So Much Happening!!

Sorry for being so behind on the blogs! I've been running around so much I've hardly had time to sleep these past few weeks! Here's a catch-up on what's been going on:
Camp is over; it ended a week and a half ago. Very bitter sweet saying good bye to, not only all of the kids, but all of the counselors too. August 15th, the day before everyone took off for their respective homes in the states, we celebrated Lora's birthday (the girl with whom I shared a classroom) by going to Hakone. The city was beautiful, and had we utilized our free boat cruise passes and swam in the river, the trip would have definitely been worth it... but we went to this spa instead (and blew another forty-some bucks just to get in) in which thousands and THOUSANDS of people crammed into decorated hot tubs full of "coffee", "red wine", "sake", etc, etc to enjoy "exotic" bathing. Of course the "coffee" and such was nothing more than colored/scented water, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy it, so I pasted on my best smile and looked back on my childhood with the deepest regret and sympathy for having drug Mom and Dad to all of those crappy, people-packed amusement parks.
After everyone left for the airport on Sunday Aug. 16th, Hank and I packed our bags and headed back to the Embassy housing compound where a mother of one of my campers had offered to keep our bags and let us stay as long as we need during our extended stay - VERY nice to have a home base like that. So, the two of us made a rough draft of what we would be doing over the following two weeks, and set out bright and early Monday morning for Hiroshima. When we got there we headed strait for the island of Miyajima where there is a shrine gate in the water that looks like it is floating at high tide, and you can walk up to it at low tide. We hiked around the island all day, and decided to make it home for the night. We found a plastic tarp on the beach as well as a partially assembled party tent, so we put the tarp under the tent and settled down for the night.
In the morning we woke and caught the ferry back to Hiroshima. We visited the Peace Museum (honoring the A-bomb) and spent over 6 heart-wrenching, eye-opening hours in the museum before we headed out to the peace memprial park and the rest of the town. After a big dinner of a noodle dish Hiroshima is famous for (the first real meal we'd had since we left - it'd been PB&J's and granola up until then) we set off on the impossible two-hour task of finding a hotel.
In the morning (after finding a supprisingly decent hotel and getting our first full night's sleep in four days) we loaded up bright and early again and jumped on the train to Shikoku, a large island on the south-west-ish side of Japan. There we met up with a fellow named Kelsey who let us stay at this English school/international exchange center for three days. It was SUCH a nice place, and he and his boss (who owned the building) were SO incredible. Our first day there we swam in the pool (yeah, it was really, really nice) and explored the town. We were in the town of Takese and were two of three white people for many, many miles. It was such an eye-opening experience to be treated so differently. People all stopped and stared when we went by, and the few people who spoke English were quick to run up to us and ask why we were there. Apparently not the place tourists often find.
The next day (Aug 20th) we caught the train to a near-by town called Kan-onji and hitch-hiked our way to the foot of a large mountain to hike up and see this incredible temple called Umpenji (worth googling if you have a chance). Umpenji is also something not many travelers do. We were the only people hiking - a rather difficult hike at that - and were one of the very few at the top (there was a cable car system to get up there too, but we preffered the hike). While we were wandering through the hundreds of large buddha statues and admiring the temple, a man who was pilgrimiging to 88 temples on Shikoku (a common feat for dedicated Buddhists) who told us about the history of Umpenji. Apparently before 800AD a Japanese monk traveled to China and brought back Buddhism, starting it atop a mountain near Kan-onji. We were at the very first Japanese Buddhist Temple, and we didn't even know it!
It is time for me to get a move on the day. I have hardly begun to tell you about our adventures, but I will do my best to get another post up MUCH sooner than I have been.
So sad to see we have less than a week left here!!! I am not ready for this to end.

Yoyogi

Whoops! I forgot that I had made this video. We haven't been to Yoyogi park in a couple weeks, but I thought I'd better go ahead and put this up here so you can get a taste of it anyway. Enjoy!

FUJI!!!!!

So, like many, one of the things I really wanted to do in Japan was hike Mt Fuji. This weekend I finally did it!! Wow, what an absolutely exhausting, fantastic time it was, too! We left Hiroo (the prefecture in which we live) at 6:15 on Friday night to get to Shinjuku station in time to get our bus to Fuji. The bus pulled up to station 5 on the mountain at about 10pm and after we bought our walking sticks and got all suited up in our under-armor it was nearly 10:30 on Friday night before we began our hike. It started off pretty easy, but we quickly learned how fast a mountain can change. It seemed at every switchback was a completely different kind of climbing. There were times when it went from slippery gravel to garden sized lava rocks to full-on hands and feet vertical rock climbing! Lena and I stopped around 4:15am to sit down and watch the sunrise. Hundreds of people around us had the same idea. We stayed there for about an hour - it was all WAY too beautiful to risk missing a second! I took probably two dozen pictures of the sun coming up. I literally felt like I was in heaven it was so fantastic. After the sun was up we finished up to the top where Hank, Shirley, and Rebecca were waiting for us. It was crazy how many people were hiking all at once. I mean there were thousands and thousands of people on that mountain. Before we left I was really disappointed in this because I knew beforehand how crowded it would be. I was upset that this beautiful natural experience would be ruined by thousands of tourists, but once we started climbing, I really began to appreciate how awesome of an experience it was that ALL of us could share such an incredible event together. We got to the top and I got a victory hot chocolate before we headed back down. Going down was much faster, but MAN did it kill the knees! We were all sure our toe nails had fallen off and I was sure I would never walk again my knees hurt SO bad! But we made it, and within a couple days I was good as new again.

Sunday was great as well. A few of us went to the Harajuku area to a flea market - LOTS of fun treasures there. Then I went out to a cool little Chinese restaurant with Ronald for dinner. It was really neat; we got to pick out our own fish (a really cute red one that I felt bad killing) and they friend it up and brought him out scales, fins, eyes, and all. I was surprised at how good the fins were, and I even ate my very first fish eyes! I was ready to gag over them, but they were actually probably the best part! I wish I'd had a camera because the restaurant was so nice, and there was literally a skull, a jawbone, and a razor sharp spiky spine left on the plate after we ate - I wanted to document it, but you'll just have to take my word that I gnawed every last scrap of meat off of the bones. Then we met up with Hank, Shirley, and Rebecca and went to Tokyo Tower. I vowed to myself on the bus ride to the New Sanno the very first night I arrived in Tokyo that I would NOT waste my money on the miniature Eiffel Tower/tourist trap, but I was swayed into going and regret every one of the one thousand, six hundred, and eighty yen I wasted there. Oh well. It was more time spent with my friends.
So, our second to last week of camp is well under way. The kids are still crazy, but I have decided, since the summer is nearing its end, I really don't need to enforce rules anymore. Yes, it sounds bad, but the kids have more fun, and I am less stressed. So if they want me to throw them in the pool (I have literally had over six kids climbing up my back, arms, head, and chest at every moment we have been at the pool this week - just wanting me to throw them. Great workout with all that extra weight!) or if they want to get out all of the blocks, dolls, books, and animals and have a hay-day, that's fine with me. Only seven days left with the little buggers!
Thanks for checking in on me! I hope I'll have more for you soon!

Making the Most of Time

Wow! Time is absolutely FLYING by over here! I cannot believe we only have two weeks left with the kids. Last weekend was a blast. Hank, Jeff, Shirley, and I caught the overnight bus to Kyoto on Friday night. It poored all day Saturday, but we did not let it slow us down. Our first stop was a huge flea market - tons of fun stuff I wish I had room to carry and money to buy! On our bus ride to the flea market I met a really nice woman who was on her way to a 'Mothers for World Peace' conference. It was a long bus ride so we spoke for quite some time. Apparently they have these conferences once a year in some different city in Japan. They've been going on for over 50 years, and thousands and thousands of Japanese mothers come from all over the country. It was really cool.
Anyway, after the flea market we headed to the Golden Paviaian (the one that has been the desktop on my computer for the last five months). Despite the rain, it was absolutely gorgeous. We walked around the grounds and found a place to have a traditional Japanese tea ceremony - the perfect place to duck into to get out of the rain! It was very nice and the little desert we had had a picture of the golden pavilian baked into it, and it had two tiny gold leaves on it that we ate!
Next we went to the Nijo Castle. Wow. The wole thing was surrounded by a moat, and there were two palaces inside, one of which was surrounded by yet another moat. We spent hours in the Ninomaru Palace (the Shogun's palace) it was absolutely mind blowing how intricate everything was. There were SO many incredibly interesting aspects to such simple arcitecture. I'd say the most interesting part was the floor boards. Nightingale Fooring was a kind of flooring used to alarm people of intruders. Metal cramps are fastened into little nitches under the floor boards, so when any weight is applied to the board (ie someone walking on it) it tweets like a nightingale! It was really cool because each board had a little bit different of a sound, so you could tell how fast someone is going, or how heavy they were.

From the castle we hustled to teh Arashi Yama Monkey Park. Oh my goodness. It was a little bit of a hike, but those monkeys were SOOO cute!! I thought about snatching a tiny one and smuggling it home (I think they would really get along with Olive!). We got to feed them, and the best part was when a baby monkey started playing with my toes. His momma saw him when he started climbing up my leg, ran over my foot screaming, and snatched the monkey right off of me. I felt pretty special.

Then we saw some long-boats paddling down the river and stopped to see what they were up to. I was SO excited to see that they were lining up to watch an ancient practice of fishing. It was a form of fishing I learned about a few years ago in which a small flock of cormorants are tied to a boat via a metal ring around their neck. The birds go down into the water to catch a fish, and when they come up the fisherman pulls the rope they are tied to, flinging them onto the boat, and the fish they caught is forced out of their mouth into a bucket on the boat. The bird is thrown back into the water and they just go over and over again - boom, boom, boom, one after another, catching fish incredibly fast. It was really something to see. At first I felt really bad for the birds, but apparently they actually have a ranking order among them that the birds actually recognize - it seems like they really take pride in this sort of fishing.

Sunday was pretty full as well around these parts. We went to a little cafe in the morning and took off for a ropes course to check it out and see if it would be ok for the day camp kids to go to for a field trip. Then we walked around the Yoyogi area for a few hours trying to find this Samuri sword musuem (everywhere we stopped to ask dirrections pointed us further and further from where we were supposed to go... very thoughtful). We finally found it, and thought it was small, it was PACKED with interesting history.

Another blog soon to tell you about this weekend (Aug 1-3). Whew!