Osaka Sucks

I'm putting up the stories about Osaka right now also, because I don't know when I'll next get a chance, and I'd rather get it out sooner rather than later. For those who're just checking now, there's also a second day of Kyoto below, so don't skip it!

Osaka

By the way

I don't know who all is reading this blog, at this point, but if any of you want postcards, just email me with your address, and you'll get them from time to time!

Kyoto part 2

Well, I've had substantially less internet access than I thought I would, so this has just gotten out of hand. But I'm putting up several posts in the next few days, to catch up with being in Korea; whether or not I'll be able to put up any more updates after this weekend is up in the air; I'm going to China, and a lot of websites are blocked in China, including this one, as of the last time I checked. There might be some way for me to get around it, we'll see.

Anyway, for now, Kyoto part 2:

Kyoto to the mizznax pt. I

Currently, I’m onboard a bus to Seoul; I’m about two weeks behind in stories on my blog, so I’m going to start including multiple days of travelling per entry, organized by city.

So, where last we left off, I was in Kyoto, having marveled at its pine-lined labyrinthine secrets, but not actually doing all that much.

Leaving Fuji

Tuesday began rather innocuously. I got up as late as I could, checked out, and realized I had lost a towel somewhere in the shuffle, my UCSD towel. Kinda sad to have missed it, as it was one of the few things I had with me that showed where I came from, but life goes on. I signed up for a shuttle to take me to the nearest bus station, which would be used to take me on to Kyoto, and did my laundry. I saw a couple of blonde girls that were getting ready to take the shuttle as well; soon we found out we were going in the same direction, so we coupled our fates together for a spell, and got breakfast together while waiting for the bus to Kyoto.

Pictures for the last post

This was a picture of people going up the mountain in front of us, one of those traffic jams.



This is a view down the side of the mountain. Fascinating, innit? Can't see shiyyyyit.


This is almost at the top, and I just thought the clouds looked purdy here.


And here's me, at the eighth station, just a little bit away from the top. This was really the first time that we could see much of anything from where we were on the mountain, the first time that we were no longer walking through the clouds itself.


Dominic and I at the top!



This is a picture of the station at the very top. On the top of that little mound in the distance is a shrine for the top of Fuji; on the right, the brown reflective surface is a vending machine. Yep, that's right, vending machines at the top of Fuji. A little anti-climactic, maybe, but them's the breaks. Japan has vending machines EVERYWHERE, and they don't serve everything, as you've been told, only soda, coffee, water, cigarettes, and occasionally booze.

Fuji-san

(Note: Blogger's not letting me add pictures right now, so here you go, just two pictures for now)

Sooooo Monday begins. I get up early-ish, but only by my standards; I know almost every person reading this works at a real job, and gets up at 6 or 7am every day. I got up at probably around 9am, and I tried to take it easy to begin with. I had made some slight preparations for the trip up Fuji, but I needed to get some more food for sure, as well as sunblock, so I leisurely strolled from my hostel to the bus station that would take me up to “Kawaguchi-ko 5th station”, which was a halfway point up the mountain of sorts. Although you can hike from the very bottom of the mountain, most people opt to start from the fifth station, which starts at about 2,300meters up or 7,000 feet, roughly, and the summit is at 3,700 meters, or about 12,000 feet. The estimate of the hike up from the fifth station is around 4-8 hours, and then 2-4 hours down, double both of those numbers to get the figures for people starting from the very bottom.

Well, today, the real today, was pretty crappy, but I’m going to try to keep that out of this writing. WARNING: This is a pretty long entry.


In this entry, I’m going to talk about my Mount Fuji (mis) adventures. It started on Sunday; Sunday was a day almost as frustrating as today, although it had some saving graces. I was planning on meeting a Japanese friend of mine that I met years ago back in Russian class, a girl named Ai, who’s getting married to a Bulgarian guy (hence why she was studying Russian, which is mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, and actually has classes offered, as opposed to the real deal of Bulgarian). We were going to go to Kamakura, which is a beach town south of Tokyo that’s supposed to be quite lovely, and home to a great big giant bronze Buddha.

Plastic Choco-miruku

Day 3

The first, by far most important objective of the day was to take my skateboard to a skate shop and get it in working condition. I did my research the night before, and it turned out there was an all-purpose sports shop with a skating section not far from my hostel, so I skipped over there quick as I could.

If you had told me a year ago that I'd be trying to use Japanese to get my skateboard fixed in Tokyo, I probably would've thought you were high as a kite. But there you have it.

The First Day Out, or, Japanese Water Cannons

Day 2

So I went to bed at about 4-5am last night, and I managed to get at least a whopping five hours of sleep after. I didn’t have a super clear plan of what I was going to try to do this day, but I knew that it would basically involve just going to a couple districts and spending as little as possible. I also knew I wanted to try to put together my skateboard, and razzlematazz the locals with the awesomeness that is Gravity longboards. Unfortunately, I’ve got butterfingers, and I dropped a very small piece that was crucial to making my whole skateboard work, and it bounced off of my shoe into oblivion. I spent about half an hour trying to find it, to no avail, and finally went to the front desk to see if the guy working there could direct me to a hardware store, which he did. It was a place called, apparently, Doityo, pronounced as two syllables, doyt-yo, and it was only two metro stops away.

Day 1: A retrospective

Okay, its actually day 3 at the moment of my first ever travel, hanging out in Tokyo, Japan. I've been running around ragged, as you might have guessed, so I haven't had the time to make a proper update to my blog, which I really just created for this purpose. So, for the time being, I'm going to do a series of retrospectives until I'm caught up with present time.

Day 1: