#incluEsivity

[weebnihonja]

Days 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: Hike, Museums, FOAM VOLCANOS!, review, Fuji in Tokyo, Enoshima

apologies for the long wait since the last post.  we’ve been super busy with work and things to do here in Tokyo, and i’ve been to exhauseted in the evening to either upload or post.  Check out the Flickr by searching for Fuji 2017, and all of my photos will be in a google folder(coming soon).  With that out of the of the way, lets get to the (brief) shenanigains.

Day 5:

The entire day was devoted to hiking up and down Mt. Tsukuba.  I had made the grand mistake of not leaving my heavy and unessecary items in a coin locker at the bus station, so i was lugging a pack that was too heavy for me to keep up with the group, so I eventually transfered the heavist stuff to Liz’s backpack (praise her for that), and traded my pack for Azens’s, just because I was still slow on the climb.  Once we reached the top, we visited each of the peaks, each devoted to Izunagi and Izunami, two shinto deities.  Pro tip: a ramen bowl after a long climb tastes SOO GOOD, especially when followed up by a milk ice cream cone.  The decent was an adventure on my nerves, as most of it was very rocky, steep terrain (sadly no pictures due to my fears).  The train back to Tokyo was very silent, as we were all exhausted from the climb.  I did get to try a Japanese sugar cookie though, which is basically a clump of dried brown sugar.

Day 6:

We vistited the Edo-Tokyo museum as well as the Hokusai museum, which were both interesting.  Fun fact: Betty Boop, the classic american cartoon character, inspired the Manga style of art.  The Hokusai Museum was also very neat, as we got to see most of the prints from his most famous, and pertainent to us book, 36 views of Mt. Fuji.  Turns out he likes to reuse shapes, as well as mimicry in his own paintings, for example The Great Wave.  not only does the wave point to Fuji in the background, but within the wave itself in another Fuji shape.  Afterwards we went to the most popular/touristy Buddism temple, which was pretty cool to see.

Day 7:

The Day of endless lectures.  the morning lectures both talked about the Japanese national park system, which is vastly different from the U.S. system, as it inclueses divided national park land, each owned by private owners, as welll as segmented territory within the park, each withe different regulations.  The afternoon lecture, howver, was very interesting and exciting, talking about volcanic eruptions and mapping lava flows, using light radar(liDAR) to create a represention that shows the degree of the slope, based off how red it is.  After showing us srome maps we simulated lava flows with various viscocities of shampoos, acting as the lava.  to simulate lava eruption, he started to mix polyethelane foam components together, which ten ‘erupted’ and created beautiful scultures.  Afterwards, Nick and I decided to  visit the Pokemon Center, a huge store full of Pokemon merchandise, i picked up a few gifts, including 6 pairs of socks for myself.

Day 8:

the day was pretty laid back, but academically intense, as we reviewd for the first test in the morning, then had a lunch/visit to Meji Shrine, in the nearby Yoyogi Park.  we had two lecturers in the afternoon, one of which lectured on a very trtaditonally-rooted Japanese concept of nature, as well as the process of getting Fuji marked as a world cultiural hertaige site.  the other one talked about hte history of japanese volcanic eruptions, with a focus on Fuji.  Once we were finally done, a few of us went to visit a festival associated with star-crossed lovers.

Day 9:

We had our first of two exams, on everything we had learned withing the past week.  Ast to be expected, I forgot most of the names of importan people in Japanes history and myths.  The afternoon was devoted to going out in groups and finding Fuji imagry in Tokyo.  If you lookm for it, its everywhere.  for example, as we were having lunch (my group) we noticed a fusion of Hokusai’s two most famous prints, the great wave and the Red Fuji, on hthe wall of ther restaurant.  after finding about 25 different Fuji’s, including a traffic cone!, we wantdered back and came across a street festival, which had a group of syncronized daners, which was cool to watch.  Thate evening, we all went out for Karaoke, which was an amazing time, all of us belting out the words of the songs we knew( bohemian rhaposdy was an epic time, as was smack that).

Day 10:

Yet another early morning, its become a trend.  we made our way, via train for 1.5 hours, to Enoshima, where yet another festival was taking place, this time taking the Deity of the town to the river, allowing it to play in the water.  we followed it all the way from the shrine to the central waterfront area, where they switched it to be more water resistant, then carried it into the ocean.  We then visited the caves where supposedly the dragon fron the legends, Benzaiten lives.  we toured the caves, checked out the deep tide pools on the seashore, and generally had a fun time.  We took this tram jam-packed full of people to a Buddist temple, wich was a beautiful place.  We wandered those grounds for a bit, then went about 500 meters away, to a MASSIVE buddah, it had to be at least 30 ft tall.  Since it was a long, hot, day of walking, everyone was exhausted on the train back to Tokyo.

thats all for today! (Note: I’ve been writing this for at least an hour and a half, currently 1:20 a.m. and another early morning is scheduled to get to the fuji area, in addition to filtering through all 1075 photos i’ve taken on this trip so far)