Golden Week. The Beach and some Hiking.

Golden Week is a very important holiday in Asia, but unfortunately all I know about it is that you take a holiday on the Monday, Thursday and Friday of the week. For the Thursday of the week I returned to Harajuku, and walked around with my friends Ulli, Natalia, and Ulli's visiting friend Tobias. I saw some interesting shops, and restaurants. That is what I think makes Harajuku such a great place to visit. Not because of the retarded cosplay outside of Yoyogi park, because the foreigners who exploit the teenagers - who, in all fairness, like having their picture taken in their strange costumes - for a good picture seem like the most vapid and idiotic people I have seen. Anyway, the bars. They're on the 3rd or 4th floors of small apartments in the neighborhood, and they are very compact. But what they like in size they gain in unique character. They either have a great theme (I went to a great Mexican themed bar with a Mexican pizza, which involved a tortilla crust, and salsa as tomato sauce), and carry that theme from how the walls are constructed to the signs on the bathroom, or the bars will give you such a great selection of alcohol that you wonder how a bar smaller than your apartment can afford it. But these bars are all over Tokyo, and really, if you visit Tokyo for a week, visit some of them,
The following day I went to the beach to visit my friend Minori, who I originally went to Singapore with. I went with some people from ICU, including my American friend Jamie, who wanted to teach Minori how to surf. The weather was amazing, but unfortunately the water was too cold to swim in. When we got to the beach there weren't many great waves, so the there were a hundreds of Japanese surfers sitting on there boards in shallow water. It was like the beginning of a big battle in The Lord of The Rings, but with wetsuits and Surf Boards. My intention was to take a great nap on the beach for most of the morning, but the wind got very strong, and you would get showered with sand sitting on the beach for too long. Instead I played soccer against a pair of Peruvian guys who have been living in Japan for the past 10 years, and speak only Spanish and Japanese, and one of who is dating a Parisian girl from my school. Afterwards our whole party went to Minori's place for some of her mom's homemade pizzas, which were delicious. We were all so tired that conversation would often lead to awkward silence. At this point the Peruvians, and the Parisian were no longer with us.
The following day I went hiking with some friends (Matt, Natalia, Ulli, Dan, Risto, and April). I don't know the name of the place where we went hiking, but it was southwest of Tokyo City, and about 2 hours away. The first day had fantastic weather, and we had some magnificent views from 1500 metres. You get this amazing scope of the horizon from that height, and you can see millions of various trees blanketing the foothills, creating this enormous green tapestry covering everything except for the mountains' peaks, which were able to pierce through. I also liked looking directly up the mountain, you can see so many trees and protruding rocks, which are more scattered than on level ground, and they are all green and grey and beautiful. The first day was mostly the climb, which was really tough. The land was very steep, and climbing up the mountains split us up into 2 groups. I was in the slower group which arrived at the chalet an hour after dark, giving us 15 minutes to eat and get ready sleep before the lights in the chalet were all turned off. We didn't really make it.
The second day kind of sucked a bit. We were woken up at 4:30 in the morning by the rustling of eager middle-aged Japanese people getting ready to continue their hikes, and the power returning to the light in our room, which we forgot to turn of the night before. The moment I stepped out to use the bathroom (okay, piss of a giant rock face while cheering! nah... I didn't do that) it began to rain; it would not stop raining until well after we returned home. The group of Japanese hikers was well prepared and had all the appropriate gear: rain coat and pants, boots, gloves, Thinsulate fleece vest, and waterproof knapsack cover. Before they left for their hike, they stood in a large circle and had one of them lead in morning stretches. Soon after we began our second day of hiking, which was mostly descending the mountain. Being at such a high altitude through the rain we were walking through the clouds, which made objects 5 meters away invisible. I didn't mind the rain so much because of this, and I referenced The Highlander and Rocky IV to deaf ears. As we dropped below the clouds and got to a more open part of the hike we could see the clouds roll through the mountains - a classic image of Japan. By the end we got ourselves lost, ending up in a small town several kilometers from our final destination. We decided to hitchhike. April, Risto, Natalia, Ulli, and Dan found a Japanese family that happily made two trips to carry them 15 kilometers to the station. Matt and I got a ride from a Japanese women going to pick up her young daughter from the station. Matt sat in the front seat because he knows more Japanese then I do, and had a polite conversation. I sat in the back with her 3-year-old son. I decided not to talk to him, because he probably doesn't talk to strangers. Afterward the hike, we went to another public bath in the town, and took naps on the train.



For fun let's play a game. It is called guess the nationality of my friends. If you get them all right I will bring you a t-shirt! The rule is that you can't look at old photos to guess. I'll give you a hint: there is a Canadian, an American, a Brit, a Chilean, one guy from London, Paris, and Durham SC, a German,and a Fin.