it's a term of endearment

Last fall during our Japanese lessons, we had to give a self introduction which included our name, nationality, job, etc. Remember that this was before Jason had the teaching job, so he introduced himself as a "housewife".
Flash forward to our Japanese lesson last night. We were practicing some vocabulary related to cleaning and I tried to tell our teacher that now I do most of the cleaning, but that last fall when Jason was a housewife that he did the cleaning. Well, our teacher got this horrified look on her face. It turns out that one easily confusable syllable is all that separates the Japanese words for "housewife" and "prostitute".

Waterpark

Wrapping up our summer (still catching up), on the very last day we went to the waterpark in Himeji. We'd seen the park before, as it is right next to the city track and field stadium. But we'd never been there, partially because it's only open in the summer. So this was our last chance to go for the year.
It was fun. There were a lot of kids there, and some of them recognized our friends as their teachers. Neither Chelsey nor I saw any kids from our schools, which is probably because our schools were relatively far away.
The park had a waterslide which was pretty good. Chelsey and I got going quite a bit faster than the Japanese children, I think. There was also a wave pool, but that got so crowded it wasn't as good as it could have been. We spent most of our time in the lazy river, a moving stream of water that you could just float circuits in. It was a good way to finish the summer.
-Jason

Shiraishi again

We spent our last summer weekend (we're a little behind and catching up on our posts) at Shiraishi Island, a place we had also visited in June. There's a villa there that only foreigners can book, so we went with other people from our building ... although, aside from us, it was a completely different group than the first time we went.
We went out there a bit earlier this time, and got luckier with the weather, too. In June, Sunday was a rainy day, causing us to head back home early, but this time both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days. We spent most of both afternoons at the beach, with a lot of time in the water because it was actually pretty hot out. Saturday night we had a barbeque at the restaurant on the beach. It was a great night for it; it had cooled off after the sun went down and it was quite pleasant sitting out near the water. It made for a really nice end to summer.
-Jason

it's a first

For the first time ever
I bought seafood at the store
and cooked it for us.

Who would've thought?

*Jason pointed out that my sentence in fact forms a haiku. Seafood and haiku -- my year in Japan is starting to show.

Nagoya

On our way home from Hakone we stopped by Nagoya, Japan's third-biggest metro area (after Tokyo and Osaka). I'm sure there's lots of interesting things to do in Nagoya, but we didn't do many of them. It was more of a practical trip for us. The main reason we stopped was so I could visit the Canadian consulate to renew my passport. We did that. We also did some shoe shopping. Those were the main highlights of our day-plus there. Of course, it wasn't entirely our fault. The local baseball team was playing in Tokyo, the robot museum was closed and so was the aquarium. (As an aside, that's now three aquariums in Japan that have been closed when we could have visited). We did run by Nagoya Castle, which is a lot shorter than Himeji Castle. It does have its own charm as well as a nice dirt running path. It also lacks the construction girders that currently grace Himeji's version.
-Jason

Hakone transportation

Here's a sampling of the various transportation that we used to get around Hakone.

Hakone

After we finished climbing Mt. Fuji, we headed to the resort area of Hakone to rest for the weekend. Hakone is a mountain area about 100 km from Tokyo - so an easy daytrip from that city. As we discovered, being a popular daytrip destination means that business hours often end when the daytrippers go home. There's not much open after about 6 p.m.
Chelsey had found a good deal on a nice hotel right by the edge of Lake Ashi, the main lake in the area. From our window we could see the loading dock for the pirate ships that cross the lake. One of Hakone's big attractions is the abundance of onsen, or hot springs. Since it was the middle of summer, we didn't feel the need to try one of the big ones, but I did go down to the small one in our hotel at night to soak and recover from the hike.
We used our days to tour around the area. We took the pirate ship across the lake. In tourist materials there are lots of nice pictures of the lake with Mt. Fuji in the background. We never saw Mt. Fuji at any point on our trip. I think Chelsey did get some nice pictures of the clouds where we think Mt. Fuji was supposed to be.
On the first day we stopped by the "Boiling Valley", an area with a lot of sulfuric hot springs. You could see the steam rising out of the side of the mountain as we rode the ropeway up to it. We went to walk around the area, but the sulfur smell was a bit strong for Chelsey, so I had to investigate and report back to her. The other special attraction of the area was the black egg: eggs that had been hard-boiled in the sulfur water, which apparently makes the shells turn black. You could buy packs of five practically straight out of the pools. Like the pools themselves, it was up to me to try and then report on the experience. They didn't taste much different than regular hard-boiled eggs to me.
We also stopped at the Hakone Open Air Museum, which was a pretty interesting concept for a museum. It's an art museum, but most of the pieces are installations in what was essentially a garden. It made for a nice and interesting stroll, at any rate. Unfortunately, a couple of the interactive exhibits were kid-only. We can't figure out why kids get to have all the fun.
The next day we rode the pirate ship and the ropeway again before jumping on a train line. It was supposed to be a spectacular train ride, but it was a bit underwhelming. There was some nice scenery as we rode above a valley, but that was about it. We ended in the largest town in the area, Odawara, as we figured it would be easier to find an open restaurant there than in the evening ghost town that surrounded our hotel. So we found a pretty good and cheap Italian place, then caught a bus back to the hotel.
On our last morning there I took Chelsey to the Hakone Ekiden museum. An ekiden is a long-distance relay race, a format that is quite popular in Japan. The Hakone Ekiden is the most popular of these races. It's contested between universities from the Tokyo area and is held on Jan. 2-3, with national television coverage. Each team has 10 runners, each of whom runs about a half marathon. The first day goes from Tokyo to Hakone, then the second day they run back. Taking Chelsey to a museum about a race she knows little about, with exhibits in a language she doesn't read, probably doesn't rank high on the list of romantic things I've done ... but I think it still beat the Paris sewers.
-Jason
The rest of the Hakone pictures are on the picasa site.

Sweet smell of success

After getting down from Mt. Fuji, we had to get on a train to get to the hotel we had booked for the weekend. As I mentioned, we were tired after the climb, so we got on the train, put our bags on the luggage rack and sat down. I put my book on the seat next to me. A few stops later, several more people were waiting to board the train. A guy sitting across from me said, in English, "move your book for other passengers." Now, there's limited water on Mt. Fuji. The sign in the bathroom at our hut even said "No brushing teeth." Needless to say, there was no shower. That meant I hadn't showered in two days, during which I had climbed the tallest mountain in Japan in the summer heat. I moved my book, because I wanted to be polite, but I thought "buddy, nobody's going to want to sit next to me". The seat remained free at least until we got off.
-Jason

Mt. Fuji part 1

****We had to split this post into three sections. They are all posted below. The first picture is of Jason at the shrine at the bottom of the mountain. Then you can follow our finger count as we reach each of the 10 stages on the way up the mountain.****

Well, we did it. We made it to the top of Mt. Fuji. It was a long trek, and it left us fairly tired, but it was actually a pretty manageable feat. We started our journey from the train station at about 9 a.m. Thursday. We had to walk a couple of kilometers to get from the station to the start of the hike. Given that it was an uphill walk, it seemed like a bit of an unnecessary prologue. But we got there and found the right path. For the first little bit it was simply walking on the side of a road, but after maybe an hour we left the road for a path in the woods.
This part was maybe our favourite part of the hike. It was a nice path through a very beautiful forest, with lots of trees and plants to look at - quite a contrast from the upper reaches of the mountain and our path down. It was also very quiet, since most climbers or hikers don't pick up the trail until the fifth station (you can take a bus that far). We only saw a few other climbers scattered through the day. We crossed paths at rest areas a couple of times with two women. They were quite surprised that we were going all the way to the eighth station that day, as they were only planning to get as far as the sixth.

continued below...

Mt. Fuji part 2

After the fifth station we joined with another trail and the number of people increased significantly. Particularly noticeable were the tour groups, who tended to move fairly slowly. The terrain around us changed as well. We were moving past the tree line and into barren, rocky mountainside. Fortunately, it was also getting cooler. I got quite sweaty on the bottom part of the trek, but a change of shirt, the setting sun and the rising elevation helped cool us off to the point of adding layers.
Our trail map gave us little tidbits of information for spots along the trail. At the sixth station it said: "finally, Fuji starts to get steep." This was accurate. Before we had been going on a steady uphill path, but now the path got steeper and rockier. In many places I used my hand to help me get up the particularly rocky sections. The use of hands wasn't necessary, but it helped balance sometimes on the rocky parts. Despite getting a little trickier, it didn't stop the increasing numbers of people on the trail. We even passed one guy who was climbing despite not having any legs. That was inspiring.
We reached our hut around 7 in the evening. It was nice to be done climbing for the day, as we'd been walking for a long time. We got in and were shown to our beds, which were essentially in a little cupboard in the hut. It was quite cozy, although we didn't have any light in our area. We did have hooks to hang our bags plus the two beds. We put our stuff down and changed clothes, then went to get our dinner. A hot meal was very welcome, and the curry tasted delicious. The water might have been even better. After eating, we headed to bed at about 8. Since we were planning on getting up so early in the morning, we thought we should try to get as much rest as possible. Even though I was tired from the day's hike, it was difficult to get to sleep so early. The cabin mostly quieted down around 10, but noise picked up again around midnight as hikers began streaming by the hut on their way to the top for sunrise. So I didn't get much sleep. I think Chelsey got a little bit.

continued below ...

Mt. Fuji part 3

We got up at 1 a.m. to get on our way to the top. Even though we had covered the vast majority of the distance the previous day, the final stages took a long time due to the crowds. It had started raining during the night, so we put on our ponchos and joined the line of people heading up to the top. After about half an hour, we had climbed through the clouds and therefore the rain. We couldn't see much below us because of the clouds and the darkness, but the view above was spectacular. With no cloud cover and at a good altitude, we could see a lot of stars.
We moved at a pretty slow pace: basically a couple of steps, then stop. Our trail merged with another just above the eighth station, and combined with all the people trying to get to the top for sunrise it produced gridlock. The lack of sleep started to catch up with me a bit and it became hard to keep my eyes open as I stood on the trail. Finally, about a hundred meters from the top, I told Chelsey I wanted to sit and rest for a minute. I was just tired, but when I sat down I suddenly felt nauseous. I leaned against the rocks for a minute and it passed just as quickly as it came, however, and we got up and continued on to the top.
When we reached the top, the eastern horizon was just beginning to show some light above the clouds, so we had pretty good timing. We squeezed ourselves into some east-facing space to wait for the sun. It was worth it to be there to see the sun rise, clear above the clouds. A lot of the people around us cheered when the first edge of the sun appeared on the horizon.
Mt. Fuji is a volcano, and the top is a big volcanic crater with a rim around it. You can walk all the way around the rim, but it takes about an hour and a half. We were tired and wanted to get down the mountain to catch a bus, so we elected not to hike all the way around the crater. Maybe next time. We spent a little time looking at the crater and around at the top (as well as taking some pictures), then walked half-way around the crater until we found our trail down.
We took a different trail on the way down, and it was a much less interesting route. There were also a lot fewer people. I don't know if those two things are related. But we only saw a handful of climbers going either direction, and I think only one or two open huts (as opposed to the dozens on our way up). There was also a lot less variation in scenery. It was a barren, rocky landscape as far as we could see. Below the seventh station, we couldn't see very far because fog set it, adding to the eerie feeling. With the lack of huts or other human activity and our lack of visibility, along with how tired we were, it seemed like the trail might never end.
On the bright side, the path was covered with soft, volcanic ash, which made it possible to make really good time on parts of the trail. We could take long, bounding strides and just sink into the ash without pounding our legs. It helped us make the bus on time. We actually got there with a few minutes to spare, which allowed us to buy a drink. When we finished those, we both promptly fell asleep as the bus took us to the train station.
-Jason

all of the pictures from our climb are on the picasa site

fish pedicure

After our hike in Miyajima, we stopped and got a fish pedicure. It was a little bizarre the way the fish went right after your feet as soon as you put them in the water. You could definitely feel them, though once we finished neither of us were convinced that it'd made much difference.

wasabi ice cream

Walking along the main street in Miyajima, we saw an ice cream store that had wasabi-flavored ice cream. Yes, wasabi. That spicy stuff you mix in your soy sauce when you eat sushi. I dared Jason to try it. So, of course, he did.
I tried one small lick. It was disgusting. I can't believe that Jason ate the whole thing. I don't know how he did it. Yuck.

in the bullpen

While we were in Miyajima, Jason stopped by the Carp bullpen to chat with the team.

Unfortunately, though, the team wasn't actually in town while we were there, so we didn't get to catch a game.

Note: Jason has no legs in this picture -- that might slow down his running.

Luckily, he found his legs later. He appreciated this sign that let you know how long it took to get to the ropeway. He thinks more signs should let you know how long it'll take if you run a little.

Miyajima

Miyajima, and specifically its Shinto gate set out in the bay, is one of the most famous sites of Japan - in fact, one of the three famous views of Japan. It's also the site of the largest fireworks display in Western Japan. Though it's an easy day trip from Hiroshima, we passed back in April because we were going to time a trip to coincide with the fireworks in August. So in the middle of last month we went back down for a few days. We got there a day before the fireworks and took the ferry over to the island to check it out. It's not a terribly big island, and most of the most of the town is contained in a very small area. We walked past a lot of the little shops to the shrine. The tide was out at the time, so we could walk right out to the big gate. Then we went back to the edge of the land and watched the sunset and the tide come in.
We stayed at a hostel on the mainland, near the ferry terminal. Our guidebook and some friends suggested this was a bad idea and that we would miss some of the charm of the island by not staying on the island itself. Our book said it was nice to see the peaceful area after the daytrippers left. That night, however, failed to convince us that it was a big deal. We stayed until about 9, at which point most of the businesses were closed and almost all the people were gone. There were even some people in their hotel-issued yukata (summer kimonos) walking to the vending machines to get night-time drinks. I don't know how much more peaceful it was going to get. Even the deer - and there were many, many deer - were pretty much down for the night.
The next day we went over around midday and found a lot of the water's edge already claimed for that night's fireworks show. We found a spot under a tree and camped for the day. As the tide went out, people filled in the suddenly available space in front of the gate. There was also a deer that came and sat directly below my seat on the wall for a couple of hours. I could have kicked it in the antlers, but decided against it.
The fireworks show was very good, even though we didn't really catch any of the narration that went with it. It lasted about an hour, and featured some very impressive sequences. Chelsey liked the ones that fanned along the surface of the water. She put some really good pictures of the show on the Picasa site.
The day after the fireworks we climbed to the top of the island's mountain, which took a little over an hour. It was training for climbing Mt. Fuji later that week. It was a very hot day, which spoiled the hike a little bit, but the view from the top over the Inland Sea was very pretty. There's supposedly a colony of wild monkeys near the top, but we didn't see any.
On our last day in the area we went kayaking. Following up on my first rafting trip, this was my first kayaking experience. Chelsey and I had a double kayak. We started from the mainland, paddled across to the island and along its coastline, then went through the gate before taking a short break on a Miyajima beach. Then we headed back. It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to kayaking again sometime.
-Jason
here's the link to the picasa site