Good news and Bad news

Good news is that I'm home safe and sound at my parent's place in Canada stealing a wireless signal to connect to the internet.

Bad news is that I didn't get into Ottawa, so I need to start making plans for the future. Right now I'm thinking of re-applying to Ottawa and Mac. In the meantime, possible options include applying to work at MEC for a year (know someone who'll "put in a good word" for me), finding another random job, or doing some sort of "fun" volunteer work for a while.

New number here is (450) 437-9868. Here helping my parents settle in, and visiting family I haven't seen for over a year. Brother's wedding is on Friday. After that (besides a canoe trip in the works with Ali and Carter) I have no plans. Call me.

Sayonara Enkai

So I've been doing a lot of going-away-type-things in the last week or so. Here's a picture of me and Joe-san at the sayonara enkai that our board of education held for us. I thought it was kinda funny because I had never met about half of the people that were there, and neither had Joe. So these people, who we were meeting for the first time, were there to say goodbye to us and thank us for a year of hard work.

The dinner was really good (and vegetarian, which was a really nice thing for them to do), and the drinks flowed freely until late into the night at around 9 pm. Then everyone went home. Good times.

Awwwwwww.

Me and Karly at the sayonara party (I stole this picture from Lisa, because I didn't bring my camera). We went to the sayonara party after taking about a 2 hour nap. The theme of the party was to wear a white t-shrit, get drunk, then write messages on people's t-shirts with markers. My t-shirt actually turned out quite nice, and will make a good souvenier.

4 hours 26 minutes

That's how long it took us to climb Mt. Fuji. We shattered the previous world record by an incredible 2 hours, 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Seriously, though, the sign at the bottom says that climbing Mt. Fuji is supposed to take 5-7 hours, so I was quite happy with our time. We weren't racing or anything, just nice to know that we're not out-of-shape slack-assess. Funny, because on the way down we passed a bunch of American military guys who were really struggling to get to the top.

Last Friday, the four of us (Rui, Risa, Kari, and Natari) took the Shinkansen (burret train) to a train station right after work, where we were supposed to take a bus. Long story short, we ended up taking a cab, and shelling out 3000 yen each for the ride. Not too shabby, considering the ride was over an hour long. We got to the 5th stage camp (that's where everyone starts climbing from) at 11 pm, and started our ascent.

It was the first day of the climbing season, yet all of the huts along the way up were closed except for one, about halfway up. When we opened the door to see if we could go inside and have a rest, a dude came out and asked us if we wanted to sleep there (many people climb during the day, pay to spend the night in a hut, then start climbing very early to see the sunrise). We said no, and he promptly kicked us out. Then he locked the door. Jackass. We snuck into a nearby janitor's closet just to get out of the wind, and took a 10 minute break there instead.

The only really negative note of the trip was that one of our group members got separated from us, because we were climbing at different paces. Although we had agreed beforehand that everyone would climb at their own pace, we felt kinda bad leaving her behind. We figured she could spend the night at the hut if she felt the climb was too difficult; we also felt that it was unsafe for us to rest for more than 10 minutes at a time (once we stoped, we cooled down very rapidly).

The trail itself was quite challenging. Very steep at some points, very slippery or loose rocks at others, and climbing in the dark was tough. Got good use out of my headlamp finally, though. Fortunately, the trail was well-marked, and there was a rope on most parts of the trail that saved me from falling on more than one occasion.

About 3/4 of the way up (or maybe 4/5ths) we ran into two people from Taiwan that spooked Lisa. They were just sitting there in the dark, and you're not really expecting a random "hello" at that point on the mountain. Apparently, they had been climbing in pitch dark, after being separated from their friend with the "group flashlight". Placing them between us (we all had headlamps), we escorted them up until they eventually caught up with their friend.

The summit itself was unspectacular, with an ugly (closed) building, and mostly rocks for scenery. The view looking away from Mt. Fuji, though, was incredible. Nicest view from 3776 m that I've ever seen :)

Climbed down in a hurry, hooked up with our other team member, and passed lots of people on their way up. I was surprised to see so many foreigners, but apparently about 1/3 of people who climb Mt. Fuji are foreign. All in all a good way to spend my second-last weekend here in Japan.

My eyes aren't closed in that picture; I'm actually taking a short nap.

...almost there...

One of the signs.

Snow!!! This is a shot of the crater (for those of you not "in the know", Mt. Fuji is actually a volcano). The crater takes over an hour to walk around. The scenery not being great, we decided to just head back down.

Picture looking back at the trail.

Summit

...precious...

That's right folks, we were above the clouds

On the way down...

View down from the top.

Karly sporting an Engrish hat from the souvenier shop.

Koyasan

Koyasan is the name of this city that's located on a 900 m high plateau, and surrounded by a bunch of mountains. It is also the final resting palce of Kobo Daishi, a famous priest/monk who was the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism in Japan. Many people make religious pilgrimmages to this site. Before you get to the main temple (which is really cool, but you can't take pictures of it), you have to walk through the biggest graveyard in Japan, which has (estimates vary) up to 500 000 people buried in it. The neat thing about this is that you have everyone from former elite samurai, to political leaders, to local unheard-of peasants buried in the same area.

We stayed in a traditional Japanese inn (run by monks), and ate traditional Japanese food. It still boggles my mind how most Japanese people really have no concept of vegetarianism now ("you can eat sausage, though, right?"), yet at one point in Japan's history, the entire populace was vegetarian. How quickly we forget.

Anyhow, Takahashi-sensei (a former teacher at Lisa's school) took us there last weekend. It was his going-away present to us. It was great because we probably never would have gone to this place on our own, and it was a great way to spend one of my last weekends here in Japan. We also met some fellow tourists (a fairly rare occurence) and invited them to our place to drink the local sake and play cribbage. Another interesting note was that a boy's choir was also staying in the same place as us, and I couldn't contain my laughter of the funny/cheesy descriptions of Japanese food and traditions given by the leaders of this group.

We also joined the monks in a round of meditation (where my legs fell asleep, and I couldn't walk for several minutes afterwards), and them chanting some religious verses (although the "head monk" was away on business in Tokyo, so he was replaced by a monk that coughed every 2 minutes, and another one that kept losing his place). All in all, though, it was a very interesting insight. We also had an 80 (85?) year old lady come in and describe her life in the city back when it was still a town. Hearing about the conditions after the War was particularly informative.

Enough babbling for now; enjoy the pictures.

ps the last 3 pictures (in case you couldn't tell) are completely random.

A very scary guardian deity on one side of the entrance gateway.

Nothing to see here folks. Just a bunch of monks walking down the street in procession.

Lisa and I in the room we stayed in. Monks set up the futons in here while we were having delicious traditional vegetarian food.

Yes, that's right, you can buy beer in 1 or 2 L quantities from a friggin' vending machine.

Cool dragon carving on a roof that Lisa didn't think I could take a good picture of. Take THAT Lisa.

Me being a goof.

Takahashi sensei looking at the map. Takahashi-sensei (aka Mr Highbridge) was our faithful guide for the whole weekend. It was his going away present to Lisa and myself. He rocks.

People throwing water on Buddhist statues. Apparently, someone(who has recently died)'s name can be inscribed on a wooden tablet and placed in the river (not allowed to take a picture of that) behind these statues. If you throw water on these Buddhas (the water will eventually flow onto the wooden tablets in the river), then that water will be transported to the person whose name is on the tablet, thereby making their trek through "hell" to reach "heaven" more bareable.

Final resting place of someone really important, but I forget who. Probably an important samurai warrior/political leader.

This is a shrine for Kirin Beer. There's even a beer can offering on the stone altar.

That's me hugging a really big tree.

Lisa defacing a Japanese shrine.

This is a picture of Eric getting lice picked off his leg from a monkey.

This is a picture of my brother. I was writing a wedding speech today at work (I'm one of his best men).

Here's a picture of me with some kids on a garbage clean-up day. We went to the local river and picked up some trash. I won the trash-finding game, since I was wearing sandals and didn't mind crossing the river.