good evening. all i have to say for today is that “my legs are hurting!!” or in japanese “ashi sugoi itai!!” i still can’t believe i climbed that mountain, and made it. wow…. i finally got to check some of my emails. sorry i’m falling so behind in photos i’ve taken and people i’ve met. but eventually, i’ll get back to all of you….
i usually don’t have a car when i’m in japan so i can’t go deep and explore. but thanks to toda-san, who was kind enough to let me borrow his car for a couple of weeks, i got to go pretty deep. i don’t take the highways, i take the back roads and stop at every thing that catches my eyes. then i get my camera and my broken japanese, and explore japan….

check this out. the cold fresh water from the river chilling fresh tomatoes and cucumbers…. so good…

this is old school rice cookers, or in japanese, kama meshi. you don’t find these rice cookers in Don Quijote….

and for all of you in hawaii that think wasabi grows in tubes, your wrong. don’t worry, i use to think the same.. haha… this is real wasabi…

and last, this is a small train station somewhere deep in japan. when the little train stopped by, i got chicken skin. this is as country as it gets. and if anybody could tell me where this is, i will send you a free go-naminori t-shirt and stickers. good luck…
*stay tuned for more deep in japan photos because i have so many that i can probably publish a book from this trip. from the city, to the country, to the ocean, to the mountains, to the people, and to the highest peak of japan, mount fuji…. stay tuned…

i am a happy tourist!

good morning. hiking mt. fuji has been a dream for a long time. it’s something i had to do and now that it’s done, all i can say is “OH MY GOSH”…. an experience i will never forget…

when i left the bottom, it was all foggy and cloudy so i couldn’t see the top. that was a good thing because if i seen how far i had to hike, i would have turned around….

passing by the 6th station, the clouds cleared and i seen the top. they say it takes 4-8 hours to get to the top so 5 hours 20 minutes wasn’t too bad i guess. the last 2 hours was the hardest. the air was thin, i had a major headache, my legs were tired, and i was freezing cold. but my grandparents always told me not to give up. so i didn’t…

i had a long sleeve thin dry shirt and a windbreaker jacket when i got to the top. it was freezing cold. i thought i was going to freeze to death….

hundreds of people line the top of the mountain to get the first glance of the sunrise. as soon as it peaked over the clouds, you could hear everybody cheering. it was a pretty awesome experience. and the workers were saying that the weather was absolutely perfect….[:??????:]

was it worth it? yes sir. i carried my heavy camera all the way up the mountain. i don’t know why but my fully charged battery just died after i took 8 photos. this was the last one…. luckily, i had my compact dig camera so i got more photos. but this one is a keeper for me. i’m going to blow it up and put it in my house. check out the guy on the left side of the ridge. next time i climb it, that’s my spot!!!
**anyway, i was planning to climb mt. fuji this past weekend on the 22nd and 23rd but couldn’t because of a meeting. now i’m glad i didn’t because i just got an email from miki-chan who happened to climb it on those days. she said that it was too foggy so she couldn’t see the sunrise. that must suck. miki-chan, if your reading this, i’m sorry you couldn’t see the beautiful sunrise. your still young and will have more chances to see it. but for now, i’ll send you the high res of this photo so it will give you motivation to do it again….. ganbatte[:?????$B!x(B???:]
**many many more photos coming. stay tuned….