富士山！！ （Mt. Fuji)

I was in charge of getting us there. . . Thank god I had Rainy there to translate for me when I bought our bus tickets from Hachioji. I still had to get us from Fuchinobe to the bus station in Hachioji. I was able to do that by myself and completely in Japanese to boot! Even though the trip was done July1-2, I will refer to it as last night since I slept for 17.5 hours to recover from the overnight climb. We set out at 6:46pm from Fuchinobe Station. Everyone meet up at the bus stop at about 7:40 were we were all very excited to climb Fuji.

I don't have any pictures from where we started, but we started at Kawaguchi-ko 5th station, the altitude is 2300 meters at around 10:30pm. Btw, if you plan on doing a night climb bring some warm clothes, it was close to freezing all night and below freezing at the summit. The climb is pretty steep, however, if you take your time its is no problem. The sun started to show signs of sunrise once we arrived at the 8th station.

 

From there it was a race to get to the top to beat the sunrise. I broke away from the rest of the group and meet up with Rainy in order to race to the summit. We made it to the summit just in time to watch the most rewarding sunrise of my lifetime.

A picture of the Crater some Onigiri and back down we went to catch our bus at 11am.

We arrived back at the 5th station with enough time to eat some breakfast and rest before our bus arrived.

 From there it was a sleepy ride home and a 17.5 hour Mt. Fuji induced coma. I also have a picture of some of the water bottles we emptyed at the 5th station, 2300m. The atmospheric pressure difference between there and Fuchinobe caused them to collapse!

Hmmmm... An update I suppose

So yeah, here is a bit of an update from Japan.

The End of April

After Hanami I settled into the arduous task of studying Japanese in preparation for my placement test. . . I did horrid, I wasn't able to read a simple sentence. The speaking test went so bad I wanted to die. The end result, Japanese Level 1 class. I should note that I was the only student that placed that low, thus I have been enjoying one on one instruction 5 days a week. May 6th marked the beginning of the Spring semester. As far as school goes, I'm pretty sure I don't need to talk about my everyday school life.

May

I found a friend here who enjoys hiking on the weekends and we have gone on several trips together. Our first trip was to the Mt. Tanzawa Ridge Trail.

 

From there I was able to see Mount Fuji　(富士山） for the first time. Unfortunately It is hard to make out in this image. Our next trip was to Ooyama (大山）.

 

大山 offered a better view of 富士山. There was less snow on the summit since it was later in the spring season by this point. The snow typically doesn't melt until late June/early July.

June

I went to Yokohama for a day to check it out. Yokohama is so far my favorite city in Japan. The city is extremely clean, even though Japan in general is very clean, and there is a very laid back atmosphere there. I visited the International Dock there and enjoyed the sunset from there.

 

In the middle of June, I made another trip to a mountain. This time we went to Mt. Takao (高尾山）. We climbed Takao, then went on to several other summits along the ridge line.

I had to add this picture of the Moth since it was pretty big.

At the end June, the school held a International camp for 40 Japanese and 40 international students to attend. The entire weekend was done in Japanese, so it was pretty difficult for me to understand most things, but regardless I was able to make many new friends. I made a lot of memories there that I will never forget!