January, AKA Why is it snowing? This is why I left Canada!

Look at me, attempting to get better about posting.  I feel so accomplished!  (That'll last about half a week.)

After finishing up my holidays at home, I headed back to Japan, which was something of a nightmare.  I had my window seat, as always, but next to me was a rather broad man who couldn't help but constantly encroach on my space.  For thirteen hours.  And the Air Canada movie choices kinda really sucked, so I didn't have much to do.  Joy.  My flight was scheduled to get in just after 5, so I'd have time to head into the city, grab food at the station, and then make my way home on the shinkansen.  For reasons I don't understand (since we took off on time) we were a half hour late getting into Tokyo, and then I had to wait almost an hour for my luggage.  Then after customs & immigration, it was another 20-ish minutes for me to ship one of my suitcases to my apartment.  Slow walkers in front of me meant that I reached the platform just in time for the doors of my train into the city to close in front of me.  I waited the four minutes for the next one, and headed to Shinagawa.  I had to wait in line while four trains I could have taken left without me, because apparently they don't actually believe in keeping the office fully staffed until the last train in Tokyo.  Three service desks closed up while I was in line, leaving only three open to service all of the people in front of me.  I got a ticket on the last train I could possibly have taken into Nagoya to make it back to my place in time, and had to hasten, Princess Diaries-style, for the platform to catch my train.

When I got into Nagoya, I could wait and take a series of trains that were the last ones for the night, meaning I would have to make all of my transfers perfectly, or I could pay more money and get a seat on the faster, fancier limited express trains.  Given how everything else had gone that evening, I elected to pay the extra for the reserved seat.  My one lucky break was that I found the bag of cookies my mom had given me to put in my carry-on that I'd forgotten about, so that kind of made up for not having time to get food?  I guess?  In any case, the sugar improved my mood slightly.  I got home at 11:45 at night, and then tried to wind down as fast as possible, since I had to go to work the next day.  Moral of the story?  Never fly back the evening before you have to work unless your flight actually flies into where you need to be.

The beginning of the next week was our annual ALT Skills Development Conference, which is exactly as boring as it sounds.  Probably 80% of it just involves me trying to stay awake.  Also, it decided to snow a lot, and was generally cold and miserable outside.  The cool part was that on the evening of the first conference day, our AJET group had planned a Pub Quiz, and I was invited to join a team.  The even cooler part is that we won, thus proving that we knew more useless information than everyone else in the room.  That's....something to be proud of, right?  We won Mie JET hoodies/shirts (whichever one we wanted; I chose hoodie) and a bottle of wine, which we shared with snacks in the park after the second conference day because that's legal in Japan and we're classy like that.

That Saturday, Mary and I celebrated her birthday by traipsing about Nagoya and eating all of the food.  Seriously.  So much food.  We also apparently did a lot of impulse shopping, since the phrase, "Oh yeah, I forgot I bought that..." was used more than once.  We got Turkish food for lunch, bought some small snack bags of some really great chocolate & orange flavoured popcorn, hummus (!!) at a Halal grocery store, English books (!!!!) at a rather large secondhand store, and then hit up an American-style sports bar for dinner.  The last part was especially awesome for me, because I'd been craving a quesedilla since 4:30AM, and they had that on the menu.  I will definitely be going back there.  We also stopped in at this super tiny and adorable Alice in Wonderland shop that I had no idea existed but was thoroughly awesome.  It's so tiny you have to wait in line because the store holds so few people at once!

I think the only other thing of interest this month was finally getting to play the Zombie Outbreak game that Ros and I designed in September.  Those of you who have played the game Mafia or Werewolf (I think it's got another name or two as well...) will recognize elements, as will anyone who's ever played Wink Murder.  It's like those, but also really not, and with learning objectives!  We spent an entire day developing this thing over text messages at work (I had no lessons, Ros was bored), and I'm pretty proud of the outcome.  (So many times I'd start typing out "official" rules, and then have to text, "Wait.  What if such and such situation happens?"  And then we'd have to redo part of the game again.)  The kids really seemed to enjoy it, though I think it needs a bit of tweaking, numbers-wise.  My initial instructions made for too many doctors and not enough zombies when we actually played.  For those interested, here's the initial instructions (numbers to be adjusted for different class sizes as necessary).  For those not interested, skip over the red text.

Zombie Outbreak!

There has been a virus outbreak!  Some people are only a little bit sick, but other people have been turned into zombies!

The goal is to quarantine (“out”) all of the zombies!

 

Each student is given a card.  There are 3 doctor cards and 3 zombie cards to start.  Everyone else has a symptom and a temperature on their card.  Everyone should look at their card secretly.

 

Doctors should sit at the back of the room (their “offices”). 

 

Other students will walk around the room and speak to each other.  After greeting each other with “Hello,” the pair will play “rock, paper, scissors.”  The loser must ask the winner, “How are you?” and the winner will answer.

-       If the winner is sick, they should say “I have          “. 

Ø  If there is a doctor available, the loser should answer, “You should see a doctor.” 

Ø  If the doctors are all busy, the loser should answer, “You should get some rest.” (If the loser is a zombie, they should always say this answer.)

-       If the winner is a zombie, they should say, “I’m a zombie!”

Ø  The loser should bring the zombie to the Check Point (ALT).

²  The pair will be given a pop quiz from the ALT.  If the zombie gets more points, the other student is given a zombie card (unless they are “immune”) and both are released.  If the other student wins, the zombie is quarantined (out of the game), and the other student goes back to the game.

Ø  If the loser is also a zombie, they can say “Me too!” and end the conversation.  A zombie should not bring another zombie to the Check Point.

-       If the winner has been cured by a doctor already, they should say, “I’m fine, thanks.”

*******The conversation should only go one way.  Students should NOT use “And you?” or ask how the other person is feeling. ********

If a student goes to see the doctor, they have this conversation:

Doctor: What’s the matter?

Student: I have             .

Doctor: I see.  What’s your temperature now?

Student:         .

Doctor: OK, I’ll give you a prescription.

After this conversation, the doctor will hold out a set of cards (“prescription”) to the student.  The student will choose one and look at it.  The card will either say “Medicine” (not sick anymore) or “Immunity” (not sick anymore AND can’t be turned into a zombie even if they lose at the Check Point).  The student gives their illness card to the doctor and keeps the new card.

The game ends when either all the zombies are caught (the remaining students win) or there are three more zombies left in the game than students (zombies win).

Pop Quiz!

-       ALT will point to a body part.

-       Student has 5 seconds to say the name of that part.

Ø  If they get it right, they get a point.

Ø  If they get it wrong, or don’t answer in time, they don’t get a point.

-       Each student will be asked three questions.

-       In case of a tie, each student should cut a deck of cards.  The higher cut wins.

Obviously this was something we were doing at the end of their unit on injury and illness.  It was a bit chaotic, but like I said, they seemed to enjoy it, and it was a good way to incorporate all the parts of the unit.  I still feel indebted to the Australian teachers who were here with the exchange group back in September/October, because I coerced them into reading the instructions to make sure they made sense to people other than Ros and I.

And that's about it.  It's still snowing at least once a week, which I thoroughly do NOT enjoy.  I'll have a post about some February stuff soon (ish).

Boo! and Other Autumn Utterances

Apparently I forgot to do this again.  I start thinking about what I want to say about things as they happen, but then I forget to actually type it out in the "really" world.  Kind of like texting people back...

So Halloween and its associated events were fabulous.  My trip to Tokyo was amazing, starting with my usual foray to the Tokyo Disney Resort.  I decided to follow the incredibly popular trend here and do some Disney bounding.  It involved a couple trips to the thrift stores beforehand, but it was well worth it.

For Disneyland, I dressed like Rapunzel, and the Cast Members, especially in Fantasyland, thought I was adorable (and that's why I do it, really - so that complete strangers will tell me how cute I look :D).

I was also by myself this day, which was interesting.  It's the first time I've done a Tokyo park by myself, and the first time in 4 years to do any Disney park alone.  It was super dead, though, so I got to wander around taking pictures of all the Halloween decorations without getting in anyone's way, and ride pretty much everything.  I skipped the really lame rides (Tomorrowland Speedway), the rides that are awkward to do solo (Mad Tea Party), and Splash Mountain (the flowers in my braid were paper, so that would have ended badly).  I got to eat some fun seasonal foods, do some shopping, and just generally laze about the park, soaking up the atmosphere.

At Disney Sea, I had my trusty Ros by my side as we dressed in clothes inspired by The Little Mermaid, and had Ros's first experience with a character who can actually talk (we met Mickey and Minnie in Hong Kong 4 years ago, and that was her first character experience ever)!  Being a grown adult and not having done this in her childhood, she was completely thrown and couldn't entirely wrap her mind around it.  I fielded most of the Ariel conversation and then had a good laugh at Ros's expense afterwards, because I'm an awesome friend like that.  We did some new rides (new for us, not new for the park - and they were the kiddie rides in Mermaid Lagoon that we usually avoid for the obvious reason that we are not accompanied by a child [physically - my mental age doesn't count]), I got to see a show that I've only ever seen in passing before, and we ate at the fancy ship restaurant to celebrate Ros's birthday. 

We also got to see the Villains show on the lagoon, which was all kinds of awesome and full of fabulous costumes that I want in my closet and the phrase "tentacular spectacular" yelled out by Ursula, which had Ros and I cracking up for a good couple minutes.

The real reason I was in Tokyo, though, was because Ros found a concert for us to attend: The Music of Danny Elfman from the Films of Tim Burton.  Awesome!  She'd sent me a picture of the poster and was like, "Wanna go?"  To which I replied, "Um, obviously." 

I love Danny Elfman's music, especially the creepy Tim Burton stuff (Sleepy Hollow being my favourite, as much as I love The Nightmare Before Christmas).  So Ros got the tickets, we kind of vaguely looked at the website to try to figure out what to wear - on one hand, it's the Tokyo Philharmonic, and on the other, they were having a costume contest, so we weren't really sure - but that was it.  Didn't really look to closely.  Then, about a week or two before the event, Ros finds a blurb about it in an English Tokyo magazine that says actual Danny Elfman will actually be on the stage for the concert and actually singing The Nightmare Before Christmas songs like he does in the actual movie.  Needless to say, I flipped.  Mentally, not out loud, because I was at work when she texted me the picture of the blurb and that would have been really awkward to try to explain.  So off we went, amongst people dressed in some pretty freakin' cool costumes, and sat through an absolutely phenomenal concert.  There were so many times I had goosebumps!  The concert ended with the Nightmare set, and there he was, Danny Elfman, singing and rocking out to the music in a way that really reminded me of Elton John, to be honest.  But he was so cool!  He came out for an encore and performed Oogie Boogie's Song (for anyone wondering what it would sound like if Jack Skellington sang that song, the answer is "odd"), with the conductor playing the part of Santa, while wearing the hat.  So, so awesome.

Back at school, we had our Halloween lessons!  The first years were forced into a Halloween tongue twister contest (Hoot owls hoot howls of horror in haunted Halloween houses), and got to do a word search.  Fun, but kind of bland.  Not my best lesson ever.  The conversation class, though.  That was a whole other kettle of fish.  For the first period of class, we played a game I found online called Bump, which they enjoyed even though they're really bad at actually listening to what the other teams say and miss out on what would otherwise be easy points.  The part I'm most proud of, though, was the second period.  I read them a simplified version of Hairy Toe, and the JTE gave a bit of a translation.  The students had to be paying attention, and making notes of the translation that was given for my reading, because then they had to work in groups to retell the story as a comic!  They had a lot of fun with this, and I got some really great comics!

I assigned a different comic-type activity for my first years, where they were practicing compliments by drawing different scenarios I'd given them.  What did I learn?  Some of my kids are cannibals:

And you should never look to this kid for compliments:

Visitors From Abroad

Alrighty!  So the last week of September saw the arrival of our exchange students from Australia and two of their teachers.  They were here for two weeks and it was awesome.  It was a small group, only six students this year (last year they sent eleven, and I think that was too many).  They were an absolute blast.  A couple of the girls (we had four girls and two boys) were fairly reserved in the beginning, but they got over that fast enough.  One of the boys, though, was a character from day one.  He definitely got the most out of this trip, I think.  He was enthusiastic about everything they were doing, and he had a sense of humour that was by turns ridiculous and smart-ass (but never in a mean-spirited way).  The best thing about this kid, though, is that he got my kids to talk.

You know I’ve bemoaned my conversation classes before.  The third years are noisy and like to talk to each other all the time in Japanese but won’t talk much in English, my second year class with Morita-sensei has a couple loud-mouths and about twenty kids who stare blankly at me and wait for Morita-sensei to translate my instructions into Japanese because they can’t be bothered to even try to understand my basic English, and my conversation class with Tanimura-sensei is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.  And that classroom has carpeting.  So when the exchange kids come, we set up their schedules so that they all come to our conversation classes, and then we set them up in groups and have them rotate around to the different groups and each time they rotate they’re given a different conversation topic and a time limit.  Last year this went well, but last year I only had one conversation class, and they were a lot… I don’t want to say better, but… they were better.  So I was worried.  And there were still a couple (mostly one in particular in Tanimura-sensei’s class and I don’t even know why she’s taking the class in the first place, and for the first couple months I would have sworn she was actually mute) that didn’t say much and it was like pulling teeth, but for the most part my kids were excited and eager to talk to the Australian kids.  The teachers came to my third year class as well, and the kids loved that.  Trying to run a legit class with them was a whole other story, because Morita-sensei kept throwing things into the mix (sometimes by interrupting while I was trying to do what my lesson plan said), but even that went off fairly well.  But anyway.  Yeah, the class where they just had to talk to each other was awesome.  

We had the farewell party for them on Friday after school, and there were a lot of tears from the students (even the ones who were still going to see them later because they were hosting the kids and they weren’t actually leaving until the next day).  One of the girls came up to me, thanked me, and basically told me I was so pretty and so awesome and that she basically wants to be me when she’s older.  That was possibly the biggest ego boost I’ve ever gotten in my life.  She was so sweet. 

So yeah, basically the last two weeks have just been a series of awesome experiences.  I got along well with the teachers, too, and we had some good laughs.  I was also invited (read: Morita-sensei said, “Mel, you should come to this!  Please come!”) along with them to check out the kyudo (Japanese archery) club.  Things you need to know:

1. I took a 10-week archery class when I was in Grade 6.

2. While I’m not the most awful person to hold a bow ever, I’m really not good.

     2b. I hit three bullseyes during that 10-week class.  On the target next to the one I was aiming for.            Two of those were in the same night.
3. An unbent Japanese bow is more than two meters tall.  I am decidedly not tall enough to properly draw this bow.

All of these things worked together to ensure I was probably the worst archer to ever step foot inside that club.  If the objective was to hit the lawn, I performed admirably.  The objective was not to hit the lawn.

After they left, I got to meet up with a friend of mine who’s visiting Japan with a couple of her friends.  This was especially exciting for me because it was our first time meeting in person (I started editing her Kingdom Hearts fan fiction nine years ago, back in university, because we’re nerds).  There was squealing and hugging and excited fast-talking, and then we headed out to explore Osaka! 

I’ve been to Osaka before (my first time there was with last year’s exchange kids, when I was asked to accompany their field trip), but I haven’t really seen a whole lot.  Mostly I go there because there’s a wax salon run by a lady who was trained in England, so I don’t have to worry about things being miscommunicated.  And I went to USJ for my birthday, you may recall.  But I’ve never really done Osaka before, so this was a new experience for me, too!  We started out by heading over to Expo City (leftover from the 1970 Osaka Expo) to hit up the Pokemon Expo Gym.  I figured it would just be me wandering while they looked at all of the things since I'm not super into Pokemon, but I actually picked up this really cute tin that had coffee cookies in it (that will later house my loose teabags, because I always seem to have some of those lying around).  We checked out the mall at Expo City, and then headed back into the city center to check out Osaka Castle.  I’ve been through that park before (it’s a nice walk, and there’s a Domino’s Pizza nearby), but didn’t go inside the castle.  We decided to bypass the ridiculous line for the elevator and hike up to the 8^th floor lookout via the stairs.  That…was a lot of stairs, but it was worth it.  It was gorgeous afternoon weather, and the lookout area is actually outdoors, so that was fantastic.  There was a craft beer festival with some food tents in the park right by the station, so we stopped there for some grub and the guys got some craft beer.  I'm not actually sure what Katy and I ate.  It was meat from an undetermined part of a cow in some kind of tomato sauce and served over a white puree that we have absolutely zero idea what it was.  I'm going with beans.  Pureed kidney beans.  The last part of our day involved going up in the HEP Five ferris wheel near Osaka station for another great view of the city (but pictures taken from inside don't turn out well).  I headed back to their hotel to pick up the bags of Reese's Katy was kind enough to bring over for me (I'm aware that I have a peanut butter problem; I like to think it gives me character), before catching the train back home.

Now I'm back to work for the last week before midterms.  But because it's the last week of classes before midterms, all of my first year classes have been cancelled so that the teachers can make sure everyone's learned all of the necessary grammar.  And my conversation classes have their in-class midterm.  So I'm sitting here, typing this.  But I took off the actual exam week to go back to Disneyland like the uber-nerd I am, and also to hear the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra with Ros.  So excited!!!!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Partie Un)

Summer vacation started at my school officially on July 20th, but I started my vacation a bit early.  The week before that, I accomplished something I've wanted to do since my first trip here six years ago: I climbed Mt. Fuji.

It was a gruelling climb, and there were many moments where I honestly didn't think I would make it, but I did, and I'm super proud of myself.  Especially given the ridiculous handicap I had, which I'll explain in a minute.

When I decided that I was going to do this, I did some searching around, reading accounts of people who did it on their own.  It seemed really complicated, with the various paths you can take up the mountain, and in many places (especially the mountain huts) it seemed like fluency in Japanese would be required, so instead I did a slightly different search and found the tour package offered by Willer.  Definitely a good idea.  The package included transportation both ways between Tokyo and Fuji, a mountain guide (which actually turned into two mountain guides), an English-speaking guide (who was also a mountain guide, and our other mountain guides spoke English too, but this one was with us from pick-up to drop-off, not just on the mountain), meals, and a stay in a mountain hut so that our hike was properly timed for sunrise.  There were also add-on options to the package for equipment rental (which I did not purchase, and I regretted not purchasing it virtually the whole time) or a post-climb bath (which I also did not purchase, but that actually turned out to be a good thing, more on that later).

So the bus picks up in Tokyo (Shinjuku) at 7:30 in the morning.  I have two choices: a) get there the day before and pay for that transportation as well as a hostel for the night, or b) take the night bus, rolling the transportation and overnight shelter requirements into one cheap little package.  I went with option b.  Thing is, as I've detailed in my past adventures, I don't really sleep on the night bus.  Probably even less than I sleep on planes, which isn't really much.  So when we pulled into Shinjuku at 5:40AM that day, I was running on about one to one and a half hours of incredibly disjointed and not even remotely restful sleep.  Boom, handicap!  I have to climb a mountain on this.  I regret that decision as well. 

Anyway, the bus picks us up (there are 27 of us, not including the guide), and we take our ride from downtown Tokyo to the 5th station (of 10 total, with 10 being the summit) of the Subaru trail.  The people who bought the equipment rental package get their equipment, and we all have a ridiculously early lunch (like, before 11). 

We eat, get our stuff together, meet our other two guides, and just after noon we begin our trek up the mountain!  In this time, I've made friends with a lovely couple from Finland, a father-son pair from New York, a pair of undetermined relationship from Ottawa, and a girl from the Netherlands travelling solo.  We were a gay couple and a pair of irritating best friends away from casting a season of The Amazing Race, I swear.  Sarah (the Dutch girl) and I became climbing buddies, since we could chat while we climbed, and we seemed to have the same cautious excitement about this (you're really excited until you actually get there and look at it and you realize you can't even see the top of the mountain and then you kind of regret all of your life choices).

The climb up the Subaru trail basically looks like this: you start at the fifth station (where all the restaurants and shops are, because buses can actually go that far so many people take trips to Fuji and just spend the day there before going home), then comes the sixth station (the station the mountain safety team works out of), the seventh station (parts one through, I think, four), the real eighth station (with multiple parts as well), the old eighth station (which is where our mountain hut was), the ninth station, and then the summit.  Our guide took us at a slow pace, with breaks roughly every half hour to water ourselves and take deep breaths to adjust to the altitude.  Our goal was to do about six hours of climbing to reach the mountain hut, at which point we would have dinner and rest, and then get up and moving by 2AM the next day to make the one and a half/two hour-ish climb to the summit for sunrise.  The first few hours weren't bad.  Definitely hard work, and not something I should have been doing on as little sleep as I had, but I was doing fine.  I was definitely worse off when I did the half marathon at Disney two years ago.  Mostly the path was an incline of semi-packed dirt, with a few retaining steps around corners as you slolam your way up the mountain.  The steps were particularly difficult for me, being as short as I am.  Many of them came up to around my knee, so I have to keep lifting my knee to my chest and put a lot of energy into hoisting myself up these things.  And the guide gives us advice like, "Push your weight through your heel to keep the strain off your thighs," or, "Take baby steps to use less energy!"  And I take another look at these stairs and think, "Baby WHAT?!"  But yeah.  That was the first couple hours.  That was the easy part.

My feet at the sixth station.

After about two or so hours of that, our guide announces that we're coming up on a section of what he calls "steep rock," and we're going to be climbing that for about two hours.  He advises those who have been using those walking pole things to put them away, as we may need the use of our hands a bit.  Alright, that sounds... vaguely ominous, but sure.  Let's go!  So "steep rock" turns out to actually mean "irregularly shaped volcanic slag," and it's only JUST climb-able, with odd footholds, and again with the huge steps I have to take that practically shove my kneecap into my neck.  It's a tough climb.  After a gruelling amount of effort, extra personal breaks for a few seconds at a time, and draining at least one of my bottles of water, we reach the seventh station.  Hurray.  Only about another hour and a half of this rock nonsense, and then about another hour of dirt hill climbing after that to reach our destination.  Because we're only halfway through the day's climb at this point.  We take an extra-long break at the beginning of the seventh station before continuing our way up.

Rock.  So much steep rock.

This is where we start to lose people, and we learn the purpose of having multiple mountain guides.  It's so the rest of us can keep going while one guide takes the ones who can't make it back.  Thankfully, they don't have to go all the way back; there's space available along the seventh station mountain huts, so they can stay the night, potentially still see something of the sunrise, and then meet us back at the fifth station after the descent in the morning.  Every time we reach a new set of buildings after a tough bit of climbing I think, "Oh man, we must be almost there!  It's been forever!"  No.  It's just another section of the seventh station, we're still a ways away from our stop, and my body is starting to hate me.  I've lost my Dutch friend, so barring a couple conversations with the dad from New York (we lost his son as well) at the rest stops I've got no one to actually talk to on this climb anymore which means I have no distraction.  All I have is this climb.  Other people are starting to feel the altitude a bit, and I'm not sure if it's the altitude or just my lack of sleep finally catching up to me (my money is mostly on the latter), but my balance is starting to feel really off.  Not bad enough that I can't climb, but I definitely need to climb slower than everyone else.  So I'm at the back of the pack with the last guide.  It's embarassing, I feel incredibly out of shape, and so many times over these two hours I consider throwing in the towel and going back to the seventh station.  But there's something inside me that's determined to do this.  It's hard, and my limbs are protesting every step I take and every time I rise from a break I want to sit right back down, but something in me refuses to quit until I actually can't climb anymore (or I fall off the mountain).  So I kept going.

 

Everything you see is one station, but it'll take you forever to get through all of it.

It started raining about five minutes before we reached our mountain hut.  We'd been lucky enough to have gorgeous weather thus far in our climb, but up near the top of the mountain the weather can get unpredictable.  So we were pelted pretty hard, and it started coming down even worse when we got inside.  Even though it's close to our target arrival time (we actually made it fifteen minutes early), our supper won't be ready for a while, so we have some time to strip off our wet outer layers (and socks), and just relax and maybe nap a bit.  We're in a room to ourselves, and by "ourselves" I mean all 22 of us who made it this far, laid along the main floor and each of the bunk wings of the room six-across like a high school sleepover party gone weird.  Eventually we were called down to dinner (curried burger patty and rice), and then went back up to crash, with our instructions to be awake by 1:30 so that we could start our climb at 2:00.  A bunch of us set alarms, and we all settled into our futons.  The summit climb in the morning was completely optional (obviously), and I wasn't sure how sore I would be in the morning, so I was resigned to the fact that this may be as far as I made it.  Especially since, when the alarms started going off at dark o'clock in the morning, I hadn't really slept.  Again.

I was surprisingly good for the climb in the morning.  I mean, I was incredibly tired, obviously, but just sleep-tired.  My body didn't hurt at all.  I was equal parts shocked and thankful.  So I dressed in all my layers, removed anything extraneous from my bag to leave at the hut (we were coming back for breakfast after the summit), and headed out with my flashlight to join the herd.  It wasn't too busy heading up to the top (apparently there can be "traffic jams" sometimes that cause the climb to take more than two hours), and it wasn't any worse than anything we'd faced thus far coming up.  It was just a little scarier because of the dark (I had a handheld flashlight instead of the headlamp because I didn't rent the equipment; headlamp would have been loads easier, but I didn't trip and fall and die, so I'm considering it a win anyway), but physical exertion wise it was fun.  But let me tell you, the dark makes it a lot more boring, without anything to look at.  Add that to not really having anyone to talk to in order to distract me, and I was afraid this climb would actually drive me insane.  So I did what I usually do in these kinds of situations and retreated into my mind, only coming out to interact with people on breaks.  I can reliably inform you that, excluding the time we took for breaks, it takes almost exactly the length of Disney's Beauty and the Beast to reach the summit from the old eighth station.

The summit was all kinds of cold and wet.  Clouds had moved in, the wind was whipping every which way, and we couldn't really see anything.  Our guides had to make the call to cancel the walk around the volcanic crater, and our sunrise consisted entirely of the dark just becoming less dark.  Disappointing, but I made it to the top. 

The descent is where the intense regret at not renting the climbing equipment comes in.  There's a separate path for descent (presumably to help the flow of traffic and to reduce accidents), and it's entirely semi-packed/semi-loose dirt and rocks on a steep slant, slaloming down the mountainside. 

They recommend having the climbing sticks to take the stress off your knees.  Personally, I think they should make them mandatory.  I read that, and I was like, "Nah, it won't be that bad.  I can do without!"  And I mean, I did.  Obviously. I didn't have a choice.  Going down the mountain was kind of an imperative.  But it hurt.  A lot.  Basically you're walking down a steep, shifting hill for three hours.  But after a lot of effort, I made it all the way back to the fifth station to grab some omiyage for my coworkers.

I hadn't really planned on buying anything for myself, but I was feeling pretty nasty after a couple days without a shower or being able to brush my teeth, and wearing the same clothes that were pretty saturated in sweat by this point.  Like I said, I hadn't purchased the onsen option when I booked the package, but I was pretty sure I'd just be able to pay separately when we got there, since we were all stopping there anyway.  Apparently I'd had enough foresight to pack extra underthings, socks, and yoga pants, but not enough foresight to pack a clean shirt.  So I had to buy one.  I found one of the largest shirts I could find in green so that it would be super comfy and also long enough to wear with yoga pants and still be publically acceptable since I would be going into Tokyo after this.  Win.  We all got back fairly early, so the guide was able to have the bus brought around an hour early, which would give us more time at the baths.  When we got there, it turned out it was Ladies' Day, so my ticket actually cost ￥100 less than it would if I'd bought the package.  More win.  After a lovely soak, brushing my teeth twice, and bundling all my dirty things into plastic bags in my backpack, I got back on the bus and we made our way back to Tokyo!

(And a big thanks to Ros who did my mountain laundry while I passed out after I got back.  Tired Mel was tired.)

Post-Birthday Post

So it's been more than a month, and that's super awkward.  Let's just pretend I did this sooner, m'kay?

Last time I posted we were talking about my birthday.  I took myself to Universal Studios Japan (USJ).  I went alone, which was simultaneously really awesome and really weird.  I mean, I've done theme parks on my own before (obviously, since I used to spend all my days off in the parks back when I worked at EPCOT), but I've never done a theme park for the first time by myself.  I usually like to have someone with me to exclaim over all the cool stuff I see.  But, as you'll see, it was kind of useful to be alone at some points.  Anyway.  I'll start back at the beginning.

I headed to Osaka on the Friday night, because I had zero desire to get up and ride a train before dawn on Saturday.  I get excited about theme parks, yes, but not  that excited.  I'm still mostly not a morning person.  Not the point.  So I checked in the night before at the J-Hoppers hostel one stop away from USJ, which was really nice, and had a decent night's rest.  The park hours were from 9-9, with ticket sales beginning at 8AM (you can't buy tickets in advance unless you're getting them through certain travel agencies outside the country), so my goal was to be in line by 7:30.  I met that goal easily, actually arriving somewhere around 7:15, and had about 20 people in front of me in the queue I chose.  Ticket sales began promptly at 8, I got my day pass, and then moved into the massive throngs of people waiting to get into the park (there were a huge number of Chinese tourists with advance tickets plus the forty bazillion people actually from Osaka who have annual passes).  That's when things got weird.  At about 8:20, they start letting people through the gate.  But not, like, only certain people who get perks with something they bought (they had a separate line for that); I mean everyone.  So I figured, okay, it's like Wonderland in Toronto.  They start filing people through the turnstiles around 8:30, but then there are ropes stopping them from actually reaching areas of interest that don't get dropped until park opening.  Alright.  I head off to the right, determined to get as close to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as I can, because I know that's going to be stupidly busy.  And I just keep going, and going...  I get into the area, and I still haven't been stopped.  I walk through Hogsmeade, and I'm still not stopped (none of the shops or food carts are open yet, though).  I get to Hogwarts, and they're welcoming people into the ride queue.  O...kay.... 

There were a few moments walking through the castle where we stopped briefly, but I don't think I actually ever stood still for more than two or three minutes at a time.  Once my locker was obtained (because they don't let you bring anything on the ride) and I made it through to the actual loading area, I was ushered onto the ride by myself, with three perfectly good seats empty beside me, and off I go.  I get off the ride at 8:58.  Awesomesauce. 

I proceeded to ride the other ride in the Harry Potter area, Flight of the Hippogriff (or something like that.  Whatever.  It has a nesting hippogriff, and it's adorable).  I browsed the shops a bit, but didn't really feel like carrying anything so early in the day, plus I was sure that my planned chocolate frogs would melt, so I figured I'd come back later.  When I exited that area, I found out that park attendance was high enough that I would need a timed entry ticket to get back into the area.  This was necessary for me, as I'd also planned to have a meal at The Three Broomsticks when I did my shopping, so I had to head to the area distributing those tickets and got one of the few left available (already!).  I could re-enter the area just before 1PM.  Cool.

On the "list of things I wanted to do" was the Hollywood Dream: The Ride coaster, and it was the closest thing to Harry Potter, so it made sense to stop there next.  There are two separate queues for this ride (not including the single rider one) because they've added a new experience; Hollywood Dream: Backdrop.  Using the same track, they reversed a couple of the coaster trains so that you do the whole ride backwards.  This was intriguing to me, and I usually like backwards coasters, but the line strictly for that experience was more than two hours, and the estimated wait for single riders was less than an hour.  In the single rider line, you have to be willing to ride either direction, because they're just going to shove you wherever they can.  Except the dude who was doing the loading queues really sucked at his job because he wasn't filling the rows like he should have been, so there were a lot of empty seats that should have gone to single riders and that was contributing to the long wait time.  But I got on a Backdrop train, so that was cool!  ...At first.  Okay, so it's not like it was a bad ride, but it wasn't stellar.  Because they literally just painted the train car a different color and threw it on the tracks backwards, the ride is, for lack of a better term, awkward.  You'd think a coaster is just a coaster, but there are definite differences between this and a coaster that's actually been designed  for backwards movement.  It just doesn't feel right to ride this one backwards.  But like I said, not a bad ride, and I still managed to get exactly what I had wanted at the time, so that was all good.

Moving on to Spider-Man.  I love this ride.  I loved it at Islands of Adventure, and I love it in Japan where I can only understand 15% of what they're saying but I don't even care because it's just that awesome.  Single rider was only 20 minutes, so that was great, too!  When I got off the ride, I saw a line of people across the street, and I was like, "Hm, might as well check what that's about," so I did and there was a photo spot where you could get a photo with a hanging-upside-down Spider-Man statue.  Obviously I did this, because how can you not?! 

Then when I was finished, I started strolling towards Jurassic Park.  Before I could actually exit New York, though, I stopped by tape on the ground with "Violin Trio" written on it, and a couple people gathered around.  Violin Trio is exactly what it sounds like.  It's a street show they have with three violinists.  It was something I really wanted to see, but at the same time wouldn't have been devastated if I'd missed it.  I joined the small gathering, figuring, "Hey, the show probably starts within the next ten minutes, I'm making good time, and it's not like I have to worry about what anyone else wants; might as well stop!"  Yeah, more like "show starts in 30 seconds."  More awesome luck! 

The show was great, but after listening to a few pieces it was getting pretty hot, and I was ready to get wet!  I left New York, and headed over to the other side of the park. 

In Florida (at least when I was there), Jurassic Park consisted mostly of food and the one Jurassic Park water ride.  Here they have a new suspended roller coaster added that looks amazing.  The problem being that everyone thinks it looks amazing, so the single rider line was close to three hours, and the regular standby was even longer.  Uh, no.  Not happening.  I don't have that kind of attention span, even with my phone, iPad, and DS on me.  So I continued on and basically walked onto the water ride (I maybe waited 5 minutes?).  Oh man.  I forgot, because it's been 6 years and I only rode it that one time in Florida, but you get SOAKED on that ride.  And I was wearing jeans.  It was so incredibly uncomfortable, and yet 100% worth it at the same time.  And yeah, I closed my eyes as soon as we entered the warehouse in the carnivore area of the ride.  Dinosaurs are still scary.

After that I mostly just wandered around, in and out of shops and areas I wasn't particularly interested in.  Like, I've never seen Jaws, and I'm ambivalent about sharks, so I wasn't really raring to wait in a line for that, but walking through that area was nice.  I'm also not a fan of Back to the Future (sorry, Dad) so I wasn't going to ride that (even though it's closing up for good and I think it's the last one out there?), but I did take a picture with the DeLorean because it's iconic and how can you not? 

Lunch time!  That's right.  I did all this already and we're only halfway through the day!  Amazing, right?!  I headed back to Hogsmeade for my first time into The Three Broomsticks, where I had a lovely lunch of fish and chips, along with a necessary cup of butterbeer.  Because butterbeer.

 I also bought myself a birthday cupcake with a mini chocolate frog on it from Honeydukes!  The lady at the shop counter warned me to eat it fast so that it wouldn't hop away!  (In Japanese.  That's right, I'm just that awesome.  Or it was really obvious what she was saying from her gestures.  Take your pick.)

I think the rest of the day was just repeats of what I did in the morning???  I rode Spider-Man at least twice more, back to Jurassic Park (to walk on again) when I got too hot later in the afternoon, and satisfied my shopping needs (aka I got a Slytherin phone case and tie).  This was the point where it sucked to be alone, because I didn't have anyone to chatter to while I wandered, and I didn't have anything that I was really focused on as a goal to occupy my mind.  I treated myself to funnel cake after dinner, because I love funnel cake and I can't remember the last time I had one, and then picked an awesome spot for the night parade!  ...Which was really, really not an awesome parade and I regret that I didn't just go stand in line for the dinosaur coaster instead.  I thought it would be full of Snoopy and Harry Potter and other such things that they have at the park.  There was one Snoopy float that was literally just a giant Snoopy, one Hello Kitty, and an Elmo. 

The rest of the parade was all fairy tale stuff that just screamed "Look how we got around Disney copyrights!!!"  I think that was really my only disappointment for the day, though.  The rest of it was fabulous, and I look forward to going back again sometime!

Another Tokyo Adventure

So it`s been three weeks.  Again, I kinda forgot that this was something I do.  I think partly it`s because I`ve been reading, and partly because I`ve hit a wall of ennui due to the utter lack of work I`ve had for a month now.  Everyone who knows me knows I don`t do well with boredom. 

Almost literally nothing has happened to me since my last update (again, see my lack of work).  But I guess I can tell you about my trip to Tokyo?  I mean, most of it was focused on Disney again, because I`m me and I really don`t go to Tokyo for anything else, but I can still tell stories.

So I got into Tokyo at 6AM on March 16th, thanks to the glory (torture) that is the overnight bus, and made my way to Disneyland without incident, despite having to change trains at Tokyo Station (AKA Hell on Earth).  I met up with Ros, and we stood in line for a little less than an hour, waiting to get into the park.  We`ve never done actual restaurants at Disneyland before, so we`d decided that was something we wanted to do this trip.  We headed over to the Crystal Palace and had a lovely breakfast wherein Ros was startled by five different Winnie the Pooh characters as they came around to our table from behind her.  Did I laugh every time?  Yes, yes I did.  I`m such a caring friend.

When we finished breakfast, people were lining the streets for the first run of the event parade for Frozen Fantasy (the reason we were there - I still don`t love the movie as a whole, but it`s pretty, and Let it Go is a fun song to sing at the top of your lungs while flinging your arms about dramatically, which is something I already did so it justifies it).  The park wasn`t terribly busy, though, being a Wednesday of a non-holiday week, so at half an hour before parade time we got bench seats right outside the restaurant.  It was a big deal, and so luxurious-feeling!  I held our spots while Ros went to get Fastpasses for Space Mountain.

We managed to get done everything we wanted to, but a lot of our day was just spent wandering around.  We got a lot of Fastpasses, and other things didn`t have particularly long lines, so we just sort of strolled, ducking into shops and people-watching.  There were some really interesting pseudo-costumes (often known as "bounding", but that`s a lecture for another day)!  Ros also managed to get us some priority seats for the stage show One Man`s Dream II: The Magic Lives On. 

It`s your typical "characters on stage, with lots of dancer extras (most of whom are white, and that`s actually kind of really jarring)" thing, but it was really well done.  Plus the fact that we managed to get tickets was kind of awesome, because priority seats are given out via a lottery system that I can`t really explain.

Thursday was my lazy day.  I got to sleep in (thank god, because I didn`t really sleep on the overnight bus, and then going all day at Disneyland... I was exhausted!), and then just spend some time wandering around wherever I wanted.  I`ll be honest: Tokyo doesn`t thrill me, as a whole.  It was huge and exciting the first time I was there, six years ago, but since then it`s lost a lot of its awesome factor for me (I don`t think it helped that I went to Hong Kong).  So I went and got my train ticket for Sunday, and then wandered (AKA got lost in) Tokyo Station City, had some lunch, and then headed over to Ueno Park with my book to sit in the sunshine for a couple hours.  Turned out a couple of the park`s cherry blossom trees were blooming early, so I got to see those before I found a nice bench to park myself on. 

In the evening, I headed into Yokohama for the first time ever to meet with Ros for supper.  Yokohama has a really large Chinatown, and I`ve been craving Chinese food for months.  That craving hasn`t entirely gone away, because I want the sugar, MSG-infested, highly Americanized Chinese food, and what they have there is, like, legit Chinese food, but they still had sweet and sour pork, so that was alright.  Then we wandered around the harbour area so that I could see some of it, got brownie sundaes courtesy of the local Hard Rock Cafe, and called it a night.

Friday I got the chance to meet up with my friend Hitomi, who was one of my housemates for a while when I lived in Florida.  We met up in Asakusa, where the Kinryu no Mai (Golden Dragon Dance) was happening at Senso-ji.  This was actually a new experience for both of us, since being somewhat local means Hitomi doesn`t often do the big tourist things.  This was also her first temple visit of the year, so we made sure she did the obligatory fortune telling and such as we watched the giant dragon-on-a-stick parade around and dance.  It was really neat! 

We stopped for lunch at a really famous ramen restaurant, and I was surprised at how much I liked it!  I`m usually rather indifferent to ramen, but this stuff was really good!  Then we took a stroll around Hibiya Park before heading to our reservation for afternoon tea at The Peninsula Tokyo.  Hitomi had never done afternoon tea before; I`ve had it a few places, but The Peninsula Hong Kong was my favourite, so I knew the one in Tokyo would be high quality.  I was right!  The service was sakura (cherry blossom) themed (like everything else in Japan at the moment), but not overly so. 

The savory plate had a poppy seed waffle cone filled with green pea butter (this was actually my favourite savory item), egg and shrimp salad on a sakura bun, smoked salmon and cream cheese in a wrap, and I honestly have no idea what the tiny triple-decker sandwich was, but it was pretty good.  The scone plate featured both plain and strawberry scones, with dishes of Devonshire cream and raspberry-mint jam for spreading.  I didn`t think I would like the jam much, but it was actually delicious!  The dessert plate featured two kinds of cake (raspberry mousse and strawberry sakura, both of which were typical Japanese cakes), a strawberry tart, and a strawberry sakura madeleine that I probably could have eaten an entire pan of on my own.  We ate at a leisurely pace, so we each ended up having a different kind of tea with each plate.  I started out with the chocolate mint tea, moved to a rose hibiscus (which was much stronger and more hibiscus-y than I`d anticipated, unfortunately), and finished with some kind of vanilla tea that was really smooth. 

Saturday involved getting up at the crack of stupid to head out to DisneySea (worth it, always).  As soon as we were through the gates when the park opened, we waited in the half hour line for Fastpasses for Toy Story Midway Mania (which were for, like, 5:20-6:20 that night, and it was only 8:45AM!).  It started spitting while we were waiting to get into the park, and it just kept going, often a bit harder, for most of the day.  By the time we were out of the Fastpass line, we discovered that you can actually fit, like, four fully-grown humans under a standard umbrella when you`re not worried about silly things like personal space (welcome to Japan).  We went back and forth across the park I don`t even know how many times that day, checking the times on various rides.  Despite the fact that, at one point, the standby line for Toy Story was 4 hours long, all the popular rides were still at least an hour and a half wait, with most of them sitting around the two hour mark.  After hitting up the Arabian Coast for our beloved Nap Ride (it`s not actually called that; that`s what we call it.  It`s like `small world` but telling the story of Sinbad, and it`s very relaxing) and the carousel (which Aladdin was riding while we were waiting in line, and it was forty different kinds of exciting), we were able to get a Fastpass for something else, so we grabbed one for Tower of Terror and then went and stood in line for Journey to the Center of the Earth for two hours.  It was relatively warm, and definitely dry, so we were happy to wait.  Plus it`s not like we had much of a choice at that point.  We had a nice lunch of barbecue pork sandwiches at the Cape Cod Cook-Off, by which point my jeans were soaked from ankle to knee and my shoes were sloshing with every step.  It was gross and cold, but there was good food so I only complained a little.  We grabbed a Fastpass for StormRider, which was the only thing I was adamant that we needed to do that day, because they`re closing it permanently and I`ll never get to ride it again, and then... I dunno, did some shopping?  Whatever.  Not important.  We circled back to do all of our Fastpasses (once we returned to Toy Story, we still had to wait at least a half hour in line before we got on the ride), and then we had dinner reservations at Magellan's, which is one of the two fancy restaurants in the park.  It was so good!  It was a four course meal, with hors d'oeuvres, a soup or salad, a main course, and a dessert. 

I would definitely go there again, but there are so many other places to try!

Sunday was my last day in Tokyo, with my train departing in the late afternoon, so I coerced Ros and Hitomi to come with me for lunch to the Kawaii Monster Cafe.  I'd been wanting to go to this place for quite a while, because bright colours and cute things, so it was awesome to have willing company!  The food was pretty good (though Ros's sandwich took forever to come to the table), the atmosphere is awesome, and there's entertainment, too!  ...Ros and I ended up being part of the entertainment, which was unexpected, but a lot of fun.  We're just standing there, watching the Merry-Go-Round stage like everyone else, and then one of the hosts comes over to us and reaches out her hands to us, and we're like, "O...kay?"  So then we get pulled up onto the stage, and they're like, "We're going to dance together!" So we're taught this basic dance that's vaguely reminiscent of the Thriller hand motions, and we go round and round on the stage, doing this.  I felt a bit ridiculous, especially since my outfit was a clear statement of "Yes, I'm out for lunch, but then I'm going to sit on a train for three hours," so I wasn't exactly at my best to be stared at by everyone in the restaurant like that. 

And then we hung out around Harajuku and Shibuya until it was time for me to head off.  End of vacation!