Sticks and Stones... a lot of freakin' stones

The ascending rock climbing is still haunting my dreams. Haunting. My. Dreams.

I brought a rock home from the descending path. I asked our tour guide if we were allowed to take things off the mountain. She shrugged and said, "I didn't see it." Which I think meant, "you are a gigantic dork for asking, just take your rock. It's not like you're trying to steal something with actual monetary value." So into my pack went this:

Yes, it would look better in daylight, but let's be real here, it's a rock and and as such, even in its most flattering light, can only look like a hunk of rock. It's very rough and volcanic and fragile. I have to be very gentle setting it down because it leaves behind a pile of red dusty stuff, as if it is so terrified of being moved yet again that it takes a terror-crap all over my shelf. I had a tough time deciding where to put it so it's probably loss 1/3 of its mass.

My other nice souvenir from the climb is the walking stick. The walking stick is the reason I climbed the mountain, and, I daresay, the reason many people put themselves through such misery. 

Way back when we first got here (a whole 3 months ago), in the Area Orientation Brief, our adorable Japanese instructor arrived to class with a stick and pronounced it a Fuji Walking Stick. It had brands all down its handle and a nifty flag on top. Instant stick envy.

I pictured myself atop Mt. Fuji, wind and snow swirling around my body, as if the mountain itself wanted to blow me off its summit. But I stood firm. I had fought and climbed my way to the top and Mother Nature was not going to deny me my victorious surveying of the country of Japan.

Aaaaand we all know how that little fantasy panned out. Fuji made me its... woman. Fuji won.

But I still got the stick.

Soon after this, I impaled my tour guide with it

I had heard that at every hut along the mountain, someone would "stamp" it. It's actually a brand.

Each hut's brand is unique. On the drive, the guide warned us not to get every stamp because it would end up being very expensive. Basically, she was warning us not to be suckers. But guess what? I am a sucker. I am a tourist. I have a problem. I'm looking for meetings and support groups.

My stick has 8 brands. The very bottom one came on the stick when I bought it. Also, one hut had two stamps which they discounted if you brought both. So the stamps were ¥1300 altogether, and the stick was about ¥1200. So my walking stick cost me roughly $32. The exchange rate's a beeeyotch lately. Seventy-seven cents to the yen. Painful.

Here are the brands I have on my stick:

My favorites are the Torii gate with the year (third from the top) and the very top one for obvious reasons.

At the hut with the Torii Gate

On the descent, the stick was a great help for balance so you didn't slide yourself into an early grave. On the way up, it was minimally helpful at best. For a lot of the climbing, I wanted nothing more than the full use of both my hands so I could cling for dear life to the side of the mountain. I did stick it in my backpack once, but it tried to escape and in the process, almost rearranged some guy's face. Oops.

It felt really good to reach a hut, get the brand, and sit down for a minute or two. I felt like, once the brand was there, that was one more hut I'd never have to see again. A very good thing.

There were three or four people at each hut, all looking a little bored and so over the majesty of Mt. Fuji. I don't blame them. They see it all the time. I don't know how long they work on the mountain before they can rejoin the normal world, but they most definitely do not go up and down the mountain every day. They get to take the bulldozer up and down. Lucky jerks.

The Fujidozer (not its official name), takes the descending path up and down to make supply runs. It probably takes trash too, but it's minimal because no one who climbs for "fun" is allowed to throw anything out. There are many signs telling you there are no trash cans on the mountain so you have to hold onto everything.

We were lucky that we were at a rest stop when the Fujidozer descended. We had a nice, safe place to get out of its way. Others on the actual path had to scramble to get out of its way. I do literally mean scramble because there is no way to get good footing in a pile of rocks and sand. How that thing doesn't pancake seven-hundred tourists a year, I have no idea.

It made me nervous, even with its treads, because it just looked precarious, driving down the path. I didn't need to go all the way to Fuji to be paralyzed. I could have done that myself with a steak knife.

I managed to not act on the urge to jump desperately onboard and get a free ride to the bottom.

It would have been cheating, and anyway, it might not have been going the way I was. Near the end of the hike, the trail splits. The trail we were on, Yoshida, goes back to the Subaru 5th Station (bus, home, yay!) and also goes somewhere completely different and very far away.

The guide stressed many, many times to pay attention on the descent. It's easy to go down the wrong path if you're not paying attention. I owe my safe return to the bus to my tour guide. I am not exactly famous for my excellent sense of direction. One man was not fortunate enough to have tagged along with the guide, and was unfortunate enough to have been blessed with navigation skills similar to my own. His broken internal compass led him down the wrong path. He called the guide, very confused, as he had reached the bottom of the mountain, and it did not look the way it had looked that morning.

There are no good options at that point. Some people have taken a cab ride back to the Subaru 5th Station to catch the bus. It's a couple hundred dollars. Others, the lost man on our tour included, choose to take the train back to the base. I cannot imagine. After such a long, hard day to have to take the train, which includes four or five stops and switches. It would be my last straw. I would be writing you all from a padded cell... or I guess I would be hallucinating I was writing you all since they probably wouldn't give me a computer.

Anyway, I am completely recovered from the trip (minus a little sunburn on my calves). My muscles are back in working order and my memories of the trip are already being colored with the wonderful haze of nostalgia.

Blake told me last night that he was disappointed we didn't get to climb together. I am not. I would never have been able to keep up with him. Plus, I can put the fear of God into him before he takes his trip up, which is kind of what marriage is all about.

Climbing Fuji, An Overview

Like any recent, fresh traumatic experience, I don't feel ready to talk about it, and yet, I must.

This picture was taken just before our actual ascent up Fuji. Big smile. Physically okay. Completely unsuspecting. It is a picture of a simpler time.

We arrived at Fuji just after seven in the morning, the three-hour trip having gone by quickly because first the tour guide talked for an hour and then I just went to sleep.

The tour guide shared lots of helpful information. She passed out maps, told us symptoms of altitude sickness, and gave us a timetable. She did, however, leave out a very key piece of information that I will get to later. Other bases actually require people who sign up for this tour to take a class. It's about two-hours long and is nothing that you can't find out with a little time and Google. It's kind of tough love, I guess. People have canceled their trip after taking this class. They recommend roughly four million pounds worth of gear and water and tell you that you can die.

Blissfully unaware of all of this, Andrea, Sarah and I set out. My only goal was to go as far as I possibly could. If that was the summit, okay, but let's be realistic. I am no Bear Grylls.

When we started up, we were surprised at how hard it was. Go ahead, laugh.

Did we think climbing Fuji was going to be easy? No. However, after hearing that everyone has done it, then how hard could it be, right? Well, here's the thing about "everyone." A disproportionate number of the people we know have done it because we are all foreigners and we come here and we want to conquer things like any good American. Most Japanese people do not climb Mt. Fuji.

The ones that do are a really interesting mix of people. Some have hundreds of dollars worth of climbing equipment. They book a tour and do group calisthenics before hiking up. Some people look like they went to the mall, climbed Fuji, had dinner with friends, then to a concert. T-shirt, jeans, a messenger bag and (no joke) Converse sneakers. They are all ages. Elderly to small children. All of whom passed me on the way up.

 

The view is spectacular from the very first time the trees clear. It was exactly like what I saw when we first flew to Japan.... because we were that high off the ground. We were above the clouds. The most beautiful view I am likely to ever see in my life.

The first leg was a gravel and dirt path that zigged and zagged upward toward the string of huts you can see in the distance in the first picture. It was tiring, but okay. Then, the path stopped.

Here we arrive at that key piece of information the guide failed to tell us. The one thing no one shared, in all my asking around. What I consider the most important piece of information in this whole excursion.

There is serious rock climbing.

When I booked the trip, the lady at MWR told me I might want to bring cotton gloves because I might have to do a little climbing. There was no "might" and no "little" about it. We were at this for hours.

Oh, Jeeana, you might be thinking. You whined and complained the entire way up the mountain, so surely you are exaggerating and are acting like a tiny baby who needs to be swaddled for comfort.

Let me provide you with proof.

 

 

Where is the path up? You're looking at it.

A truly great workout is only an ocean away if you want to visit. Sarah, Andrea and I actually ended up splitting up. Sarah, who is seventeen, and therefore really good at climbing Fuji, went ahead. Andrea and I met and separated a few times. I climbed the rest of the ascent and descended with the tour guide and a wonderful woman visiting her niece. The tour guide was amazing. She was so much fun and was constantly taking my camera to snap pictures. She wasn't much for boring, normal pictures. She enjoyed things like this:

Considering our national histories, I didn't really want to act like I was staking her to death. She, however, insisted. It was awkward and violent and really, really funny.

She also made me do this:

Yes, that is king of the world, a trend that should have begun and ended in 1997. It took a lot of effort to lift my arms that high. At this point, I was dragging myself up the mountain.

I did not make it to the summit. I know I cannot help the fact that you will think less of me, but frankly, I do not care. You try climbing Fuji. It's pretty hard. From the 8th Aid Station, where we began our descent, to the summit was another four hours. It is steeper and more difficult than where we had just come from. Also, the path up is one person wide, so everything bottlenecks. In my sorry physical shape, there was no way I could go to the top and still make it down in time to get the tour bus back. I hear that there is a nice noodle shop, gift shop, and post office where you can mail post cards from the top of the mountain. There is also a crater that takes an hour to walk around and not much of a view because all you get is crater (Fuji is, after all, a volcano).

I will never know because I will not be going back. Once is plenty for me.

The descent is a "sand slide," which is exactly what it sounds like. Sandy, rocky and slidey. It's difficult to get a good footing so you kind of have to relax and go with the flow. I was as happy as I'd been all day because we were finally on our way down.

 

The descent is still pretty steep, as you can see. Occasionally they have these concrete overhangs to protect you from falling debris, which is kind of silly considering that the entire way is littered with signs that say "Danger: falling debris, do not rest here." If you're going to die in a rock slide, you're going to die in a rock slide. It could happen in any of the three or four hours it takes to descend. Plus those tunnels are moist and damp and creepy.

To me, descending was a lot easier than the ascent, and a lot more pleasant because every step I took brought me closer to the ice cream at the bottom.

I am glad I went. I am glad I never have to go again. And in the end, I didn't need rain gear or hiking boots or a fancy backpack. 

What I needed was to be taller and stronger, but they don't rent that at outdoor rec.

Beauty and the Off-Beat

Omotesando means "Holy crap, what a beautiful street! Wow, this place is expensive. Chanel, Dior and Galliano. Are those security guards at the door? With ear pieces and everything? Wow. Is that a Body Shop? What are Body Shop and one of the largest Louis Vuitton stores in the world doing occupying the same block?"

It's only a rough (and completely made up) translation.

This beautiful place is Omotesando:

Every mental image I've ever had of Tokyo was one of energy. Lights, crowds, noise, weird but enticing food smells. This street, I never expected.

It's peaceful. Look at those trees.

Tokyo has amazing and huge parks. In fact, Omotesando ends at one, but the parks contain nature inside their boundaries. The rest of the city is all business (the business of being a city, that is. There are more than enough ways to get yourself into trouble in this place).

It's easy to relax and window shop here. It's shady and surprisingly quiet. It's known as the Champs-Elysees of Tokyo, even the garbage cans say so. Seriously. They do.


I, of course, was there to spend thousands of dollars on shoes.

...
...
...

That's not true, but I just thought I'd give you a minute to indulge in fantasy with me.

I was there to hunt bargains at one of the most well-known shops in Tokyo (at least for tourists), Oriental Bazaar. It is so reasonable I just walked around double-checking prices for awhile. All the rumors about Japan being expensive are true, and then some. This store however, is three floors of happy low prices. I would love to tell you what I bought. I would love to post pictures. Unfortunately, all information is classified. Gifts for my in-laws. Don't tell them.

Speaking of classified, I had this exchange with Blake tonight on Facebook chat:

Me: So what did you do today?
He: I flew to the carrier to drop some people off. That's about as much as I should probably say.
Me: You're like Jason Bourne.

There is no good transition from that back to my post so I'm just going to limp awkwardly toward how I spent the rest of my day.

Harajuku. I was both impressed and disappointed. Impressed by all the really interesting things I saw. Disappointed that I didn't see Gwen Stefani.

I didn't really see any people dressed in crazy strange fashions. I guess the weird stuff comes out on Sunday. Because on the seventh day, God rested, and then changed out of robes and into a gothic French maid outfit with kitty ears, fishnet stockings and a blue wig.

Harajuku Station

It's filled with little shops selling so many things their tables and racks spill out into the street and block your path to get your attention. Lots of clothes, some of them fairly normal, some of them really out there. I came across a t-shirt stand that had all these weird t-shirts with English and Japanese translations. Like, "I'm a pervert," and "I don't speak Japanese," and "one day I will become a samurai."  Also t-shirts of a bunch of cows sitting at a dinner table looking very, very sadly down at a piece of steak. Then one of pigs looking very, very sadly down at a ham. And a tuna looking very, very sadly down at sushi. I know it sounds funny and ironic, but the artist was actually too good at their job and the pictures made me feel kind of bad.

So I cheered myself up with food. Every post eventually ends up at food.

I had a crepe. There's a joke somewhere about a crepe load of crepe, but I'm not going to force it on you.

Harajuku has a lot of crepe stands. In fact, two of them face each other, on either side of a very narrow street. They just stand there like two old guys giving each other the stink-eye. I bypassed that feud and went for a different option. A picture cannot do my crepe justice because all the goodness was wrapped up inside and I wasn't going to unwrap my perfect crepe just so you all could see its guts.

Instead, here is this:

It's shaved ice. Very big in Japan. Not a surprise since walking anywhere in summer is like wearing a down coat in a sauna. The one on the left is strawberry. The one on the right is harder to pin down. It's green. That white orb thing is ice cream. That thing on top is probably a mystery to you. It's beans. For once, I am not joking. It seriously is a blob of beans.

Bean filling is very, very common here. I cannot tell you the number of times I've bitten into something (savory or sweet) and surprise! I have a mouth full of red bean paste. This is the first time I've ever seen it as a topping on ice. But there it is.

I'm sure my crepe tasted better.

Be cautious. Be very cautious.

There are so many reasons Blake and I wanted to come to Japan. Most of them food-related. Okay.... all of them food-related.

Then to get here and discover so much more than we thought just makes every day absolutely awesome. While Blake is out to sea, I'm trying to keep myself motivated to explore. It's difficult. You see, we're BFFs, that's Best Friends Forever, and if your BFF isn't around, it can be tough to do anything. I'm not talking about skipping out on a sightseeing trip, or deciding not to eat out because there's no one to eat with. I'm talking about literally, anything. The first couple weeks Blake was away, I ate microwave dinners. I have made the bed once. To take a picture to send to Blake.

Please don't think I'm living in squalor or anything, but... well...

just kidding

There are many, many theories as to how to make the deployment go faster. Everyone says to keep busy. Pack your days with as many things as possible. Surprisingly I haven't heard, "just sleep through it."

It's very strange. We spouses and families are kind of just biding our time until our service member gets home. But is that really the best way to look at it?

Blake's deployed half of the year. That's not really time I can afford to waste since we're only here for three years, and I know Blake wouldn't want me to. He's stuck on a ship and he doesn't want me to be stuck too.

So I go. I do. I see.

I shop.

Not many wives have their husbands support to go out and spend all of his money. I not only have his support, I have his encouragement. I briefly mentioned in a previous post that Blake and I made a list of things the house needs. It is my job to find these things. Curtains, rugs, all manner of household stuff.

The thing is. I have to do it in stages. Going out and blowing a gigantic amount of money is just not the way I was raised. Some people's childhoods were all about nature vs. nurture or spare the rod or Dr. Spock or Atkins or South Beach or whatever (I don't have kids, can you tell?). I was raised to be all about family, appreciating the things you have, and being cheap. Above all else, be frugal.

So, going out and buying all these things, especially without Blake by my side feels, evil. I take forever before I decide to buy something that's over $50 so when it comes to buying furniture, which can get expensive, I think and think again.

I like to think I'm getting better.

For example. The other day I bought an area rug. It was 50% off, so about $100.00, which if you know anything about area rugs, is pretty cheap for a nice one. I got it for the living room because the wood floors really need a little cushion. Blake was all about it. Go. Spend.

And how was my new-found confidence rewarded? I came home with the wrong damn rug.

The language barrier strikes again.

Huge flowers. Not really my style. But there is no way I am schlepping that thing back to Grandberry Mall. Even if you drive there, the parking is separate from the mall so I'd have to carry it all the way from the lot to the store. I've already carried this thing all over kingdom come because when I brought it home, I brought it by train.

This rug is almost as tall as I am. The route from the mall to our house involves four separate train stations. Four sets of stairs up an down. Did I also mention that the trains were packed with commuters going home? Car after car of men and women in suits and there I was, in a union jack t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, carrying around a rug that was bigger than some of the people riding the train.

I carried it home from the train station. I dropped it off in the hallway. I walked back to the train station to get my bike because the rug didn't exactly fit in the basket. I came home. I unrolled the rug.

It was not the rug I wanted.

I cursed. I cursed again. More cursing was involved as were many repetitions of the word, "unbelievable."

While the pattern of this rug is not exactly my first choice. The colors are good for the office. So that's where it's going. It's going to be a reminder that shopping in a foreign country is fraught with many invisible obstacles and even when you think you've scored a victory, don't be so quick to celebrate.

There is a reason I make every decision carefully. And now I have a reminder of that.

Just Food

Many of the meals Blake and I have eaten in Japan have included this little interaction:

-Look at that guy.
-Holy crap, that is a huge bowl of noodles.
-How does he expect to eat that?
-There is no way he can eat that.
-Why would anyone order such a thing?

I don't know about those people, but this lady ordered one on accident.

One of the unexpected things about Blake being deployed is how my eating habits have changed. I knew they would change at home, but they've changed when I eat out too. When Blake and I are together, it is acceptable for one of us to order a safe, relatively "normal" looking dish, and one of us to order something off the wall. Because I am eating solo, it is up to me to choose the safe path or the adventurous path. You never know which option will be rewarded with tasty greatness.

In Oak City Mall, the McDonald's called to me. The picture of the fries gets me every time. I knew, though, that if Blake ever found out I'd eaten at a McDonald's while there were so many Japanese options, he would divorce me. So, I went with a non-threatening bowl of noodles and soup. They weren't udon (big, white noodles), they weren't ramen (skinny and yellow) and they weren't soba (buckwheat noodles). I don't know what kind of noodles they were. I do know, however, that there were a crap-load of them.

When the lady handed me the bowl, I know I overreacted. I was visibly shocked, eyes huge, mouth agape, frozen for a few seconds before finally taking the tray from her. I couldn't very well run screaming from the food court.

Unfortunately, I could not take a picture that really did this bowl justice. No matter what angle I took a picture, no matter what I put next to the bowl to try and put it in perspective, it just didn't look right. Take my word for it. The top side of this bowl was bigger than my face.

And then I had to eat it. It's kind of like when you know you have a really big job to do. The process seems so daunting, you don't even want to start.

I started with the tiny shrimp and bits of seafood. I ate the noodles, some onion. And I've got to say, it is the most bland thing I've eaten in this country yet, and that includes a slice of white bread. I can only assume they did this on purpose because nothing could so lack in salt and flavor on accident, not with so many tasty things in it. The gyoza were delicious, of course. I've yet to meet one I haven't wanted to eat over and over again.

Yesterday, I ate this:

There's a little ramen place not far from where we live. No, this isn't a bowl of ramen (and yes, the bowls of ramen here are ginormous), but it was amazingly delicious. There are ramen noodles (or ryu-men as the menu says) buried under the sprouts and beef. It's so good-looking, you'd think it was fake. Which is funny, considering there is so much fake food in this country. Many, many, many restaurants display fake versions of their dishes in a window at the front of their shop. They look something like this:

Except this is a real plate of food. It's a little disconcerting when your food shows up looking exactly like the plastic replica, right down to the reflective finish. This was supposedly chicken, but it was a strange color and a frightening texture.

I couldn't let the last picture be of a dish that was completely awful, so here's a picture of yakitori:

This adorable woman sets up her little yakitori grill in front of a grocery store near Seya Station. I asked if I could take her picture. She was very nice and even gave her me best jazz hands. Better yet, I had a delicious skewer of chicken dipped in amazing sauce. She was also selling skewers of liver, which I am not a huge fan of. Japan is a country that loves their bits. Random bits of animals are routinely sold pretty much everywhere. Anything tastes good grilled and dipped in sauce.

Blake is eating a lot of barbecue too. Wait, did I say barbecue? I meant barbecue sauce. While my food has been hit or miss by my own decision making process, Blake's food has been miss or less-of-a-miss on the ship. I can't help but ask him what he's been eating lately. My questions have often been answered with "We had________. It wasn't that good, so I just put BBQ sauce on it." 

The other day I let slip that I'd had an avocado. I immediately tagged it as an over-share when Blake's email response included a very, very sad and pathetic "I'd really like to get my hands on that avocado." Unless they do an underway replenishment, fresh fruit is scarce. It's a good thing Blake is so busy. It keeps his mind not only off home, but off his taste buds, which may never be the same again.

Let's make alcoholic drinks!

Fruit liqueur. That's right, liqueur. This is a classy endeavor.

The first time Blake and I stepped into a Japanese grocery store, we investigated a curious display of jugs and cartons and fruit and rock sugar. Obviously, these things were meant to go together in some way, but, much like a monkey with a disassembled bicycle, we were at a loss as to how to get onboard. The only english sign said this: "It is now the season for fruit liqueur." We were very happy that this was the season for such a thing, but it wasn't until I took an off-base grocery shopping class that I learned how to make the stuff.

Here are the ingredients, minus the alcohol, which for some reason I forgot to put in the picture. The alcohol is called so-chu. No, I do not know what that means, but I do know that it smells like moonshine and is 35% alcohol.  Anyway, these are the ingredients for plum wine. When we picked up the fruit, I was very confused. The fruit looked like the most under ripe plum you could ever imagine. I could not fathom making any kind of anything from something so far from its sweet and tasty end product. Lo and behold, they are actually apricots. How Japanese apricots and what is basically rubbing alcohol translate into plum wine, I have no idea. The bag on the right is the rock sugar.

Here are all the liqueurs I made. On the left front is a freshly put-together plum wine. The container in the back with the floaters is a two-day-old plum wine. The one in the middle front is garlic liqueur. I saw the recipe for it on the alcohol container and knew I had to try it. It's alcohol and three heads of peeled garlic. Apparently it's good on steak and for dipping gyoza (meat dumplings which are heavenly). Apparently it is not good for drinking. The one just behind the garlic is cherry and the one next to that is orange. You can just see part of the alcohol container on the right hand side.

All of this alcohol is sitting under the kitchen floor. What does that mean, you may ask. Well, Japanese houses often have little storage places in the floor of the kitchens. You can put canned goods or whatever in them. I have filled it with these jars. Whenever I open it to give the jars a quick shake, the garlic smell immediately punches me in the face then runs off to infiltrate the rest of the house. Luckily, the door has a good seal on it so the house doesn't constantly smell like garlic, not that I'd mind really, but probably the general public would. We also have a hidey hole in the bathroom floor. I do not know what is supposed to go in there. I wouldn't put any paper products in there because in this humidity, it would rot in probably a week. Maybe it's where you store the canned goods you use in the bathroom... because the options are so many.

In conclusion, the drinks will be served in six months. So, they are an extra incentive for anyone who wants to visit us at Christmas. Which, by the way, is the only guaranteed time Blake will be home. So, if you want to see The Man (and drink homemade fruit liqueur), then come celebrate with us in Japan!