Golden Week and the Reimergence of Blog Passion

Lately I've been avoiding my blog like all manners of MTV programming. For the past couple of weeks I've been very busy with work and getting ready for Katie to arrive in Japan. Also, occasionally I feel like a self-absorbed jerk for writing about my life in a blog. These factors combined have resulted in an abrupt stagnation on the blogging front. However, now that Katie is here and my ego is back to being overly inflated, I plan on trying to keep a little more up to date on the blog.

I was going to pick up where I left off and talk about the one week holiday called "Golden Week." Lucky for me though, Matt has already done a fine job of documenting our journey in his blog, Our Life in Japan. So I will kindly ask that you please visit his blog by
clicking here.

I'm not totally copping out, however. Below are some of my pictures with descriptions.

Here I'm standing with my friend,  Callie Parkinson, at the Great Buddha in Kamakura.  She is dating one of my friends, Josh Montoya, whom I met in Las Cruces.  I had seen on facebook that she would be visiting Japan, but didn't contact her about her plans during her stay.  In short, the odds of us meeting up here are astronomical!  Allow me to break it down:
  • A 2007 UN population estimate of the Greater Tokyo Area was in the ball park of 36,000,000 people.
  • Golden Week is one of the most heavily traveled holidays in Japan.
  • With the easily accessible Tokyo transit system, one can travel to hundreds of tourist spots within about a 30 mile radius.
  • The Great Buddha is among many must see attractions in Kamakura.
Taking all of this into account, it simply blows my mind that we saw each other.  Annnnnnnd, not only did I see her and her friend once, about an hour later we saw each other again walking in the streets toward the beach....simply...crazy.

Backside view of the Great Buddha.  It's actually so large that people can walk around inside. 

At some of the temples you can pay a couple ¥100 to receive a fortune.  Usually its bad so you are suppose ask the gods to improve it.  However, on this occasion I got the 'best fortune' at this temple in Kamakura. 


It is believed that when the incense is wafted onto the heads of children, they will be smarter.  I tried to get as much of that stuff in my hair as possible! (Kamakura)

Almost like a "Where's Waldo" but with idols. (Kamakura)


In Yokohama's China Town, we saw some Chinese dragon dancing.  Here is a quick photo I snapped of the head of the dragon as they walked to their next performance location.  

Most of these images are from only one day during Golden Week.  Once again, please visit Matt's blog for a more detailed description of our week: click here.

I, Seth Walker, do solemnly swear to quite being lazy and catch up on my blog.
Look for new posts soon.

-Seth

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Tsukuba Walking and Mountaineering Club

Once I knew I was coming to Japan I vowed to seek out people in the community that would enrich my experience.  Fortunately for me, Matt found a group called the Tsukuba Walking and Mountaineering Club (TWMC).  They are a fantastic group of people who simply enjoy good walks with gorgeous views.  The TWMC is a regular rag-tag group of people from all walks of life and every corner of the globe.  I'm talking Peru, Czech Republic, UK, Australia, Netherlands, France, India, and now of course, USA.  Matt and I attended one of their meetings in which they discussed up coming hikes.  The first of which was hiking, in its entirety, Mt. Tsukuba (a.k.a Tsukubasan).

The morning of the hike we all met at a 7/11 down the street from the Ninomiya House to carpool.

This trip to Tsukubasan was much different from our previous journey. We started at the very base of the mountain and went up some lesser known trails on the northern end.  After hiking for about 45 minutes we ran into a temple area with some interesting accents and sculptures.  
The entrance into the temple.  

Beautiful tree and gateway.

As you can see, some of the statues' heads are destroyed.  Notice that people have put round stones on their necks to serve as heads.  This sparked my curiosity and I inquired as to why the heads of the statues were destroyed.  I was told that some past emperors of Japan wished to be worshiped as gods.  To encourage this, they ordered idols like these to be defaced.  Its too bad that the pride of men often cause the destruction of something as beautiful as these.     

The following section of the hike was fairly brutal and hot.  Many of the once enthusiastic hikers started to become sweaty and sluggish.  However, once we reached the crux of that section, we were greeted with the open arms of a mildly sloped road. 

We walked for about 2 miles on the road and veered onto another trail head.  This trail was a lot of fun to hike because it took us through areas with drastically different vegetation.  Another aspect I quite liked was the section of trail that went straight up the creek (shown below).


Approximately 2.5 hours after starting the hike, we arrived at the saddle area between the northern and southern peaks.  Since Matt and I had already been to the north summit, we decided to break away from the group and trek on to the south summit.  This day was an especially busy day on the mountain due to the amazing weather.  We shucked and jived our way through the crowds until we reached a breathtaking view at the summit. 


As I said before, the mountain was bustling with people.  In fact, the summit was downright craziness.  Sightseers were on almost every piece of rock you cloud stand on. 

Chaos at the summit.

One good thing about having so many people up there with us was that we could easily find someone to take a picture of us with my camera.


We met up with everyone once again at the shop area between the peaks and started our hike back down the mountain.  I loved that we took a different trail down the mountain than we did when we came up.  It was yet another opportunity to take in all of the beauty of the mountain side vegetation.

Upon arriving at our cars we had accumulated over 6 hours of hiking time.  The difference in elevation from base to summit was over 2,600 feet.  My dogs were tired to say the least.

One thing I didn't mention was that throughout the day I was able to have great conversations with great people.  Many of them have been in the area for several years and were more than willing to share information about the local culture.  I'm very excited to continue going on hikes with members of the TWMC.  

-Seth

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