So anyway, I now have reliable internet that doesn’t have this website blocked so I can finally upload pictures from Hakone and Nagano. My sister, mom, and I went with Seisei’s family who own a van, so Seisei’s dad drove us around everywhere.

Hakone is at the base of Mount Fuji. When I climbed Mt. Fuji before, I started from the fifth station, but this time I got a chance to go to the very bottom. As one can imagine, the bottom of the volcano had a lot of hot springs and random steam coming out of the mountain. Also, the whole place smells like rotten eggs due to the high sulfur content.

from a cable car… see the yellow stuff? that’s sulfur!

ouch, hot! 80 degree Celsius hot spring…

… where they boil eggs and sell them to tourists. The eggs come out completely black but apparently taste the same. According to the sign in the tourist shop though, if you eat this egg (that contains crazily healthy minerals… er… like sulfur), your life will lengthen by 7 years.

We stayed in a mini hotel that’s called a pension which only has 8 rooms or so. But the rooms have a living room, a tatami room, and two beds so both of our families could easily sleep comfortably. The pension had its own onsen (hot spring bath), a ping pong table, and breakfast and dinner included. Here’s a picture of all of us at breakfast:

Next: Nagano which was basically us walking down a long trail that had a bunch of waterfalls along the way.

and there’s more, but waterfalls get kinda of the same after awhile.

I’m going to enjoy the absence of the Great Firewall of China now.

Next, I’ll put up pictures of Beijing: Bird’s Nest, Watercube, and Wang Leehom’s concert!

Edomura is a village modeled after the Edo Period. Tourists can rent a costume to wear, but it was too expensive so we didn’t, but there were little kids running around in ninja costumes everywhere. And all the men had that crazy hairdo. We first went to a lot of ninja attractions which consisted of a ninja haunted house, a ninja maze, a house of tricks, and a house that made no sense in terms of gravity. We tried to get into the ninja show twice, but both times they were full

the ninja maze

in the haunted house…

the crazy warped house

so much carp!! all fighting for the food

There were also exhibits on famous Japanese wars and a jailhouse where torture devices and people being tortured were displayed.

a guy being beaten along with the unfortunate people who are in line

heavy stones placed on a woman who’s kneeling on a rack made of triangles, looks really painful…

a guy being murdered; I have no idea what the context is since all the descriptions were in Japanese

And we got to watch a water show where water came out of the woman’s fan, tea cup, and head.

After Edomura, we decided to go to a onsen (hot spring) since the train station is called Kinagawa Onsen so the place is famous for them. Unfortunately, according to the ad in the brochure, the onsen we were looking for was called Kinagawa Onsen, which caused some confusion when I asked the guy at the bus stop for directions. In the end, after wasting a dollar on the bus when the guy dropped us off at a member’s only club, we walked to the nearest train station to ask for directions. Luckily, this guy knew what we were talking about, but it turned out the onsen was called something completely different. Oh well. The onsen was pretty nice, only $5, and there was one outside too. It was drizzling  so it felt pretty nice. Of course, right before we came in, a class of elementary school girls went in before us, so it wasn’t exactly peace and quiet with all the giggling at being naked. Afterward, Jess and I went back to the station; Kemi decided to stay overnight to see the temples.

There was a foot bath right in front of the station!

When Jess and I got back to Tokyo 3 hours later, we met up with Chris, Adrianna, Chris’s friends to sing Karaoke. We ate ice cream ate this awesome place called Blue Seal. I got mango/banana soft serve, mmmmm. Jess made fun of me cuz this was my third ice cream that day. Japan really has yummy ice cream bars…

The Thursday before this, I had my farewell party from Honda at an izakaya. Since I wouldn’t be here for most of the week after since my mom and sister were visiting, I had my final presentation on Thursday as well. Around 16 people were at my farewell party and since about 5 of them were interns, and they drank a lot of beer, everyone except the 5 of us had to pay at least $80. o_o

When my sister and mom came last week, we went to Hakone and Nagano for two nights and three days. That’s another entry though. Since China blocks almost all common blogging websites, I’m using a VPN client, but it makes my computer blue screen randomly (my comp shut down twice while writing this entry, thank goodness wordpress autosaves…). I’m going to google it now…

A MISTI Japan alum had reserved a spot near the river, really close to the fireworks, and said he would go there at noon to spread out his enormous blue mat. He told us to definitely get there before 6pm (fireworks start at 7:15) so naturally, I got to the station at 6:15pm. This is what I saw:

it took 15 minutes to get up the stairs…. then…

in Japan, we pay on the way out, since the amount you pay is based on how far you travel. So, there was a really long line… When I got out, I had no idea which way the river was, but all I had to do was follow the crowd!

And Lawson, a popular convenient store, had a line outside of it…

this is what it was like for over a mile along the river, people’s mats spread to the left and right of this street. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place at once.

So I was supposed to look for the big blue mat that had MIT taped to it, near the number 2 sign. This is what it looked like… I even walked among the mats until it got too dark and I couldn’t see any MIT people so I decided to just stand there and watch the fireworks by myself.

There was a whole show with a burning bridge and the Olympic Flag in the middle. Tokyo is a Candidate City for the 2016 summer Olympics and people in Japan are really hyped up about it.

I realized pretty quickly that I would have to leave early because there would be no way I could get back home if I stayed till the end with so many people needing to get on the train. So after half an hour (the show is 1.5 hours long), I started walking back to the station, which takes around 30 minutes. There were still people arriving so I was this lone person going against the crowd.

And there were cute shops everywhere that sold noodles and okonomiyaki. I got some soft serve or “soft cream”, it was actually some of the best soft serve I’ve ever had.

And when I got to the station, there was already a huge line to buy tickets and charge cards. Luckily, I charged mine on the the way out so I only had to go through the ticket gate. The station was already crowded despite it being really early, haha, probably people thinking along the same lines as me. The whole platform was full, but I managed to squeeze onto the immediate next train! yay! It was fun watching the fireworks, definitely more exciting than the US, but I’m not doing it again.

So today, I went to an opera called Il Trovatore! My first opera! Amy’s orchestra plays in it so I went to see her. It’s in Italian with Japanese subtitles so I had no idea what was going on, but the music was cool and Amy’s friend, Yu, gave a scene by scene commentary. I really should’ve read the Wiki before going, hehe. The scenery and costumes were very nice though. And the curtain was really nicely embroidered.

Afterwards, we went to Arabian Rock, a place similar to Lock Up, for Yu’s birthday. The set up inside was really nice. The stairs leading down to it kept playing Aladdin songs like “A Whole New World” and “One Jump”, hehe.

a room

golden eggs! I thought they were just fake eggs, hehe, but they were real smoked eggs! Really yummy!

He set a kabob on fire! and told us to yell FIREEEEE

the birthday wisher

a set up at the front, is that one of the seven dwarfs?

The hallway. There’s golden sand and artifacts under the glass!

A pyramid that turns colors! And there’s a small room for two on each side

kimchi rice, yum yum!

Two more weeks left and only one weekend! My goodbye party for work is this week since I’m basically taking the last week off to go to Nagano with my mom and sister. I’m excited to go to China, but I’m really sad I have to leave Japan Maybe I’ll come back next year? We’ll see… Adrianna is coming next week!! Can’t wait to see her!

Naturally, my cellphone battery died (like really died, I need to get a new one) right after getting out of the subway so I had no idea where to meet Amy and her friends. Luckily, right before the phone died, Amy had said “We’re meeting at Daiba…” so I went to Daiba station hoping to see them there. Of course, there’s many exits and even more people so I stand around trying to find them. I realize that I only have one phone number, Amy’s friend’s, which I wrote down on a piece of paper; good thing I did too or otherwise I would’ve just ended up wondering around by myself. I thought about just asking a random person to borrow their phone, but I saw two guys selling peaches under a bridge in the shade. I thought, well, maybe if I buy their peaches… So I go up to them and ask one of them if I can use his phone if I buy his peaches. I’m clutching my phone in my hand so he takes and tries to turn it on. He tells me it’s out of battery, and I need to go to a nearby convenient store to charge it (I didn’t know convenient stores did that). I ask him where the nearest one is, but it seemed pretty far so I ask him again if I can use his phone. And he’s like, okay fine so I use it, realize that my friend’s are in an Indonesian restaurant, and I give the phone back. I felt really thankful so I offered to buy some peaches. They obviously weren’t having much success, and 6 for $3 is a really good deal since they were super big and fruit is crazy expensive here. And he kept saying no, it’s okay, and I kept saying it’s okay back. When I was taking out money, he finally showed me another sign that said 2 for $10. Apparently, the really big peaches were 2 for $10 and these tiny peaches on the side were 6 for $3; it was just a deceiving advertisement, haha. So I relented and just bowed and said a really big thank you. I think he felt bad for the foreigner with the bad Japanese.

I’ve never had Indonesian food before, and according to Amy, it was unauthentic, but it was really good!

One of the biggest attractions in Odaiba is the giant full scale gundum. It even blew smoke and turned its head!

Next, I went to Miraikan, Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was really modernistic.

They had a “how the internet works” simulation with pingpong balls as packets; they even had a parity bit. Reminds me of 6.02…. you could send different messages and there’s a receiver end where you can well, receive them.

And there was this weird thing where people sat on a big circular table that spun and a camera took pictures through a slit in the wall and we would all appear on this big screen. And the picture of people would slowly get crushed…

Only the Japanese would have amino acids as smiley faces and and tRNA as cars…

What if humans had tails????

A model of the International Space Station and signatures of astronauts who have visited Miraikan. You see the small screen in front of the model? It’s live video feed from NASA’s control room in Houston.

And finally, the gift shop!

The huge building on the left is Fuji Television Studios. On the right is a picture I took from the train. The ship like building is the Maritime Science Museum, maybe next time…

12pm: I went to Akihabara (“The Electric Town”) to buy this camera for $380 -_- ah well, at least it was blue, and I finally got a camera

2:30pm: Got back home to pack and to fill out our budget request for ITASA (woot!)

5:00pm: Took the train to Shinjuku

6:00pm: Found out that the 6:10pm bus to Mount Fuji was full, bought tickets for the 7:10pm one and ate dinner instead

7:10pm: Took a 2.5 hour bus to Mount Fuji’s 5th station (there are 10 total), where most people start to climb because it’s the last station vehicles can access. It was already around 60F and windy so I changed into long pants. I also bought a huge wooden stick that I could brand at some stations and finally the top, to prove that I really did get here.

10:30pm: Started ascending the mountain! First it was just a gravel path sloping up and few stone steps…

11:30pm: 6th station! This was really deceiving because it really didn’t take that much effort to get there and it only took us an hour…

Monday

1:00am: 7th station! The bottled water here is already costing $5. And it’s starting to get cold despite me sweating… I put on a sweatshirt

2:00am: We pass a few rest stops but they’re still the 7th station. Instead of nice steps, it’s rocks all the way. It was like rock climbing, except it was pitch dark. Basically I climbed one handed cuz the other hand was holding the flashlight, hehe.

2:30am: 8th station! It’s starting to get freezing… I put on my fleece. The wind is crazy!

3:30am: 8.5th station! That’s actually what it’s called…

4:45am: The sun rises, but we’re not at the top! It’s okay cuz we get an awesome view, and you could hear all the people at the top shouting.

5:15am: 9th station! The sign says only 30 minutes left but there’s a huge line of people trying to get to the top, so it takes us much longer

6:15am: We get to the top! And it’s freezing! There was ice everywhere so it was definitely below freezing. We eat ramen at a noodle place, which was nice and hot. The wind was so strong at the very top that I almost fell over a few times…

7:00am: Started going down. The descending path is a completely different path than the one going up. Even though it’s longer, it’s way easier since it’s just ash, sand, and random small rocks that make up the path going down. I had to dump my shoes a few times cuz they got filled with sand

10:45am: We are back at the 5th station! Even though going down is longer, distance-wise, it was much, much easier, though painful cuz my legs were starting to get sore and going down a sandy hill that constantly slopped downwards really made my shins hurt.

11:00am: 2.5 hour bus back to Shinjuku. Luckily the seat next to me was empty so I laid down and slept for the first time in 24 hours.

3:00pm: Arrived back home!

4:00pm: Left to go to a birthday party of this girl I met on couchsurfing

10:30pm: After talking to like 30 people in the last 5 hours, I finally let the party to go home. I really got to practice Japanese!

12:00am: Home and a much needed sleep before work the next day!

I went with Amy and her friend, Kenton. This is between the 5th and 6th stations.

Branding the stick at the 7th station!

Climbing some rocks!

the sun is almost here!

it’s coming!

oooooooooooo…

the line of people going up to the summit

me with a my stick at the top, and being very cold

So icy and frozen lavay!

why are you so lonely, mr. cloud?

The path down…

Look at all the little people descending!

]]> http://alexinjapan.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/mount-fuji/feed/ 4 jianga8 amy and kenton branding! rocky you can do it, sun! peeking out of the horizon hello, mr. sun! so many people! at the top! icy are you hiding something? ice and ash volcanic barrenness http://alexinjapan.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/beach-harry-and-weird-train-experiences/ http://alexinjapan.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/beach-harry-and-weird-train-experiences/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:04:22 +0000 jianga8 http://alexinjapan.wordpress.com/?p=124 ]]> I just came back from Chris and Jess’s. I go over to their place to play cards a lot; even though it took a while, I taught them how to play ba-shi fen/shang zi (my favorite card game) last week  so now I’m super excited I can play with people here too. Tonight though, we realized Kemi, another friend, hadn’t watched Ocean’s 11, so we watched that instead.

So I left at midnight to catch the train back home and for the first half of it, I had to stand up because so many people are going home from work (yes, at 12am). Finally seats became open and I sat two seats to the right of a girl who was sleeping; the seat between us remained empty. I closed my eyes, like a proper Japanese person on a train, and tried to drift off. A few seconds later, I felt hair on the side of my arm and quickly realized that the girl sitting to the left of me hadn’t mastered sleeping while staying upright -_- I fought the urge to laugh, and hoped that my face looked like I was sleeping too so I didn’t know what was happening. In the next three subsequent stops, she would suddenly sit up when the train stopped, but before the doors even closed, she would be sleeping on my arm again. It came to the point that by the last stop, which was my stop, she was completely leaning on me and totally horizontal. I was afraid that she wouldn’t wake up when the train stopped for the last time, but luckily she jerked awake. I looked at the people around me, but they were all diligently texting away on their cellphones, hehe.

Last week, I had another awkward experience while taking the train back home. There’s was a middle-aged man (wearing the standard work clothes, white top and black bottom) standing in between the train cars smoking, which is totally illegal. I smelled smoke and turned to look at him; he was staring right at me. I quickly looked away and a while later, I turned again, and he was still staring right me. He opened the screen after putting out his cigarette and held up two fingers and said something to me. He was obviously either drunk or just out of it. At this time, I was listening to “Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce (yes, Rui, I’m still listening to that), which is really loud (and I had no desire to turn down), so even if I understood Japanese, I wouldn’t have been able to hear him. Luckily, my stop was the next stop so he just kept talking to me, and I kept staring at him blankly, not hearing a word. At the next stop, everyone around me walked to the door on the other side of the car, instead of going for the one nearest to us (thanks), and I just walked out the door, still playing my music, while he followed me, but I lost him in the crowd. creepy…

I went to the beach this past weekend! At Kamakura. The water wasn’t too cold, and the sand was super soft. We played President/A-hole on the sand with 10 people and 2 decks of cards; it was hilarious. We quickly realized that played completions up to 4 didn’t work… neither did 8. Afterward, we went to Denny’s to eat dinner! I got udon -_- and this “American Dark Cherry” crepe thing which had like 3 cherries on it. It was yummy though.

Oh, and I saw Harry Potter last night! at 7am EST Since I don’t remember this book as well as the others, I wasn’t like “grrr… they didn’t have this scene”, but they definitely put some liberties in changing small details, adding completely different scenes (the burrow, what?), and keeping the audience up to date on Draco’s plans. And Draco Malfoy was so hot in this movie! I think he got past puberty. I thought he was pretty ugly before. I really felt bad for him in the end, more so than the books made me feel. Also, the romantic scenes in the movie felt like Twilight… so awkward. But all in all, I thought it was good enough.

I’m still without a camera since the exchange rate took a sunk last week, but it’s climbing up again, so I’ll *finally* buy one this Saturday. Just in time cuz I’m going to climb Mount Fuji on Sunday night! Monday is a national holiday (Ocean day) so I get to watch the sunrise Monday morning.

we’re trapped!

my drink before I combined them… and Chris’s face is authentic, not a pose

isn’t that a pretty color?

Jess’s drink

Jess’s second drink

we stare in amazement…

while we were eating, the monsters escaped from their cell and started terrorizing everyone

whew! they were recaptured…

Happy Birthday! from a monster

check from an inmate

*these are all from Jess’s camera, I’m going to get one this Saturday…

Anyway, I woke up super early (in my book) Saturday morning cuz I realize I never exercise except the 10 minute walk to work and even though I have ample time to do so, I have absolutely no self-discipline. Thus, since I really wanted to learn a martial art while I was here, and after 3 weeks of searching on the internet for a nearby and English speaking place, I discovered that the American Embassy in Tokyo has a Judo club, targeted toward international families. It was like the hardest thing to find because they’re not allowed to advertise because of security issues. So it’s every Wednesday and Saturday, which means I have to sneak out of work at 5pm on Wednesdays, which is unheard of in Japan. Ah well. Anyway, it was super fun, really different from Taekwondo because it’s more focused on throws and grappling instead of punching and kicking. And the sensei was super awesome; the class isn’t that big so everyone gets a lot of individual attention. And the other students seemed nice, though, I asked a woman whose name is Vladamir if she was Russian. I think she was a bit offended (“You’re the 107th person who has asked me this”) and said she was from the Czech Republic, oops.

So after, I went to Waseda University to meet up with my coworker, Kin-san, and my Japanese friend who goes to Waseda named Seisei. I had told my coworker that I was interested in learning Go, and he happened to be a 6th dan so he offered to teach me. Seisei is a 4th dan so I invited him along. In case you don’t know anything about go, any rank in the dan divisions is really really good. So Kin-san takes us to this go salon on Waseda campus. I walk in and two things catch my eye: one, I’m the only girl. two, the three of us must be the only people in the room below the age of 50. So Kin-san plays the two of us at once, teaching me on a 9×9 board and playing Seisei on the regular 19×19 board. The rules of go are much simpler than chess, but there are so many freakin possibilities every move that it’s way harder (in my opinion). So we played for two hours, and then Kin-san invited us to see his lab. There were students there even on a Saturday, and they showed us a tree climbing robot and a wheelchair with a remote controlled hand. They were so cool!

At 7:30, I went to Roppongi, to meet up with a bunch Americans to eat at TGI Friday! Haha, they have everything here, from Hard Rock Cafe to Denny’s to naturally, McDonalds and KFC. I figured it would be nice to go to TGI Friday since I haven’t been to an American restaurant or fast food place yet and what better way to celebrate the 4th of July? There were about 12 of us, half from MIT, a few people from UC Berkley, and a few other random people. There were so many Americans in that restaurant; the Japanese people were probably wondering what was going on. I got a Mushroom, Onion Cheeseburger, something I would never order in the states, but I figured I couldn’t get more American than that. And it also cost $18. The full rack baby back ribs cost $30. But whatever, it was totally worth it; it must’ve been the first burger I’ve had in years, and I had obviously forgotten how good it tastes. And all the food was actually pretty authentic, which is pretty hard to find around here.

At the end of the meal, the waiters and waitresses started singing Happy Birthday and put a huge ice cream sundae in front of one of the Berkley guys. Haha, apparently, when the reservation was put, they were surprised at the number of people and asked if it was a birthday. So why not? free ice cream; the guy’s birthday was actually a month ago. But the thing was, Jess Kim’s birthday is this coming Tuesday which was way more legit so I told a waiter so and 10 minutes later, we sang Happy Birthday to Jess and ate more ice cream. Good thing there wasn’t a 3rd birthday or that would’ve been a bit suspicious.

Afterwards, we went to this club called GasPanic, lol, which was clearly targeted towards foreigners. Inside there was a sign that said “You must be drinking to stay inside GasPanic” and near the dance floor there was sign that said “You must be holding a drink or you must leave”. LOL. But the music was good, all the good stuff from the US, and the dancing was fun, though it was kinda awkward, holding my huge bag (stuffed with my judo uniform) in one hand (because the stupid locker ate our 200 yen) and holding the ice remnants of my cranberry juice, hand at the bottom of the glass, of course, in the other hand. The club was super serious about their policy too. There were girls hold flashlights weaving in and out of the dancing crowds to make sure that everyone was holding a glass. I saw her make someone buy a shot for $5 because he wasn’t hold anything. Crazy. Anyway, we left at 11:45pm hoping to catch the last train. That’s when things started to fail.

So we hoped to save money by not taking the JR line which is super expensive and instead, navigating around the smaller subway lines. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the subway station that would take us directly home, it was already 12:20am and our particular line had stopped running except for the last train that stops at Ikebukoro, miles away from my stop (Wakoshi), and about a 40 minute walk from Chris and Jess’s stop which is between Ikebukoro and Wakoshi. So we made it to Ikebukoro, which was lucky, cuz otherwise we would have been screwed. We took a cab from Ikebukoro to their Sakura house ($14 for like 3 miles, seriously), and I crashed on the floor next to Jess. A cab to Wakoshi would’ve cost me another $20 and would have been totally not worth it. Lesson learned: getting home is more important than a few dollars, specially if we end up spending that money anyway, on a cab. Except for this incident though, I’ve been pretty good at catching the last train home.

Also, I survived the weekend on $50! I have one yen left (that’s .1 cent), after buying apple juice today. I forgot to exchange money last week. This brings my four week total to $600 which is really not bad at all. Though it’s going to go up quickly, cuz I really need to buy a camera. I’m going to Akihabara next Saturday, Tokyo’s “Electric Town”.

Happy Independence Day!

Also, if you want a better account of last week’s Kyoto trip, check out Jess Kim’s admission blog here (there’s a picture of me!)

We got to Kyoto by taking a night bus from 10:30pm Friday night to 6:00am Saturday morning. I totally didn’t get any sleep that night. We started off Saturday morning by going to an onsen which is a (really really) hot spring bath. I would’ve taken pictures, but you probably wouldn’t have liked to see all of us completely naked… Then we went on a tour bus for the day on Saturday along with some Japanese graduate students from Nara

the golden temple or Kinkakuji, only coated in gold though

we toured around a traditional Japanese House which an MIT architect, Geoffrey Moussas, renovated

Heianjingu

the garden inside Heianjingu, quite a contrast to the desert outside…

I thought this was pretty

the steep narrow street full of yummy stuff leading up to Kiyomizudera

a few of us with some Japanese students from Nara in front of Kiyomizudera

Kiyomizuderam, mizu means water in Japanese. In order to drink that water with the long ladles, we had to pay $2 so I didn’t since two years ago, when I went, it was free…

in Nara! with swarming deer

Todaiji, a humongous Buddha! We got a super close-up tour!

And everyone climbed through the hole at the bottom of a column, it’s the same size as the Buddha nostril! All the Japanese people were watching all us gaijin -_-

okonomiyaki! specialty of the kansai area it’s a bunch of cabbage and random seafood like squid and shrimp; this one has soba! it’s nicknamed “Japanese Pizza”

on the shopping streets of Kyoto… no, I didn’t buy it

Kyoto train station… if only South Station looked like this

and then we got bentos and took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo Sunday night!

the fish auction with a bunch of frozen tuna on the ground

this thing almost ran me over…

the market

lots of mini fish

yummy! the orange thing is sea urchin ($7!)… I gave it to my Japanese friend. my favorite is the tamago (egg), which isn’t even fish…

a part of the second half of the setto menu that my Japanese friend ate

Japanese people are obssessed with Obama. I went into a small bookstore yesterday and ask the guy if there were books in English. He directed me to a very small selection, half of which was “Barack Obama’s Great Speeches” and things like that. My Japanese friend says he loves him; he watches youtube videos of Obama’s speeches to practice English, hehe.