My first hitori de trip

I've always had the sneaky suspicion that I am a little too disorganised, scatterbrained and naive to travel on my own... but I'm happy to have proved myself wrong!!! I just survived my first trip by myself (hitori de)! Yay!! I know you are busy people, so here's my hol in dot points:

Monday
- woke, packed, went to catch the bus at 11:30ish
- Next bus not til 1pm, so coffee at Starbucks with Mike
- At Kumamoto, went straight to the castle
- met a cool Jap lady who was eager to show me her drawings of the castle; walked with her for a while, and she gave me a drawing to keep!
- castle was unreal!!! standing on the huge walls, i could make believe I lived in old times and was up on the city walls looking out over the country side
- booked into a business hotel for 6800yen
- went to get dinner and discovered this huge awesome shopping area
- impulse bought a black skirt and cute pink top and cardi (6000yen combined)
- soaked in a bath eating chocolate with a face mud mask that arrived from Ruth 1/2 hr b4 i left Sasebo

Tuesday
- woke early, Macca's for breakfast, caught 9am bus to Aso, a cute little country town
- climbed up to the volcano - smelled funny, was cool, cement shelters (in case of an eruption) made me a little uneasy!
- ate 2 icecreams for lunch :)
- met a German lady who lives in Argentina - went to the hot springs with her (gonna stay with her in Argentina when I travel around the world!)
- when they say hot, they mean HOT! felt all cleansed after though
- stayed in a gorgeous little hostel / B&B type place - Jap style room, shared bathroom (squat toilets of course) for 4200yen
- had dinner at one of the few restaurants in town; sat with a friendly Dutch couple
- bought some OJ and more cookies at the 7-eleven for midnight snacks and brekky

Wednesday
- woke early, rice ball from 7-eleven for brekky (think i'm turning Japanese!), caught the 9am bus back to Kumamoto
- window shopped, coffeed, wandered the town
- caught the 2:30pm bus back to Sasebo, enjoying the spectacular scenery along the 3 hr ride

Had a great, relaxing trip, and would like to go back to Kumamoto next time I feel the need to escape town for a couple of days! It was fun, and I didn't get stressed, even on my own!

Tripping

Wow - what a beautiful day!!! Autumn is here!! The weather is cooling down beautifully, and it was just gorgeous outside today!

I have the next 3 days off b/c of shift swapping, so I'm gonna head out of town tomorrow. Being the incredibly organised person I am, my plans are all laid out: get up when I wake up, pack, go to the bus station, find out when the next bus for Kumamoto is and get on it. There, I'll visit a castle, wander around town a bit, maybe stay the night, maybe not. Head on over to Aso, and go climb Mt Aso (an active volcano!). It's only a little baby mountain - think it takes like an hour to get up or something. I'll stay there a night or two, then find my way back to Sasebo. Should be fun! Just wandering around and relaxing.

There was a baptism at church tonight. Was pretty cool. This girl at this morning's service talked to the pastor during the last hymn and said she wanted to get baptised, but they're leaving Sasebo this week, so the pastor just announced after the service that she would be baptised at the night service. It was very exciting!

Respect For Your Elders Day

Today is a public holiday in Japan - Respect for your Elders Day! So, everybody, you have to be nice to parents and old people today!

Had a good day yesterday. Went to church in the morning, and the pastor and his wife invited all the singles home for lunch. It was YUMMY!!! Very nice to have a good home-cooked meal. We all piled into their van and hung out there for the afternoon, then they took us back to church for the evening service. It was a nice family feeling day! Most of the afternoon was just hanging out in the lounge room, a few of the guys were sleeping, pastor and one guy were discussing religion in Japan, and I was playing with this game thingy and listening to their conversation. It was fun!

After church I caught a bus into town, and went out for a farewell dinner for one of the instructors. That was fun, and reasonably yummy. I had fun chatting to some of the instructors and to one of the staff I don't know so well. Very pleasant day! I was out all day, tho, and I have to work today b/c of shift swaps, so it feels like a very short weekend - oh, well, its been a good one! Short and sweet!

Happy Heather!!!!!!!!

I got home from work tonight to discover 2 packages waiting for me!!! And they both had tim tams!!! They were full of delicious yummy stuff!!!! Tim tams, condensed milk, caramello koalas, custard, vegemite, weet bix and instant chocolate pudding! And a letter and a card! What joy!! What bliss!! What an absolutely brilliantly fantastic way to start my weekend!!! Thanks girls!!!

Hey, wanna hear a funny story? If not, stop reading. My students often ask me what my favourite Japanese food is... well, I don't like seafood, so that rules out sushi (actually, you can get some without fish, but I haven't tried it yet) and sashimi (raw fish); Japanese sweets aren't sweet; and miso soup is a little too salty. So I always answer - Ramen! The students usually look really suprised at my answer, and sometimes almost even laugh a little... I always wonder why.

Well, this week I found out why... when I answered "ramen" a student laughed and nervously told me: "Uh, ramen is Chinese food." LOL!!!! On ya Heather!!!! For months I've been telling all these Japanese people that my favourite Japanese food is Chinese food!! Doh!! LOL!!! The funny thing is that I think I even remember reading that, but didn't quite twig at the time! All those students must surely have left class muttering, "Baka gaijen!" (idiot foreigner)

So, anyway, with my head hung low, I was about to change my answer to Yakiniku, when, with horror, I stopped myself in the nick of time - You fool, Heather - that's Korean!!! I had to shame-facedly ask, "Uh, what is Japanese food?" So from now on, my favourite Japanese food shall be named as Yakitori - food stuck on a stick. I had it for tea 2 nights ago, and it was very yummy.

Anyway, this happy little baka is gonna go eat more tim tams! Have yourselves a merry little weekend! XXOO

The joy of discovery!! ... smooshed :(

One of the things I love about living in Japan is the joy of discovering new yummy food, esp new chocolate stuff. On Sunday, I discovered these new yummy-as chocolate biscuits on display at the end of an aisle - a small packet for just 79yen! They are donut shaped little cookies, covered in chocolate. I rapidly ate several packets. I was devastated, however, when I returned yesterday to buy more - they were gone!!! I wandered around the supermarket for ages, but alas, they were nowhere to be found!! My joy was smooshed completely! But, to console myself, I bought coffee for the first time since coming here. (Which, incidently, was 4 months ago!) I just finished eating pancakes, coffee and OJ for brekky - yummy!! It made me all happy again!

Oh, yeah, I have also been educating all my students on the proper way to eat Tim Tams (slurping coffee thru them) in case they should visit Australia one day. So if you ever see a Japanese person (esp in Sydney) slurping coffee and Tim Tams, go say hi and ask if they know Heather!!

Just call me Dandy!!

Every now and then a student will ask me the meaning of my name. I tell them that I'm named after a small flower found in Scotland. If they ask me what colour or size flower, I always have to admit that I don't know.

So tonight I finally looked it up on the net... I am a small, normally purple but occasionally white wildflower found on a small shrub that grows to a height of about 1m. I saw a picture, and I don't think I'm the prettiest flower around. I asked Martina, and she said it is very common, covering hillsides in Scotland and Ireland. I wanted to know if the name was given to many girls, and she laughed, and said - "That would be like calling someone Dandelion!" LOL!! So... just call me Dandy, and think of me every time you're about to step on a dandelion!! ;)

My first typhoon!!

Dear all concerned Aussies,

It actually wasn't that bad here in Sasebo, believe it or not! I was kinda disappointed with it all - I felt bad, cuz I know you shouldn't wish bad stuff on your city, but it was kinda a pathetic excuse for a major natural disaster here!!

Monday night the winds were pretty ferocious, and they were still at it a fair bit on Tues morning. I made it to work at 1:20 without any problems (I had to share the bus with a whole one other person!!), although I got pretty wet even in the tiny dash from apartment to bus stop and bus stop to arcade. I only had two students scheduled later in the evening, and spent my time productively cutting up flyers and mopping up a bit of a leak in the voice room. I had only been there about an hour when the fax came thru saying all Kyushu was closing!

We were very happy to go home, but I felt a bit naughty, b/c by then the storm had totally died down! I wanted to go for a walk in it, and in the 7min walk back from the video store, I didn't even get soaked through!! Very disappointing to be in middle of a major typhoon and have to go jumping in puddles to get properly wet!! It picked up a little later in the evening. And, hey, I got to watch ER for almost my whole shift! 8 episodes in one sitting! (Ah, the excitement of my life!)

Martina said that's the first time Nova has closed in the 3 years she's been here!! Last year she had to walk to work in a typhoon cuz the busses had stopped running!! LOL!

Dry and safely yours, Viana
Ps - I managed to upload just a couple photos to "Vi's Pics" of my Fuji trip.

I DID IT!!!!

I CLIMBED MT FUJI!!!! And I survived! Yay!!

Wow - what a trip! Summary - big mountain, long cold hike, feeling good now. Read on if you want more details...

We got up before dawn on Wed morning, and were down at the bus stop just after 5:20am. Thanks to Rachel's diligent preparation, we easily found all our connection points. By 10:20am, we were in Tokyo - I'm usually still in my PJs at that time!! We stopped at Macca's for lunch, and I was at the point of laughing hysterically for no reason other than my extreme tiredness! And we hadn't even made it to the mountain yet!! We did have a little trouble finding the right bus centre in Shinjuku, but this Japanese man saw us wandering around looking confused, and walked us right to the bus centre, a five min walk away - what a sweetie!!

At the bus centre, we discovered that the next bus to Station 5 on Mt Fuji wasn't until 4:50pm - almost 4 hrs away!! We wandered for almost an hour looking for a small patch of grass or park bench to snooze on, but finding nothing, we headed for Starbucks for a few coffees.

We got to the 5th station before 7:30pm, wandered around the souvenier shop for a bit, and started climbing at 8:05pm from 2305m above sea level. I began in a thermal singlet, long-sleeved top and trackies and was still cold, but it didn't take me long to warm up and discard the long-sleeved top. The track was fairly deserted, as climbing season officially ends on Aug 31. The hike to 6th station (2390m) took about 45min, and was a pleasant one. Sweet! We had bought walking sticks at the bottom, and proudly got them stamped. It only took another 50min or so to 7th station (2700m), and once again, wasn't too bad.

But then the fun began... the temperature had dropped and the wind was picking up, and the walk seemed to be never-ending. As the season was ending that day, a some of little huts along the way were already closed, so we couln't get quite as many stamps on our sticks. We did stop at about 10pm for a cup of noodles (like an instant cuppa soup) for about $7.50. When we found the 3000m mark, we were a little tired to be hugely excited, but we did stop for photos. The 8th station was just 20m higher, but I'm not sure what the actual distance walked was. Even tho it sounds so little, it takes so much longer to climb than you'd expect.

About the 8th station, the rocky terrain, lack of oxygen and sleep, and the strong winds made walking a challenge. I swear, when strong gusts of wind came, I nearly lost my balance! It was totally ferocious!! At the next hut, an excellent salesman met us and easily convinced us to come in for a couple of hours for just $12.50/hr. We warmed by the fire, and slept for about an hour.

Just past the 9th station (3360m) it started to appear that we might not make it to the top before sunrise. We could see clouds gathering over the top of the mountain, slowly creeping down, so we found a slightly sheltered spot, parked our weary, cold bodies (by this stage I was wearing: 3qtr tights, trackies, thermal singlet top, 2 warm long sleeved tops a polar fleece jumper and my beanie), and waited for sunrise. It was very beautiful!!! And as the light increased, we had an excellent view of the surrounding area - absolutely stunning!

The last 300m up seemed to take FOREVER, but eventually, we did make it to the top!! We proudly paid for our stamp that I'm guessing says something about making it to the top. We rested for a while, chatting with others and drinking hot chocolate.

Then began the downward hike... boring!!! When you've already reached the pinacle, the rest just seems like working for nothing! We zigzagged back and forth, back and forth for hours!! We sang silly songs, walked, made dumb jokes, walked, complained and whinged and walked some more!

The downward path met up with the upward path at the 8th station, and we bumped into 2 Canadian girls we'd met earlier - they'd fallen asleep for too long and were still heading up!!! While we were chatting, they went inside and got into a yelling match with the hut owner... excitement! Turned out, they had chucked a plastic bottle down the organic toilet - not good! The owner wanted them to fish it out or pay a $125 fine - guess which they chose? Fishing!!! LOL!! We hung around for a while, holding a torch and watching them fish with a stick in a big pile of crap... so funny!! The machine had been turning it over, so they had a bit of trouble - we finally left them to it, and continued the remaining 3 hrs downhill to finally end our hike at 11:30am.

We got down later than planned, and there were no direct busses back to Shinjuku (cuz it was now 1/9 - climbing season was over!), so we didn't make it to our hotel til 4:45pm. This meant we would have to shower and leave straight away for Disneyland, with no sleep. Rachel didn't care either way (she's been b4), so I made the agonizing decision to skip Disney. :( I didn't want to spoil my first impression of Disney by going when I was too tired to enjoy it properly, and we had been overspending our budgets anyway. I'll go back another time.

So instead, we went for dinner at a really nice Thai restaurant and wandered the gorgeous little backstreets of Asagoya, where we were staying. It was so cute and Japanesey - I loved it! We had a good night sleep, and so work on Friday wasn't that bad after all! Yay! I have now recovered almost completely - still just a little tired, but my muscles feel suprisingly good!! I'm fitter than I thought!