Mount Fuji

Well, as I write this latest blog, I am now firmly entrench back at home in the land of Oz. The last few weeks I spent in Japan were awesome and I was really torn about returning home, especially when my friends there didn't want me to leave. Its been almost a month since I've arrived back home and have even started back at work. I caught up on all my favourite things since being back including Vietnamese food, baskeball, family, friends and nando's.

Japan sometimes seems like a distant memory, especially in the last week when I've been back at work and doing the same thing as before I left. Ofcourse, keeping in touch with my friends from Japan and checking facebook certainly helps keep the memories of Japan fresh.

I still have a few blogs to write from my time in Japan. I know some people back home won't reading anymore, but for those who are still reading and for myself, I'll continue to post blogs.

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I had always wanted to climb a big mountain and coming to Japan, Fuji was its highest mountain. Climbing had never seriously entered my mind but I certainly wanted to see it. After all our hikes in Ashikaga, I felt that I wanted to take the Fuji challenge and climb it. Cuz after all, how many people can say that they've climbed Fuji??? The safe climbing season for Fuji is really short, lasting between July and August, every year. As the start of the season was closely approaching, and school holidays making climbing the mountain a tourist nightmare, we decided that July 12th was the day to tackle the highest peak in Japan, all 3776m.

So we began to get ready, there's was talk about quitting smoking, doing some training before the climb, but non of those plans ever seemed to eventuate as we were pretty much too lazy. We prepared ourselves as best as we could, carrying plenty of fluids and some warm gear and a packed meal.

So the day came, and luckily we didn't have to get up too rediculously early as we were planning to trek the mountain in the evening coolness. It was another stinkin hot day in Japan being in the middle of summer. So we had to train to tokyo, then bus to Kawaguchiko Station, where we had to take another bus to the middle of Fuji to begin the climb. Now I know its cheating to be climbing from the middle, but it would have taken about 14hrs to climb from the bottom and most people started from the 5th station anyway. The goal in the end was just to reach the top of Fuji after all.

Artwork on the trains for Fuji

The bus trip up, with the image of what we were going to attempt. Wow, that's a long way.

One last pic as we prepared to tackle the great mountain. We set off at about 5.30pm. Look how happy we still all are ... that would all change soon enough!

As we head off the sun was slowly setting and the clouds were slowly engulfing the mountain.

Soon enough we were in the thickness of the clouds. Trying not to lose each other only 10mins into our climb, we decided not to play hide and seek ... "John, Clarence, Mike ... where are you F@%kers!"

If the prospect of climbing Fuji hadn't daunted us yet, surely the bad Japanese translation of our impending death would have scared us.

At the 6th Station we were well and truely in the clouds, it was really cool to be so high but still not close to the top!

A moment of reflection and whether or not I really wanted to climb the mountain. Some of you will know that I'm not a big climber, in fact I wine and whinge at doing the thousand steps. But being outdoors in Japan, climbing several of Ashikaga's finest mountains and riding a bike up the siden of a mountain everyday certainly prepared me better for this challenge.

Sunset over the clouds.

A look further up the mountain shows the 7th station, dotted with little huts for meals and sleeping. Through our research, we had read that food on the mountain huts were really expensive, so it was best to bring your own. However, as we approached and sourced prices, we found that it wasn't terribly expensive. I mean it was about 800yen ($8) for a bowl of ramen or karee raisu (curry rice) and sure it may have been packet noodles or not the best tasting food. But as the cold set in, hot food was looking really good. And it saves you from having to carry a bunch of food up there. This was significant as I was carrying atleast an extra 6kgs in my backpack, mostly taken up two 2lt bottles of drink. I was to find out later that as it was freezingly cold the higher we got and climbing at night ... I didn't actually need that much!

The seventh station and 2700m above sea level. At this point here we started to rug up and setting sun took its heat with it and left some fairly gusty wind and cold.

The big chunks of rock that we had to traverse while heading up the mountain. The nice Japanese also painted big arrows to show hikers the way.

Torii gate, quick prayer and move on ...

Yes, its getting very cold and windy at this point. And yes, they are socks on Clarence's hands!

Some of us are trying to muster a smile at this point. Its getting miserably cold now, we're tired, been climbing for about 4hrs, its about 10pm and the altitude sickness is setting in. We had all thought that the altitude wouldn't have been a problem and laughed at people buying cans of oxygen at the bottom. Breathing actually did start to get more difficult, especially if you were hunched over. I started losing my balance and felt really light headed at certain points on the climb. I felt that my centre of gravity was really thrown off and attributed this to the alititude.

9th Station, getting higher ... 3,400m above sea level.

At the 9th station as it was about 11pm, so we decided to eat some food and have a bit of a sleep. Having a gale force wind blowing at you, made sleeping a little difficult, but the boys tried and ducked into any little hole to shelter. I, on the other hand couldn't sit still for more than 5mins, as I would start shaking uncontrollably. So I stood near a little shop selling hot drinks for warmth. Now, we could have slept in one of the many huts that littered the mountain, but at 7000 yen ($70) for about 4-5hrs and huddled on the floor next to about 15-20 people, didn't seem like the most comfortable idea. However, after sitting in the cold ... we were willing to give up 7000yen, but you have to book these places.

After about an hour of trying to sleep, we decided to hike up to the top and see if there was more shelter from the cold up there. Climbing from the 9th station to the top seem to take an eternity to get to. I think it took longer as we had no idication of when we would reach the top as there were no lights. Previously, while working our way from the 5th to the 9th station, there were always the lights of the huts of the next station, so there was always a target to reach. The climb to the top just seemed like it took forever.

Finally after about 7hrs of climbing, we reached the top at about 2am, and still had about 2hrs to kill before sunrise. Unfortunately, there was no respite from the wind and cold and had to huddle around with the rest of the people up there. Walking around, and seeing all the people huddled into holes, behind rocks, in sleeping bags just made me think that this would be how a homeless colony would look like. It was quite a site.

Finally, the moment that we had been waiting for finally arrived ... tired, cold and hungry, I still mustered enough energy to see the sunrise, from all angles possible. After all, I didn't hike for 7 hours just to go back down again.

Here comes the sun, dooh um doo doo ....

The mouth of the crater in the middle of fuji and yes that is snow in the middle of the Japanese summer.

That's the sun if you didn't already know!

There was lots of people on top of Mount Fuji!

Nice piece of photography.

Looking over Tokyo and even further over Japan.

That line of brightly coloured ants you see, are more people trying to get to the top. Wow, lucky we climbed during the night, otherwise we would have been caught in a great log jam.

Walking down the mountain didn't prove to be as easy as we though, it was quite an ordeal actually. Firstly, because it was steep, we had to zig zag down the mountain which just makes the walk longer. That, coupled with the crumbly molton rock we had to walk on and try not to kill ourselves, took us about 4hours to get down.

A few of us bought a walking stick to help us up the mountain but at certain points on the climb, traversing huge boulders, the stick proved more of a hindrance than help. However, at many of the stations and huts we could get stamps for our sticks ... at 300yen a pop.

Wow, I climbed Fuji ... not many people can claim to have done that (well none of my friends in Australia anyway).

J-League Soccer

About two weeks ago John and I went to a J-League soccer game with a Japanese friend of ours (Kazytoshi). I had been wanting to see a baseball game with him but he informed me that the Urawa Reds were playing and that they were one of the best soccer teams in Asia. I jumped at the chance, as soccer in Japan was also one of the things I wanted to see.


I've also heard of the Urawa team as they also competed in the Asian Champions League that Australian soccer clubs are part of. Urawa actually won the Asian Champions League in 2007, in which both Adelaide and Sydney competed in. The 2008 Asian Champions League contain the Melbourne Victory and Gamba Osaka from Japan. The Victory however, failed miserably.


Anyway, brimming with excitement, off we went to Saitama, the home of Soccer in Japan. We went to the largest soccer stadium in Japan, called the Saitama Stadium 2002 (not really an original name, I know). The 2002 stands for the stadium being built in that year for the World Cup co-hosted by Japan and Sth Korea. I was told that the stadium could hold 80,000 people. Hehe, still smaller than the MCG. Non the less, still an impressive stadium.

The Stadium from the outside.

We rocked up to the stadium without booking any seats and just to buy them from the gate. About 30mins from kick-off, the only seats we could get were not the greatest. For 3000 yen ($30) we were sent to the top of the blechers, one row from the very back.

The view from our seats. It wasn't too bad in the end. It was high but not too far back so that we could see anything. On this night the Urawa Red Diamonds were playing FC Tokyo.

The Reds boys warming up!

A section of the Urawa fans waving all sorts of flags. It seemed that it wasn't just Urawa flags they were waving but anything that contained red was waved including the England flag, Iraq flag, some Che Guvara flags ... anything goes I guess!

Giant screens hung at both ends to show highlights and at this particular point to introduce the home team. This is Ponte, one of Urawa's brazillian imports. He played really well in the first half with deft back heels and touches. Unfortunately, he pulled a hamstring early in the seocnd half and was taken off.

Look how excited John is! Think he wanted some beer girls to walk by but it never happened.

A pan of Saitama 2002 Stadium and the fans warming up their voices.

On this particular, 50,000 fans packed the stadium of which most were the home team Urawa fans. There was a section of the crowd that was there for FC Tokyo and you can actually see them in the photo above. You'll see a section of the crowd dressed in dark blue. You'll also notice that to either side of the Tokyo fans are rows of empty seats. There were actually police standing in between the fans. I wouldn't have thought hooligan behaviour was prevalent in Japan but Kazu said that opposing fans has clashed in the past.


I now know that whereever you are in the world, soccer fans are all the same. The Japanese fans were every bit as loud and vocal as what the Victory fans would be. And while I'm sure they wouldn't have chanted anything like "Tokyo are wankers!" in Japanese. They were indeed chanting something about FC Tokyo. Their chants were loud and in unison, usually started by a small section and then the whole stadium would get involved.




The match under way ... Urawa scored in the first 5mins and went up 1-0. The goal was scored by one of their other brazillians, Edmilson. They dominated for the rest of the half, coming close to scoring a 2nd on several occasions. Tokyo were unlikely not to equalize just before half time when one of their headers hit Urawa's post.




Being a Urawa home game, I had to support the home team by buying a Urawa scarf/towel (eventhough it was about 30 degrees and a scarf was the last accesory that I needed). I followed the trend of wearing anything red and donned my fake Barcelona top for the match (I could have also gone with my AC Milan top). I was not the only one not in a Urawa top, I also saw Arsenal, Mancester United and Liverpool tops.

Me and John rocking it!

The momentum of the game changed in the second half, with FC Tokyo dominating possession and sending wave after wave of attack towards the Urawa goals. It seem that Urawa were just content to hold on to their 1-0 lead. With about 5mins to go, as happens in soccer when one team is pushing all their players up to get an equalizer, Urawa got a long ball off to one of their striker Nagai, who beat one defender and then the goalie to score a 2nd for Urawa. Game over, Urawa Red Diamonds 2, FC Tokyo 0.


I just happened to get my camera on quick enough to capture the last goal. The goal is in the first second of the clip, but you can see the fans reaction.

The video is really bad on youtube, so you may not see the goal, but you'll see the fan reaction.

Natto!!!

I've been wanting to write a post about our school lunch for quite some time. So nearing the end of my journey now, I thought I'd better get onto it. Lunch at Junior high schools is quite a treat here in Japan. In elementary school (primary) and Junior high schools lunch is provided by the city of Ashikaga. It's not free but the amount we have to pay for it almost makes it free. It's about $2 a day ... pretty dirt cheap for the amount of food you get really. Lunch is set this way so that the students get a maximum balanced and healthy diet. Not a bad incentive considering the obesity rates of kids all over the world.

Anyway, lunch is delivered to the schools by lunch ladies and then the students have the task of dishing out the proportions to all the classmates in their home room. Over the last few years, they have implemented a system where ALT's (me) also have lunch with the students to help encourage them to communicate in English while eating. I rotate to a different class everyday. While I initially tried to strike conversation and really promote the speaking of English, it was like hitting your head against a brick wall sometimes. Lately I have stopped trying and just sat there and ate my lunch. There are certain kids, that will try to speak with me and that's cool when it happens.

The actual lunches them self can vary over the week. Some days the lunches are really good and others, they are really bad. There will be traditional Japanese lunches, Chinese types lunches and western type lunches. The western ones are when we have bread, pasta, frankfurts or hamburg (hamburger pattie drizzled in a sweet sauce). We get an outline of what we will be eating for the month. Initially, I could not read anything, so I had to quickly learned the kanji for beef, pork, beef and fish (which also helped me in the supermarkets). I can read most of the menu now but on days where I see lots of kanji and can't read it, then I know its a traditional Japanese lunch which involves fish and miso soup most of the time.

One particular Japanese lunch involves NATTO! Most Japanese love natto and eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I say most as even some Japanese can't eat it. Natto is basically fermented soybean ... yep, rotten soybean! The smell is pretty excruciating, especially when a whole classroom is mixing the stuff. The fermentation process gives the beans this sticky sappy texture, imagine any of those alien movies where after their insides are blown apart, there's that sappy thing going on. You need to mix the natto with soy and some mustard and then into your rice. I have tried it and so I am speaking from experience. I obviously did not like it. The Japanese keep telling me that it's really healthy for you. Think I'll stick to my fruit and veg!

Hey, but don't just take my word for it. I've prepared a little clip of me mixing up the natto for you all to see.

On occasions, they give us these little snack bags. This one contains little dried fish and wasabi peas ... mmm. They also come in little dried shrimp as well. Are these really any healthier than chips????

So the natto can come in little square polystyrene containers (not the most environmentally friendly), or little polystyrene cups.

Here's the contents inside with all the ingredients at the ready to start mixing. Natto however, is not hated by all foreigners, some of them actually like it. I've even heard stories of some of them eating it actually for breakfast, lunch and dinner when they are really poor. Wow!!!

Here's me showing you the natto phenomenom.

Natto is so uniquely Japanese and famous that it has also made it as a special challenge ingredient on Iron Chef! Watch the hilarious episode on youtube here (this is only 10mins of the episode, but you can find the rest of the episode on the youtube page).


The next couple of shots of some of the things served up for school lunch.

This is curry rice day. One of the few days I actually eat my whole tin of rice. I would struggle to get through it otherwise. It's Japanese curry, so not really hot, but does have veggies and either pork or chicken. You'll also find there's milk, which we have everyday. On this day we also got an egg and seaweed, corn and dikon (some root veggie) salad.

On this day we got some crumbed fish, miso soup, jelly, and some broccoli and cauliflower. Oh incidentally, another bad lunch day is pregnant fish day ... uuurrrggghhh!. It's a whole little fish, battered, crumbed and deep fried, head and all. I accidentally bit into one, one day and had a mouth full of fish eggs ... not great. I give these to my kids now ... they seem to love it!

On the left bowl here is some bacon and cabbage, in right bowl is what the Japanese call Oden. It's basically different vegetables and fish cake in a broth. They sell Oden in most 7 elevens in Japan, so it's basically big vats of hot water with stuff floating in them ... no covered ... Wow!

This would be a western style lunch, bread, frankfurt, little bit of cheese on the top, soup of some sort and a mandarine.

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While we're still on food, I thought I'd provide you with evidence as to how expensive fruit in Japan really is.

Here's a normal sized mango, price 398yen ... that's about $4 .... for one mango!!!

Cherries ... 398yen for about 25 cherries ... that works out to be about 15cents a cherry!!!

$4 for 1/6 of a slice of watermelon. Let's just say, I'll be happy to be buying fruit back home again.

On another note, still to do with food. I bought what I thought was a normal watermelon one week, when to my utter surprise ... the flesh was yellow when I cut into it!!!!

I've never had a yellow watermelon before and didn't even know they existed ... until now!

Anyway, I tried it ... and if you closed your eyes and not looked at the colour, then you'd think that you were eating a normal watermelon. The texture is the same but it wasn't as sweet as a red watermelon.

Nagano Soccer Tournament

About 3 weeks ago, I participated in the Biannual Nagano Soccer/Football tournament. I had previously attended the same tournament in October last year and had lots of fun, so thought I'd give it another go. Plus, it was a chance to catch up with some of the boys in the Tochigi prefecture that I had not seen in a while.


I was of course part of the Tochigi team, which is one of the teams that run middle of the pack, not absolutely crap but also not the best team out there. I guess the reason is some of us only play twice a year (i.e. at this tournament) and we have some pretty decent players from the Queen's country.


In the last tournament we managed to rank about 9th or 10th. Pretty decent showing, we had a large squad with plenty of subs. We made the top half of the draw for the knockout tournament on the Sunday but unfortunately lost. The Tochigi team has been strong in the past, even managing to make the finals one year. However, the squad this time was not going to repeat that effort.


This time round, we were missing a few of our English boys and we didn't have as many subs. But hey, we tried. The weather for the weekend was looking great ... sunshine abound on top of the Nagano mountains. Unlike the previous event, where it was cold and then rained on the Sunday.


The basic structure is that we play 4 games on the Saturday. The top 10 teams from the 18 teams make the top half of the draw for the following knock-out tournament on Sunday and the right to be crown Nagano champions. The other 8 teams, qualify for the bottom half knock-out tournament for a shield and a case of beer. Not bad, really.


So we played, first up loss ... through an unfortunate goal where we were caught napping, 0-1. Our next was a bit better, a 2-0 win. The third was another loss, 0-2. And the last game was a 3-1 win. So we had 2 wins and 2 losses and would wait to see where we were headed next.

The lads gathering and oozing confidence before the game!

A bit of stretching to loosen those muscles that you never use.

Allen, our goal keeper getting in some stretches.

Yep, that's me getting in some stretches too. And there were many muscles I had to stretch due to my inactivity recently.

Some warm up laps. I was buggered after the warm-up actually!

We were pretty high in the mountains. High enough, that we could almost touch the clouds.

Unfortunately, this was the theme of my tournament ... many times too slow to chase the opposition forward. Yep, that's me in the number 15. Luckily, I think that guy missed this one.

Discussing tactics. Maybe on moving me onto someone that I can keep up with!!!

We all were staying at a Ryokan nearby and had 6 boys to a traditional Japanese room. Tight fit and lots of loud snoring ... not only by me either. We found out that we had make the top of the bottom group for the next day. Some of us were grateful for this as it meant that we had competition more to our level and the potential to win a case of beer!!! And plus some teams take the tournament way too seriously ... like skipping the party that is put on in the evening just to be ready for the following day.



To the Sunday, where most of the lads felt muscles we never knew we had. Let me tell you, it was pretty painful. But we got our game faces on competed. We won our first game 3-0. Then the semi-final where we were up early, but the opposition pulled one back to 1-1 and the game had to be decided by a penalty shootout. Our keeper gave us a great start but saving the first shot. We then slammed home all of ours to make it to the final.

Our last penalty taken by the strike machine, Rob!

Unfortunately we ran out of steam in the final. Injuries to key players caught up with us and some of the boys were trying to recover from sunstroke. We lost 2-0, but gave it a good run. We finished off with a bowl of Curry and rice for lunch and then headed home.

Team Tochigi!!!