Guess where I just spent the last hour?

a) Baskin Robbins

b) The Police Station

c) The Potty

Although on any given day ‘a’ is sure to be the most likely answer, unfortunately today, the correct answer is:

b) The Police Station

All set to have a nice leisurely bike ride along the river, who follows me into the parking lot and down to the trail??  You guessed it, a cop car.   Getting out, they ever so kindly suggested that maybe this bike wasn’t mine.  Then they pointed to my busted wheel lock (which happened at the train station when someone ELSE actually tried to steal my bike) and asked why it was broken.  Admittedly, that kind of looked bad but for goodness sakes, do I look like I would steal a bike?  Oh wait, I’m foreign so yeah, I guess I DO look like a bike thief.  Despite my assertion that this was indeed my bike, that I had the key to the busted lock AND I had a combination lock on the bike that I knew the combination to…they were not convinced.  (Or they were but just wanted to be A-holes anyway.)

Never giving up their asinine smiles, they asked me to get in the back of the cop car for a ride down to the station which ended in an hour long bout of “blah blah japanese japanese blah blah” and my answer: “wakarimasen”  which literally translates to “I don’t understand” although in my head the translation was accompanied with a few choice curse words.  Finally, after checking the registration and talking on the phone at length, someone from another station called in who spoke English.  After a lengthy conversation with the presiding officer (the other THREE were simply standing around staring at me…slow day at the office I suppose.) he gave the phone to me.  The man on the other end of the line said “You should get your bike registered and you need to get the lock fixed.  And the other officer says ‘have a nice day.’”

So this one hour brought them just a little closer to the end of their day, at the same time bringing me just a little closer to the end of my rope.   One month down, eleven to go….and yes, I AM counting.

Last weekend I climbed Mount Fuji!!

We started from the 5th station (which is already halfway up the mountain–everyone but the complete nutters do it this way). I knew it would be hard but it turned out to be far, far, far, far more difficult than I ever could have imagined. When they say “climb Fuji” they actually mean CLIMB. There were parts that were a clear cut trail–an extremely slippery, rocky and steep “clear cut” trail but there were also many, many places where I was climbing vertical, drawing only on my two experiences on a rock wall at the gym–except this time I wasn’t harnessed to anything.

High winds made climbing all the more treacherous. They were getting especially strong as it is outside the regular climbing season and this was one of the last weekends the mountain would even be open for climbing by “regular folks.”

It took us ten hours to get to the summit, not including a two hour pit stop at a hut where we “slept” (read: shivered uncontrollably) on wet and sandy futons in a communal room with everyone else foolhardy enough to brave the mountain.

But the sunrise and the views were spectacular!!! I’ve been too lazy to put any pictures up online but as soon as I do…I’ll post some on here.

The walk down the mountain took half the time–5 hours–which was actually really long for the descent but our feet were hurting so we took our time. We made it down in time to catch our bus back to the city but not in time to avoid a terrible ,terrible sunburn. I was wearing a hat with ear flaps for most of the time so ended up with a massive red circle burned into my face. I was severely swollen and missed a day of school even! I went to the eye doctor who gave me drops and sent me to a skin doctor who (after I waited for an hour) told me I *gasp* had “a sunburn.” He gave me some ointment and I went home to wallow in my misery and stinging peeling skin.

There is an old saying in Japan: “Everyone must climb Fuji once, but only fools climb it twice.”

I’ve since amended that saying: “The view from Fuji is great, but I recommend a helicopter.”

So I go to a lot of different schools now.  I have about 7 rotating junior highs and a whole slew of elementary schools.  As usual the school lunch is sub par, even for Japanese food which is pretty bad even when its at its best.

I usually eat lunch with the students in their classrooms (no cafeterias here–except in my one dream school where the kids are wonderful and cute and fabulous but this thread isn’t about them.) I’ve held fast to my right to bring my own lunch however, I was instructed by the teachers (in a super polite, beat-around-the-bush, japanesey sort of way) that I can’t bring lunches that look too delicious otherwise the students will get jealous.  So now I am stuck with the dilemma of thinking up a lunch that will match the grossness of cold french fries and a giant slice of bread with icing.  (Seriously, that was Thursday’s school lunch.  They ate the fries with a spork, sans ketchup.)

Apparently sandwiches are okay but I can’t bring anything hot.  I find that particularly hilarious because they routinely have food that SHOULD be served hot but it’s been sitting out for so long that it’s tepid at best.  Although Friday they actually had a HOT lunch.  It was curry and it was steaming hot.  Unfortunately there is no a/c in the classrooms and the temp. topped 98 degrees that day.  So probably it had been sitting out for a while and that’s what MADE it hot. :p