Go Tell It on (Taco) Mountain

Another weekend has passed by as I march toward and past the halfway point of my semester in Tokyo. Can you believe it? I surely can’t. I’ve started to single out the last few big trips I want to do before the semester is over in order to fit them in into the remaining weekends. But looking back on what I’ve done, I’ve really had no regrets so far. Though I’ve mainly left most of my sightseeing to the weekends at this point, I really have done a lot of cool stuff so far; much more so than a lot of the other people here. I find it crazy that a lot of the people in my program are satisfied with sitting in on a Saturday and watching South Park all day. I can’t bring myself to do that. But hey, if that’s how they want their experience defined, than that’s fine! I’m still having a great time.

On Friday night I was invited by my friend Rachel (born in America, moved here when she was four) to a private party at a club in Roppongi. She said she could only stay for an hour, but I figured I’d go out and meet her anyway. The club was really cool (and admission was free!), though there were a lot of middle-aged men there hitting on the Japanese girls, which kinda creeped me out. I met a few of Rachel’s Japanese friends and we all hung out in our own little corner, away from the glances of the weird old men. Soon enough, Rachel had to leave, and I contemplated leaving too, since I really didn’t know anyone else there. Luckily, instead of having to talk to the weird men, I spotted a girl from my Asian Business class and went over to her and joined her group. She was there with a few friends as well from Waseda University. They were really nice and we all chatted in Japanese and then actually got up and did some dancing. Go me! We left the first club around 9:30 and went to nearby Gas Panic! (great name) to join a “hipper” club scene. All in all it was a lot of fun to get out and meet a bunch of Japanese friends.

Yesterday was fairly uneventful, save for an Engrish shopping spree in Harajuku. My friend Dave bought two fabulous Engrish shirts, with these huge paragraphs of destroyed English printed all over. I bought a non-Engrish track jacket with some cool Japanese lettering on it. My first fashion purchase in Japan. I need to find some more Engrish stuff before I go back for sure.

Today Dave, Emily, and I decided to go hiking at Mt. Takao (pronounced Tah-cow, though I just called it Mt. Taco) for the day. We got to the mountain around 11:30 and took this rickety old ski-lift halfway up to the main base area. We decided to take the easy, paved trail up which wound though the forest (and past the Monkey-themed amusement park) until it reached Yakuo-in Temple. Yakuo-in reminded me very much of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, since it was very elaborately colored and detailed and had a certain air of opulence to it. I’ll never tire of the temples here, no matter how many I see. After Yakuo-in, we continued up the mountain until we reached the summit, which I think was about 580 meters above sea level. The view was, though a bit hazy, very nice and I could actually make out Mt. Fuji in the distance. Mt. Takao is also famous for its soba restaurants, so of course being the tourists that we are, we had to indulge. Dave and I had some delicious soba with these cool little mushroom things on top. Emily had some with shredded yam.

We want a more strenuous hike on the way down, so we decided to take a trail that wound down the mountain alongside a river. The trail reminded me a lot of a hiking trail in the Northeast, except, of course, for the occasional shrine and temple along the way. For the first half of the walk we were literally walking in the river, which meant traversing across slippery rocks, which of course resulting in each of us slipping several times much to the horror of the other Japanese hikers, who always ran over urgently with these surprised looks on their faces as if we had spontaneously caught on fire. We emerged unscathed and made it to the bottom of the mountain in just under an hour and a half. The hike was really awesome and it was nice to see a more outdoorsy aspect of Japan, though I was upset that we didn’t get to see any of the wild monkey that were advertised all over the place. I guess there were all in the monkey amusement park.

Pretty busy week ahead of me; after my last midterm on Tuesday, I have a full schedule of meetings with Japanese speaking partners Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon. I’m looking forward to practicing my Japanese more, a goal that I made for myself for the last half of the trip. Since I’m living with all Americans, I really haven’t practiced as much as I wanted, which has lead to mishaps like those described in my last entry. I’ve made it a point to go out of my way to practice in this last month and half and hopefully improve my speaking even more. I’ve definitely improved my reading greatly, especially reading the kanji for town and city names.

Next week is our second four day weekend (a “spring break” of sorts), so I’m going down to Nagoya (by Shinkansen, the super fast bullet train – SWEET!) for three nights. I was originally going to go by myself (since everyone else is going to Kyoto, but since I’m going after the trip with my dad, I didn’t really want to go twice), but my friend Bernadette (the first Bernadette I’ve ever met!) had expressed interest in going, so hopefully she’ll be able to coming along and’ll stay in my room or something like that. We’ll figure it out.

I wanted to watch some of the Oscars, but since it’s on at 8AM here, I doubt that’s going to happen. Oh well, it’s pretty boring anyways. Hope all is well back in the states and keep in touch ya’ll!

Jaa mata ne!