So I fly out of Busan airport Saturday morning and arrive at Osaka airport about an hour later. To answer your questions - I'm not really very excited - don't know why. Its not that I don't want to go, or have no interest in Japan - I'm just kind of 'meh!' but I assume that will all change when I am ankle deep in Geisha!
For those of you who don't know - my school/work will be shutting down for Aug.1,2,3 - so I craftily took the Monday and Tuesday off as vacation days (giving me the July.28 until Aug.5 stretch of nothingness). Myself and 3 other foreigners, over the past 2 months, have been lazily trying to figure out what exactly we are going to do with our time in the land of the rising sun. One thing that was always a big consideration was how expensive out Imperialistic friends are - I converted 1.2 million won into Japanese Yen yesterday and I got about 156,000 yen out of it. We are staying in the worlds cheapest hostels which cost about 2,500 yen per night (and that is roughing it). We've paid for our 7-day rail pass already - so the other costs will be food, local transportation, and other spur-of-the-moment things (like feeding nuts to the hungry and popular Geishas!).
TEMPLE IN KOREA KEVIN AND I WENT TO A FEW WEEKS AGO - CAN YOU SPOT ME? (hint - you can only see my bald head)
Rough plan is to fly into Osaka (I think we arrive around 12:30pm) - rush through customs/immigration - exchange our train ticket 'vouchers' for actual tickets - and hop on a bullet train down to Hiroshima. The train ride shouldn't take more than 2 hours and I got us a popular hostel called J-Hoppers where we'll stay for Saturday and Sunday night.
J-Hoppers in Hiroshima!
Leaving early Monday morning I assume we will then head straight back up to Kyoto (unless we stop on a quick side trip somewhere). In Kyoto there are millions of things to do - hence its immense popularity (like if I was an actual village). We are staying in some could-be-shit hostel called BakPak for 2 nights that just happens to be right next door to the famous Gion district (Geishas!) and tons of other things.HIKE FROM A FEW WEEKS AGO - I PROMISE I AM NOT TRYING TO GIVE ONE OF THOSE DUMB-ASS 'LOOK AT ME LOOKING SERIOUS' SHOTS - I WAS PERCHED PRECARIOUSLY ON A ROCK AND WAS MID-WAY THROUGH PISSING MYSELF - THAT SHOT IS A MIXTURE OF FEAR AND HUMILIATION
By the way - this particular time of the year is very busy all over Asia as not only do Koreans all have holidays but the Obon festival in Japan is also the following week so tons of tourists are pouring in all the time. There aren't that many hostels and I had a hard time just juggling around online trying to keep us all together (hence why we will be staying at 5 different hostels in total).
FUJI-SAN!
Wednesday one of our girls will be staying in Kyoto while myself and 2 others hop on the train and hopefully get to the town where Mt. Fuji sits placidly (it is a volcano you know). Aside from being the tallest mountain in Japan (12,388 feet) it is also a popular tourist spot with over 200,000 people climbing it every year. Officially only July and August are the climbing season, and all other times the mountain is pretty much closed to climbers because of bad weather, snow monsters, etc. People sitll climb it in the off season though to spite God and the Japanese weather bureau.
Mt. Fuji only has a 50% success rate (basically of the 1% of the population that decides to climb -half of them think 'screw this, I should be drinking saki and singing karaoke' before sliding back down). I've read a fair bit about the Fuji climb from other people and they all quote the same famous line regarding tackling Mt. Fuji.
"If you never climb Mt Fuji you are a fool, and if you climb it more than once you are a fool". - old Japanese saying.
I personally like this one:
“Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you.” -Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Martial Arts master, one of the world's greatest swordsmen, 1584-1645)
Anywhoo - after starting to climb at around 7pm we will hopefully make it to the summit (thats right - just like Mt. Everest!) at around 2am -where we will huddle very very close together for body warmth (its freezing up there I'm told) to await the whole reason why we climbed 5 hours in the dark - the sunrise! Of course a million things could go wrong - bad weather, fog, the volcano erupts (its erupted about 16 times since 781 A.D.!) - so keep your fingers crossed.
KOREAN MOUNTAINS NEAR MY PLACE!
After that we make the 2 hours slide/trek down the volcanic ash side of the mountain (this is why you bring a large garbage bag - to store all your garbage and red ash covered clothes) and hop on the train back down to Kyoto - depending on the timing we may stop into Tokyo - but I doubt it. We'll be staying in Kyoto until Saturday morning so maybe I'll get to do some day trips to other places (like Nara).
Saturday we are heading to Osaka and staying at a more expensive hostel as every single spot is full - and Sunday we fly back to Korea.
Talk to you then!
KEVIN AND I GUARDING A TEMPLE IN KOREA WHOSE NAME I'VE FORGOTTEN
1 comments:
huh. Seems to be you've been "as high as Mt. Fuji," on a number of occasions, without even leaving Court's basement.
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