Acoustic Iteration - Week 45 (March 24 - March 30)

Sean contemplates Fuji

Takao really is blessed with a great view

And that's lunch!

Here we are about 2/3 of the way done. You can see the route we've taken thus far. Takao is the mountain to the left of the photo (it looks more like a ridge). From there we basically just followed the crest of the ridge to this point. You can see part of the trail leading off the hump to the right of the photo.

One more push lads!

For some reason whenever I look at this photo it reminds me of the album art for Abbey Road...

Foreshadowing

I didn't really feel I captured the essence of this "horse" painting the first time. Here I feel like I really got the artist's intended impression of of a horse standing proudly erect.

This picture looks better with (cold) friends

Even a cloudy day can provide some really beautiful views

Japanese landslide armour

Acoustic Iteration

Week 44

Ah the work week. Exciting as always, especially since it was intensive week this week. That’s when students with certain contracts come to class multiple times to make up for absences that they accrued previously in the year. The classes have a little bit more of a relaxed structure in some ways, so I used the opportunity to warm up a couple of classes by playing Jeopardy! The categories weren’t terribly difficult for a native speaker, but there were some good ones…Geography, Big Books, Abbreviations etc.

Anyways, the week passed like any other. Nicely enough though, the weekend ended up being something a bit different. I invited (or managed to convince) three other gentlemen to accompany me on a hike. The original plan had been to go out to a mountain called Tsukuba on the East side of Tokyo but that was cancelled due to potentially poor weather. I ended up hiking that with a different group a few weeks later.

We relocated the hike to Takao for my second trip along the Takao – Jinba traverse. At 16 or 17 km long, it’s a pretty decent hike over a rolling ridgeline.

As it turned out, the weather was quite good, if not all that warm. We changed out of our jackets pretty quickly before later putting them back on. A few of us were even down to our T-Shirts for a little while. Oh yeah…speaking of us, the hikers were of course myself, Sean, Casey and Shin. I actually hadn’t seen Shin in nearly 6 months, the last occasion having been Zoey’s farewell party back in September. Yikes. I was happy to see him, but unhappy to hear that he’s in a tough spot these days looking for a job. Bad economy and all doesn’t help.

So the start of the hike was pretty nice up Takao. The last time I actually hiked the mountain it was in late September also, and I guess we had the Japanese equivalent of an Indian summer last year, so it was balls hot at the time. I appreciated the hike a lot more in Spring. Good crisp air and not too hot. To make things even better, it was still clear enough at the top of the mountain to see Fuji from the top! So we broke for lunch within sight of Japan's most famous icon. I’d packed along a ham and cheese sandwich from a Circle K while Sean and the others visited one of the huts up at the summit for some hot food…I ought to have done that. Especially since my sandwich was squashed flat as hell by the time I got to the top of the mountain. Literally like it had gone through some kind of halfway functional car compactor.

Oh well.

We continued on the hike. It was a bit difficult at times. I hadn’t been out hiking in a long time and my jogging regimen had been spotty around that time. The hike, as I mentioned previously, was along a ridge line, which made for a lot of up and down. That can be kind of crushing to morale. I’m not really sure which is the more difficult kind of hiking, one shot straight up and down a tall mountain or a long rolling series of short ascents and descents along a ridgeline. Both have their definite pros and cons…

Our second rest stop saw Casey, surprisingly enough, pull out a flask of whisky and a cigarillo. Not exactly what I’d call proper hiking form, but that’s just how the Hawaiian rolls. I suppose if you're going to be manly men out in the wilderness you might as well go the whole nine. We got cool as soon as we stopped moving, which is a major drag, but easily remedied. The weather was of course still really cloudy and a bit cool.

The rest of the hike was fairly uneventful. It had been quite a while since I hiked with someone else and I’ve got to say, it pretty much beats hiking solo every time. Having other people along really keeps the morale high.

We finally made it to the top of Jinba at the end of the hike and went about the business of catching our breath before heading down to catch our bus out. I smoked a cigarillo offered to me by Casey, which was quite nice. Cuban no less. I also enjoyed a little episode where Casey hunted around the top of the mountain to find the source of some jazz music he heard playing only to discover that it was his iPod. Oh well.

We finished off the hike and took the bus back to the station and from there, exhausted, returned to our various places of residence. I got some food on the way home and took it very easy for the rest of the day. Well deserved I should think.

The next day was the usual Monday. Rock out in Shimo-Kita-Zawa with the crew. Tons of fun as always, but nothing too amazing or exciting to relate to you, my readers!

Should have lots of time this week to write up a few more weeks worth of posts. Hopefully at least to Malaysia…maybe past it? Or maybe not. I have a bad record of promising lots of delicious content and then delivering a measly wafer. We shall see come Thursday.

Playing catch up as always…

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello