Mt. Fuji

One of the things on the list to do in Japan is hike Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is really accessible, and kind of an easy hike because most people start at the 5th station about halfway up the mountain, and there is a lot of support along the way. There is generally a ton of people too so you are forced to go pretty slow. I wanted to climb the whole mountain so I started at the 1st station adding on a few kilometers to the total hike. Misato and I left Utsunomiya on Thursday night and stayed in Fujiyoshida city. The next morning I started at about 7:30am thinking it would take a while to get to the 5th station where I was meeting Misato.

The bottom half of the hike is actually much nicer than the hike most people do, its actually more natural and in the woods. The photo below is one of the old huts along the hike before the road up to the 5th station was open. No one hikes from the bottom anymore so there is no need for these huts anymore.

I met Misato at the 5th station, I arrived about 10am,but Misato couldnt get to the mountain until 12, since that was the first bus up, and we started up the mountain from there together after buying our little walking sticks.

The fuji trail from the 5th station is really busy, there are about 300,000 people who hike the mountain in only 2 months, so the trail has been manipulated quite a bit with this big steel/rock/concrete barriers to prevent erosion. I think its a bit strange the sacred mountain of Japan has been manipulated/exploited so much, hence why I thought the bottom half of the hike was better.

There were some beautiful views though of course.

Here are our sticks with a few branded in stamps from the yamagoya on the way up. Each stamp is 200yen so we didnt get all of them and unfortunately didnt get the one from the very top either.

Here you can see all the people at one of the support stations/huts on the way up.

Misato and I stayed at the highest hut, 8.5, the huts are called yamagoya in Japanese. We arrived about 4:30, and had the dinner that they prepared for us and we fell asleep or at least in the bed area by about 6 or 7pm. The yamagoya are kind of expensive, about 8,000 yen ($100) each for as youll see below not much of a "hotel". Although they do provide dinner and breakfast and a place to rest for the night so maybe it was worth it.

Not much room in there, you hang your bags at your feet and literally sleep shoulder to shoulder with strangers.

I thought it was funny that at this altitude people are still smoking. some people even bring little bottles of oxygen to supplement in the high altitude, but i guess when you gotta smoke you gotta smoke.

After getting a little bit of sleep i woke up feeling hung over, even though i didnt drink. I found out later it was due to the altitude and the fact that there are so many people packed into a little room sharing the little oxygen at that altitude and your breathing slows when you are asleep you are not taking in as much air as usual. It was a little strange though because when we arrived at the yamagoya i felt fine and once we started hiking I was ok as well. We left the yamagoya about 3:30am and it took us 2hrs to make it up the last 500m or so to the top because of all the people. Luckily there were a lot of clouds so the sunrise was delayed a bit.

Here are a few more pics from the top, including our breakfast from the yamagoya.

The way down is a big dusty road, the same road they use to get supplies up to the yamagoya.

I hiked all the way down back to the 1st station and then on to the main Fuji shrine and finally back to the Fujiyoshida city train station. I arrived at the station around 12, and was starving. I met a guy who had worked at the yamagoya for the summer, 2 months with only 1 shower allowed per month, but he said it was a great experience and as we walked out together from the 1st station to the train station which is about 13 more kilometers I had a good chance to practice my Japanese. He had quit his job to do this for the summer, made me envious!

We stayed in an odd but very cheap ryokan in kawaguchiko on Saturaday night so we didnt have to go back to Utsunomiya and the next day saw Mt. Fuji peaking out of the clouds behind the station.

Hong Kong

For Obon I went to Hong Kong, although its part of China you dont need a visa to go there or neighboring Macau. Using my hotel points we got to stay in this super fancy hotel on the top floor with executive breakfast every morning. At the breakfast the people working at the hotel were very helpful with our plans for the day and told us about a bus route that was much faster than a cable car up to this giant Buddha.

Near the big Buddha was the trek of inspiration, which were these huge posts in the shape of the infinity sign, with some kind of inspirational quotes or words to live by (I think, it was all chinese so I couldnt read it).

I was kind of surprised how outdoorsy Hong Kong was, I had an image in my mind that it would be one huge city like New York, and although it was big and there were a lot of people it is surrounded by hills/mountains so it seems like there is some hiking to do, here is a trailhead with and awesome bird/rooster sculpture.

View of the ropeway on the way down.

The next day we went to check out the walk of stars, which is kinda like a hollywood for Hong Kong, unless you are interested in actors from Hong Kong I wouldnt really suggest it. There was one statue I recognized.

After the walk of stars we went to sneaker town where there are probably 100 or more sneaker stores all of which are basically the same, but it was the busy type of city i was expecting for Hong Kong.

In sneaker town we stopped to eat and there was this add for a drink.

This is literally how they serve a lot of drinks in Hong Kong, with half a lemon. Food was generally pretty cheap and delicions in Hong Kong. We tried Peking Duck on time, which I thought was supposed to be a delicious delicacy, but it definitely wasnt as good as some other duck I have had in the past.

There is a famous look out point, but there was a typhoon coming so we were worried we wouldnt be able to go up, but we did, and it was really windy, but still a good view.

The final day we went to Macau, which is supposedly like the Las Vegas of China, but there are also a lot of historical sites, so we went to one shrine and an old portuguese fort.

This picture kinda sums up Macau, old china, with some portuguese influence and this huge golden casino which you could see from everywhere.

While in Macau stopped off at this food stand for lunch and tried some Macau style gyoza.

Camping in Tochigi

Took the tent out for the first time to "practice" camping. On the way we stopped by the river side to eat some bbq fish. It was incredibly hot, and sitting by the BBQ was not the best idea but it was fun, delicious, and a nice view from the open restaurant of the river.

Usually the river is set up to where there is a platform and a sort of funnel to direct the fish up the platform, called yana in Japanese. You can basically then catch the fish by hand and cook them up yourself, but for whatever reason it wasnt set up. This is just a picture from the internet on what it was supposed to look like.

Campsite was pretty organized with concrete slabs for pitching the tent, 10 total but no one else was crazy enough to camp in the heat.

After getting the tent set up we hung out at the picnic tables and had a little snack to cool down. The campsite was equiped with the covered picnic table area with electrcity:

Then it started to poor rain and thunder and lightening. The tent held up fine with no leaks or issues. The power at the picnic tables actually went out due to the lightening at one point, but we were camping after all so it wasnt a big deal, and our nice neighbors lent us a gas lamp who were also using the picnic tables.
Here is Misato now with a river behind her from the rain.

During the thunderstorm we ate our dinner and drank beer/wine and our neighbors of about 10-15 guys with their 3 small daughters (same who lent us the lamp) who were having a big party gave us some of their bbq although i dont think we needed it after the huge burgers we ate.

Even though our neighbors seemed like they were going to be a loud group of drunk guys they turned out to be really kind and turned in about the same time we did so they didnt keep us up. I think they stayed in some of the bungalows near by like these.

There was also a bbq area next to the picnic tables for cooking, although we used a pan and a gas grill Misato had brought,

and sinks with plumbing, rags, sponges and dish soap. This all seemed to work well as the campsite was clean in the morning. You can also rent many things at the front office like a spatula, dishes, pan etc... they also gave us trash bags 1 for recyclables and 1 for all other garbage.

This particular campsite also had a stage just in case you want to have an event there.

There was also an onsen nearby so we were able to clean ourselves up before we slept. We were definitely roughing it!

Kanazawa Birthday weekend

Misato took me to Kanazawa for my 30th birthday to do some sake touring/tasting. We took the shinkansen from omiya to Echigoyuzawa, and then an express train to kanezawa, but the express train was a bit rocky and we both felt a little sea sick. First day we went to a distillery called Yachiya run by a cute grandpa guy. This is the owner talking about the pressing process in front of the big pressing machine. Of course it was all in Japanese and I could catch some parts, but not everything. I did catch that women arent allowed in this one room, where the rice is germinating with the koji in fermentation process, supposedly because of the chemicals in make up, but im pretty sure it just something reminiscent of male domination.

At the end of the tour we had a vast selection of free samples.

After all the sake touring/tasting/buying we took the bus back to the station which has a huge Tori (gate usually for shrines) in front.

Then we went out to the historic part of town where there is a lot of remade tea houses and a 1 or 2 originals still standing after 200 years or so.

There was also a gold leaf wall house in the middle of this historic area.

We then found our way to this park outside of the castle with many statues.

Finally we made it to the castle which is a rebuilt wall of the original castle, but the front is a huge beautiful park.

After the castle we went back to the hotel for a little relaxing time and to watch the sumo tournament currently going on in Nagoya. Then Misato had made reservations for a nice full sake menu dinner, Japanese style with many dishes and a HUGE desert plate.

The next day we went to another sake distillery where there was a DVD with english subtitles so I could understand more of the process. This distillery allowed women into the fermentation room, as long as they werent wearing make up, more equal rights here at Sakagura. Apparently there is no sake being made in the summer because it is really hot and the rice isnt fresh off the rice paddy. The prime sake making time in January to April. We were allowed to taste 3 types of summer sake and eat a few treats. 1 of the treats was Fugu eggs which are apparently poisonus(like fugu fish) unless you pickle them for 3 years. Pretty tasty for fish eggs that were pickled for 3 years.

After the sake tasting we went to a famous park Kenryokuen, a former samurai house with a nice Japanese garden (in the picture) and the part of town called shrine/temple city, where there we went to a shrine that was for everything. Some shrines are specific for example cancer or if you want a child. We got a little private tour for 500 yen each and got to walk around the garden at the end. The samurai house was just a normal house, where a samurai lived, I was expecting something fancy because he was a samurai.

On the way home I bought a kanazawa local beer and the most delicious Ice Cream, as you can see its super premium.

On the way home Misato noticed the shinkansen was turning 30 too!