...

Thankfully, we were all fine with the altitude.  I did not need to use my can of oxygen.  I think I can probably thank my hip for the nice, slow pace we were forced to take.


I bought a mini version of the walking stick at our lodge, and I got it branded at the 8th station and then again at the top.  It was a really good solution.  I wanted one of the poles to get branded but I was not sure how to get it back to America (It would have been like 4 feet tall).  Also, I am really glad I did not have one, because there were places where I needed both my hands to climb and having a pole would have been a problem.  Coming down, I wish I had had a pole of some sort.  Oh well.

my mini walking stick!

and the other side.  The top-most stamp is from the top of the mountain.

I never got to ask someone...but I wonder where the people who work at the lodges live...like, do they stay there 2 weeks and then climb down?  What about the people at the top working in the post office and in the souvenir shops?  Do they stay up there a few days or weeks?!  just some food for thought.


A few Fuji fun facts:


Fuji is 3776m tall.
It is the highest mountain in Japan
It is a dormant volcano.  It last erupted in 1707-08.
On average, it takes 5-6 hours to climb up and 3-4 to climb down from the 5th station.
Mt. Fuji has been submitted as a Cultural (not Natural) World Heritage Site.


Ok...that's all folks!

some numbers

• 806: minutes until I am officially past the quarter-century hump. (not excited) I think looking forward to and then enjoying my birthday is a thing of my past.
• 2,200: average number of steps I take every day at school. (not bad considering it is the bare minimum for just going to and from class, making copies, etc)
• 5: bruises I have from trying Judo last night. One of them is on my spine from trying to learn how to fall properly.  The fact that I have a bruise there means I did not succeed.
• 3: books I have read in their entirety since Saturday (50 Shades of Grey...yeah I read them.  And I liked them.  And I just admitted that I liked them on a public blog)
• 2: kanji tests I took yesterday (don't know if I passed yet)
• 21: days of school where I will actually teach at least one class (!!!!!!)
• 43: days until I leave Iiyama 
• 44376: 43 days in hours.
• 2662560: 43 days in minutes
• 56: days until I board a plane to return to America
• 5: members of my favorite J-pop group, Arashi
• 23: days until my last kanji test (probably not going to pass!)

well...

I lied.  I know.  I was supposed to write posts for last Thursday and Friday and I didn't!!    But I am posting now, so...

Just a quick post about one thing in Japan I will not miss...bureaucracy.

I had to renew my driver's (drivers'?) license on Monday.  I hear you thinking "what is so hard about that?  send in the form!  or go stand in line at the DMV and bam! done!"  Well...no.  In Japan, you have to sit through a lecture.  If it is your first time renewing a license, then the lecture is 2 hours.  After that, just one hour. 

Let me walk you through the whole process.

Paperwork hours are 1-2.  I got there at 12:50.  There were already 30 people there.  You get in the first line...they scan your license in this cool machine which prints out a paper that has your license (front and back) and then things to fill out.  Then you pay (it costs 4000yen) and they have stamps for this, so when you pay, they stick stamps to a piece of paper.  Usually they give you the paper and you go to a different window, but in this case, they stick the stamps on the paper, you write your name on the paper, and give it right back to them.  What a waste of a piece of paper, eh!  ok...proceed to tables where you fill out a form about medical stuff (I did it in japanese and they were all very impressed.)  go to room to get eyes checked.  that was fun.  NOT.  Last time I was there, I had some help explaining about my eye, but I was on my own this time, so it was a bit of a mess.  but she let it go, thankfully.  Go to a window and turn in all the forms filled out up to this point.  receive another form and a colored tag.  Go to a room to get new picture taken (No smiling!!) turn in form after taking picture.  Go upstairs to classroom and sign in.   OK STOP for a moment.  I am not sure you are getting quite how hectic the process was.  Also, please remember that this was all happening in Japanese and also that there were people everywhere at all the different windows and stations.  It was really overwhelming.

Ok, let's proceed upstairs.  I was the first one there, so I sorta wandered around a bit, took a picture of the projector cause I am weird, bought a bottle of tea and went back in.  The lecture was the biggest waste of time ever.   We started with a video that just showed accidents and how/why they happen.  It broke down reasons behind accidents into categories: ignoring traffic sings (running a red light for example and hitting someone who had the right of way) or driver negligence? (there is a better word, but it was like the driver was texting or looked down to do something).  After the video, the guy talked for an hour and a half.  Besides the fact that I was the only foreigner suffering through it, the information itself was just irrelevant.  It was all statistics about accidents and numbers of people who have licenses in all of Japan and then Nagano specifically.  It was the kind of information that should be in a pamphlet for people to read while they are in the driving center waiting room or something.  It is not something that they need to waste time saying out loud.  I know there were people sitting behind me who kept falling asleep because the lecturer kept waking them up.  It was seriously boring.  But this is Japan.  They have the power to make people sit through things like that, so they do.  I am not sure what I think would be a good use of time, but not these stupid statistics.  Oh well. It is done and I can now legally drive in Japan until July 21, 2015!

Picture of the screen. Cause I know you were curious.

Wednesday, June 6

Wednesday...hump day.

Another relatively unexciting day.

I had 3 classes.

The first class I ended up teaching alone because the JTE was not feeling well.  he came in at the end, but did not really do anything, so...  what was interesting about this is this particular class of first years is usually loud and hard to manage, but with just me, they were angels!  I don't know why, but they listened to me, and even enjoyed the class, I think.  I did a word search, which you think would not be that fun, but they were really into it.  It was their first time doing a word search, so that could be part of it.  Either way, I was happy with them.  for the last 15 minutes of class, I taught them hangman, which also went really well.  It was funny, though, because to explain it, I just sort of start a game and let them figure out the rules themselves and finally one kid got this expression and then shouted out "OH!  So we want to SAVE the person!!!"  It was hilarious, and he was essentially right.  So now I have change the name of the game to the equivalent of "save the person" game. 

Since we are on the topic of hangman and I have nothing else to really talk about in this blog entry, I will tell you a story.  One time, an ALT played hangman in his class and some of the kids wrote down the gallows thing and the dead person.  And then one of the kids decided hanging himself would be a good way to commit suicide, so he did.  And the parents of the kid found these random English class notes with people hanging and talked to the school and sued the ALT for giving their son the idea.  true story.  Anyway, I like hangman, but I always have to be really really careful to emphasize that it's just a game, just for fun.  sometimes i hang a teddy bear instead of a person, just to be extra safe.

In other news, nothing else really happened!

We celebrated Megan's birthday after work with Korean food and ice cream cake.  Those of you friends with me on facebook, can also watch the video and enjoy the fact that the chicken dance was also a part of the celebrations.

There was also a sing along to Disney's "Be a Man" from Mulan, probably due to the fact that 5 of us ate an entire ice cream cake.

the end.

Tuesday, June 5

Well...my Tuesday was pretty uneventful, especially compared to Monday.

The good news: I managed to get all the pen pal letters (been working on collecting them since March) so I was able to send them to Carson yesterday.  woo.  I decided to just spend the money and essentially overnight them, especially since school in Fairfax county ends next Friday!  I do owe 8 students cookies, but I am willing to make cookies for them, since they volunteered to write a second letter to help me out.

The rest of school was uneventful.

We had rice, milk, egg soup, bean sprouts and "matsukaze yaki" for lunch.  it was good.  Matsukaze yaki is sorta like meatloaf, I guess.  Made with chicken, I think.  guess I could check.....

...bam!  I checked!  Oh the wonders of the internet!  Yes, chicken.  Here is a recipe!matsukaze yaki (If it's all sesame to you, I recommend sesame seeds)

anyway....the rest of the school day was uneventful.  I ran errands after work and then met up with Crystal so we could study kanji.  We studied for like 3 hours tonight  The test is July 13 and these kanji are exponentially harder than the last level I took.  plus the test itself is harder, so pretty much, I am screwed!  Oh well.

After studying, I got my craft on and made a rhinestone picture frame for Megan's birthday.  I also learned that rhinestones bounce and that they stick to the bottom of bare feet if you step on them.  

That is all for Tuesday.

Monday, June 4

Let's do that thing again where I write a post every day, no matter what happened, no matter how ranty, no matter how wonderful!

Today is Monday, it is about 2:15 right now and I have had an awful day!  Well...awful is pretty strong, but I have had small frustrating moment after small frustrating moment today and it has all added up to a not fun day..  Ranty post alert!

ok...I will start at the beginning.

I got to school like usual, no problems there, and I was just getting set up when one of my teachers came up to me and said the equivalent of "I am counting on you for today!" and walked away.  .......um..........  did I miss something?  20 seconds of PANIC, frantically searching through my schedule book to see what I had promised to do today that I had forgotten about found nothing, and followed after the teacher and asked him to elaborate.  Turned out he wanted me to do the whole class by myself (he would be in the room, but I would be in charge of activities)  which is fine, but then when I asked him for a theme of some sort, he gave me the very specific  "nandemoii"  (anything is ok) answer.  Well, great.  Thankfully I had first period to figure it out, but these kinds of moments just frustrate me.  I need more warning usually, and I need something a little more specific.  So that was 1 small moment of irritation.

Next...I went to the class I discussed above.  I made a word search and then we were going to play spoons.  Mostly the class went badly.  The kids were talking, not listening to me, not playing the games right, etc.  And the teacher mentioned above is not so good at disciplining, so he just let them go.  moments of irritation to 2.

Next.  You all probably know I like my space.  I don't like people to touch my things or go through them unless I have given them permission.  Well, another teacher was talking to me about 4th period and he came over to my desk and for one thing he does not know how to make eye contact, so he was looking all over the place, but then he started touching the papers I had on my desk!  And commenting on them!  (It was a stack of puzzles I have made...but still!!)  And he also had no idea what he wanted me to do during class, so it was one of those incredibly awkward conversations that was mostly pauses.  we decided I would just do a quick warm up game and then we would work on the textbook.  Ok, cool. but still touching things+awkward = moment 3.

Well. I went to 4th period, did my quick game, we were working on the textbook in which the students learned new words including appear and disappear.  The teacher decided this was a good time to point out the prefix "dis" and how it makes words mean the opposite.  He then decided to give another example:  appoint, disappoint.  He told the kids the meaning of disappoint, and then he just decided for himself that appoint means to put at ease.  (best I can translate the Japanese word he used).  NO!  THIS IS NOT RIGHT!  What am I supposed to do with this?!  Moment 4.

Sometime between moment 2 and moment 3, I came into the teachers room and there was cake on the table.  CAKE!  Just what someone who had already had 2 irritating moments needs!!!  CAKE!  So I get a piece, and a teacher says to me in a special* tone "oh, Elissa, that has anko in it, so be careful."  Back story...anko is red bean paste, it is sweet and delicious and in a lot of Japanese snacks.  I have lived here for 3 years and these people have ALL seen me eat anko and say I like it.  so WHY WHY WHYYYYYY would this teacher pick today to give me that condescending-toned "oh...it has anko in it" warning.  *Not sure if you know, but sometimes Japanese people get this tone...it is sorta condescending?  I can't really explain, but other people who have lived in Japan will probably know what I mean..  Like when someone says to me "Iiyama has four seasons!"  Basic statement, yes, but in the tone, there is this implied meaning: "aren't we wonderful? we have four seasons!  bet your hometown doesn't!"  So this makes 5 moments.

And one more for the list...this is a constant annoyance, though.  We have a hot water pot in the teachers room that everyone can use.  I wanted some coffee but then pot was EMPTY.  I have never understood why someone would leave the pot empty.  You finish it, you fill it back up!  Why is that such a hard concept!  But I filled it, waited the 10 minutes and then got my coffee, so, I will only count this as a half an irritating moment.  it probably would not have bothered me at all if it were the first thing of the day.

today's total 5.5

Add to all of this the fact that I am trying to write grad school goal statements, figure out how to get letters of recommendation from people who don't know how to write letters of recommendation, work on a letter to my successor, and study really hard kanji and you have a frustrated Elissa.

here's to tomorrow being better!  I think I will walk to and from my English conversation class tonight to de-stress a bit. 

World Heritage sites, scaffolding and deer, oh my!

A few weeks ago, I took a week off of work and went on a trip with Kim and Crystal.

Our route:
Iiyama to Nagano (train)
Nagano to Kyoto (night bus)
Kyoto to Nara (train) and back to Kyoto
Kyoto to Amanohashidate (rental car) and back to Kyoto
Kyoto to Himeji (train)
Himeji to Hiroshima (bullet train)
Hiroshima to Miyajima (boat!) and back to Hiroshima (technically, Miyajima is part of Hiroshima)
Hiroshima to Osaka (bullet train)
Osaka to Nagano (bus)
Nagano to Iiyama (train)

whew!  sounds fun, right??  It was!

For reference (and for fun/cause it's awesome!) a map:

The right-most point is Iiyama, and the left/bottom is Hiroshima/Miyajima (practically on top of each other)

 Well...where to begin...we got to Kyoto at 5am or so and went to our hostel.  Used the secret key code to get inside and sat there and just relaxed a bit and ate some freshly-purchased convenience store breakfast.

And then straight to Nara we go!  Hop on a train, a bus and voila, deer park!  DEER!  (Deer place #1) You can feed them!  Or rather, if you don't feed them, they will eat your clothes/papers/anything.

I feed a deer.

Big Buddha likes to get high fives!

The temple where the big Buddha is is a World Heritage Site (WHS #1)

ok...from Nara back to Kyoto.  We went to a castle in Kyoto, but I am not going to put a picture.

Next day...we rented a car (gasp!) and drove(double gasp!!!) to Amanohashidate.  It took about 2 hours to get there.  Amanohashidate is one of the "three scenic views of Japan".  And it was AMAZING!

"WTF?"  I hear you thinking.  Well...supposedly if you stand on the pedestool thing and look through your legs (see image) it will look like a bridge to heaven.  Well...go sometime and see for yourself, I don't want to spoil it!

At the view station where we were, there was a small amusement park.  It had a ferris wheel and this bike track thing where you could pedal around once for some fantastic views and that wonderful feeling of...being on a bike track in the sky!

Descend from the view station and you can walk along the sandbar itself.  You will also find a sign that proves this is one of the scenic views of Japan.

On the bridge/sandbar.  BEACH!  woo!  I got sand in my shoes.

 Drive back to Kyoto.

Next day...off to Himeji, WHS#2!!  And Scaffolding #1 

Only in Japan do they paint a picture of the building on the scaffolding.  We were fully aware that Himeji castle was under construction.  We went anyway, and it was still beautiful.

Continuing on from Himeji (we only stopped there a few hours)...Hiroshima!  These pictures are not in chronological order.

Hiroshima Castle.

Pretty garden.  Even in the rain.

Crystal and I try on some period clothing.  that helmet...was HEAVY!

Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki.  Here are the layers:  Bottom is a thin pancake of sorts, then yakisoba, cabbage, bean sprouts, some bacon, and an egg.  That is the basic, mine also had cheese and mochi in it.

A-bomb dome.  Well...I did not want to smile in front of it, so I am sort of smirking.  

One thing about Hiroshima...I will admit that before we went I was a bit nervous...I am American, though clearly I was not alive during WWII, but I still had some nerves that people would stare or glare or be rude/whatever.  I could not have been more wrong.  Everyone was incredibly friendly, even around the dome and in the peace museum.  They are not promoting hatred or revenge or blame or anything of the sort.  It is all about awareness, here is what happened, here is why it happened and (most importantly) here is why it should NEVER happen again.  I do not think I have ever been to such a well-thought-out museum.  I was very impressed and moved and I think I learned more in an hour in the peace museum than I did in school when we studied WWII.  I strongly recommend if you ever have a chance, please go to Hiroshima.  I think one of the biggest things for me is the fact that the mayor of Hiroshima writes a protest letter EVERY TIME there is some sort of nuclear weapons test in the world.  EVERY TIME.  They have copies of them all on display.  It was really incredible to see all of the letters that have been written.

One more picture...we took 1000 cranes with us and hung them in the peace park.  A lot of people do this, so they have these really nice cases where you can hang them, and I assume every once in a while they go in and empty them out to make room for more.

Alright...end of me telling you how amazing Hiroshima is and let's move on to Miyajima.  It is an island, so we went by boat!  Again, not chronological order here.

You may know Miyajima...have you ever seen a picture of a HUGE red gate surrounded by water.  It is often called the "floating torii."  Well if not...my pictures will be no help, because little did we know, the torii was under construction when we went!!!  It was so sad!!

There you have it...in all it's glory.  This is almost exactly high tide.

We were very very very sad that it was all scaffolded up.

Naturally, when there is scaffolding, the answer is to buy a small wooden statue of the torii and then stand at exactly the right angle...and...bam!  There it is!  The red gate.  This is low tide, and you can actually walk down where the torii is and walk under it gather shells and fill your shoes with sand and do other wonderful things, too!

Other things to do on Miyajima...take two cable cars to the top and make momiji manjuu!  Momiji are the maple trees and manjuu are a kind of sweet, cakey on the outside and usually filled with red bean paste.  though they have custard and chocolate and green tea and other deliciousness!

Maybe I should be a doctor...?

Deer place#2.  there are deer on Miyajima, too, but they don't get fed so they leave people alone.  We found Bambi, though!  He seems to be confused and thinks he is a cat.

Fresh grilled oysters!  Yum!

Thousands of small Buddha statues. 

 Ok, well...that is it.  It was a blast!

 Any questions?

I learn how to make soba

In case you do not know what soba is, it is buckwheat noodles.  You can eat it hot (soup) or cold (you dip the noodles in a sauce and eat them).  Nagano is famous for soba, among other things, so it only seemed right that after 3 years here, I would attempt to make it at least once.

Before we get to the soba making, Crystal and I took an accidental awesome detour on the way to the place to make soba and we discovered INSANE amounts of snow!!  These pictures were taken on April 30!

walls of snow.  WALLS!!

Did I mention this was taken on April 30?  I have short sleeves on!!

Ok...so we took some pictures, got back in the car and made our way to a place called Mori no Ie.  It's a cute little lodge of sorts that offers all kinds of classes and hiking and snow shoeing and skiing, etc.   They also have these cute little huts you can rent for a night and stay in. 

Crystal and Mori no Ie

Isn't it cute?!?!

 Anywho...we made soba.  I will let the pictures tell the tale.

Our supplies/tools

I empty the soba flour into our bowl

add a little water, a little bit at a time and mix carefully

add a bit more water and try to get the dough to be...well a dough.

knead about 300 times

we took turns on the kneading part

soba dough!!!  We named it Abos.  aren't we clever!  (that's soba backwards, in case you are like, wtf?)

roll it out

its supposed to be square...ours looked like a fish!

more rolling...it needed to be about 2mm thick

fold

fold again

someone gave me a knife.  mwahaha

cut cut cut!!

all cut and ready to be cooked

about a minute in boiling water, then rinse in cold water and eat!  You mix onions and wasabi into this amazing sauce, dip the noodles in the sauce and then eat them.  At the end, when the noodles are gone, you pour some of the hot water that the noodles were cooked in into the sauce cup and drink the rest.  It is AMAZING!

  Well, there you have it.  I did something traditional that did not involve going to a concert or even leaving Iiyama!

Coming up...I go to Kyoto, Hiroshima and Miyajima.