Well, this is my last travel blog post for a while. My time on the JET Programme has come to an end. I will forever be grateful for my time in Shimanto with all of the lovely people that I met. It brings me encouragement about what's yet to come for my life, as I am only just beginning my journey. This last post will be about my last 10 days in Japan and my fun travels before I left. So please enjoy one last time my GOATs (Grace's Outstanding Awesome Tfans-who-read-and-follow-and-support-my-travels)...
I packed and thoroughly cleaned my apartment my last weekend in Shimanto, since all of my friends had left by then 😢 I had briefly met two of the new ALTs who would be succeeding us before my last day of work and I tried my best to give them advice and welcome them to town. I'm sure they will love it just as much as I did.
I left Shimanto on August 5th and flew to Tokyo.
I caught a bus from Haneda Airport to Machida, a suburban district on the outskirts of Tokyo. I wanted to go somewhere away from the shinkansen line and away from tourists for my one day in Tokyo. I went to a manga cafe and spent my evening there reading. I stayed the night and the next day headed out to watch a movie.
I enjoyed the movie and the mall area and came back to the cafe to read a little more before my shinkansen to my friend's house that evening. I stayed the night at my friend's house before heading to Mt. Fuji the next day.
August 7th-8th I hiked Mt. Fuji! I had wanted to hike Mt. Fuji since I first came to Japan 2 years ago and since I would be leaving Japan for a while, I thought I must climb it before I go. My newbie partner in Shimanto shared my sentiment so we planned to hike it together. Funnily enough, someone I didn't really know but I knew his family, also reached out and said he wanted to join. So, the three of us met up in Gotemba where our trail started. I was all packed a hike ready to go. My friend and I arrived in Gotemba a little early just in case but our bus didn't leave until 10:30. While waiting in line for the bus, my friend being the outgoing person she is, struck up a conversation with the one other young man waiting in line. Turns out he was from France and my friend is from Canada and did her schooling in French so they both were able to speak French with eachother. Since, we had over 30 minutes to kill before the bus arrived my friend and I decided to go get some coffee at a nearby cafe and we invited him along with. We chatted and got to know each other and even chatted with the person at the table next to us too as he had just finished hiking Mt. Fuji. Then, once we were well acquainted, the three of us met up with the last member to join our party which was the stranger-ish from Alaska. We met up with him right before the bus left and we became the hiking party of 4 😄
The hiking trail we chose was Gotemba Trail, the longest and most difficult trail. 9 hours to the summit, and a 4 hour decent. But, the plus was that it was the least travelled and we all wanted to avoid the crowds. We arrived half way up the mountain at the 5th station around 11am. They recommend waiting 20min to an hour there to acclimatize to the atmosphere so we waited around 30 minutes. We started our hike around 11:30am which put us at arriving around 6-6:30pm ish at our hut. Or so we thought...
Turns out the first 6 and a half hours was pretty brutal because you are hiking up pretty loose gravel so its tough and exhausting and every step up is a half step down. Also, factoring in the altidude difference, we took many small breaks to catch our breath and ease our muscles. I will admit I was co-captain of the cuboos and initiated most of the breaks haha. But, I discovered on the trail that the huts have a cutoff time for dinner and entry which I did not know because it was not written on their website. So around 4:30, we realize we a bit behind schedule so I call up the hut three of us were to be staying at, the 8th station. The French guy was staying at the 7.4 station about 2 hours below ours. After calling our hut, they said that we were not going to make it in time and to call the next hut down, 7.5. So, I called them and tried to tell them where we were and he was convinced that we weren't going to make it either and that I should call 7.4. SO. I call 7.4 and tell him that we can be at the hut by 6pm (if we pushed it) and he was like "no no no, you won't make it, you should back to the 6th station." That was not an opitno becuase we were already an hour past the 6th station. So, I try to convince this man that we will make it on time and to please let us stay and he was really hesitant until I mentioned the fact that we were hiking with someone who already had a reservation there. Once I mentioned that he said "oh, of course you can stay, 3 right? We will see you at 6!" and said goodbye. Now we were fibbing a little bit on our location as I called all of these stations to make it look like we were farther than we were but by the time I hung up the phone, we had actually climbed a good ways. I was so hyper-focused and hyper-worried about being homeless on Mt. Fuji and talking on the phone in Japanese that I was just blacked-out steamrolling the mountain. Unfortunately, after I hung up the phone, I realized how tired I was but I couldn't stop. If we were to make it on time we could not take any more breaks and had to move at a brisk pacce for an hour 💀 Well. With me in the lead (unusual), I pushed on and we made it by 6 pm in time for dinner. BUT. Let. Me. Tell. You. My legs have never felt so dead in my entire life than after we arrived. They were noodles and cramping and simply refusing to work anymore 😂 However, the sunset, good curry, and fun company made the evening much better.
A semi-goodnight sleep and some medicine later, my legs felt surprisingly better. The sleeping situation in the hut was that you had a shoulder-width of length of area with wooden boards from your face to your shoulder area to sleep in plus a sleeping bag on top of a mat. It was actually more comfortable than I was expecting but I am just thankful there was enough empty spots that I didnt have any directly next to one of my sides so I could spread out a little. We woke up at 4:20am the next day to catch the sunrise at 4:47am. The sunrise was so beautiful and I realized that I was watching the sunrise on Mt. Fuji! Crazy! It had made the previous day worth it. The national Japanese news network, NHK, was staying at the same hut as us and so they caught us staring at the sunrise. So, if you have Japanese cable, you might catch me on the news 😉 We had some breakfast and finsihed getting ready before hiking up to the summit.
I was feeling surprisingly not dead the next morning and was ready to get to the summit. I think because there were more intervals heading to the summit, the remaining 2 hours went by pretty easily. The rocks had started to change color too, and I love rocks so it was awesome to see.
We make it to the summit around 9 am and revel in our victory 👑I hadn't seen pictures of the summit before hiking it so I didn't know what to expect but we really just arrived right at the volcano crater. It was so cool and colorful! We rested a bit, looked at the shrine, ate a snack, and enjoyed the views.
While hiking up that morning, the was a tiny cloud that I called puny as we stood above it on the mountain and I think it took that to heart because as we hiked, it grew in size. I would look over my should and it would have doubled in size! By the time we reached the summit it covered half of the summit views, luckily the views we hard already seen the day before.
We decided to start climing down the moutain before the cloud got any worse so we ended up hiking through the clouds. We were in the clouds for a while which was so fun. The descent was so much easier than the ascent of course and we were just blazing down.
Once you past the 6th station it starts to get back to looser gravel but still with big rocks. That part was a little nerve racking but once yhou got into a rythm, it was like you were skiing down the moutain.
The finally, we reached the funnest part of Gotemba Trail: running down the side of the volcano. Once you round a bend, the path opens up to a huge face of the moutain and its all deep loose small pieces of gravel that is perrfect for running down. You feel like you are on the moon. It was so much fun to run down the side of Mt. Fuji with friends from around the globe taking in breathtaking sights.
Also, one of us must have been a weather child because we got really lucky with the weather. The nday before hiking it said it was going to be really windy and rainy. When we arrived, it was windy and cloudy but not bad. The wind actually helped keep us cool while hiking and we were only pelted by gravel wind gusts twice-ish. Then for sunset and sunrise, it was sunny with just enough cloud to make it artistic. The people at the hut said that the night before, you couldn't see anything for sunrise or sunset because it was so cloudy it was just white. One of the hut keepers who sees the sunrise every day rated the one we saw a 9/10 🍀. Then we had great views at the summit, a cloud to keep us cool for the descent, and then when we wanted to see the views while running down Mt. Fuji, the clouds started to clear up. Really perfect.
We finished our youthful and high spirits of running down the mountain to finish off the last hour of the hike back to the 5th station. In that last hour we realized how tired we were and trying to stop your own momentum on hard ground after the soft gravel was a little tough and tiring.
But at last, we arrived safe and sound back to the bus stop. I was grateful for the people I hiked with especially my friend from Shimanto, because there was many a moment where I would say "I can't do it! I'm dying!" And she would say, "Yes, you can! You got this!" and helped keep me motivated 😄We were so dirty and dusty and tired but we were fulfilled and we all headed on our separate paths.
BUT! No break for Grace! No, no, no. I decided it would be a good idea to go straight to the Osaka World Expo the day after hiking Mt. Fuji 😀 Two days of standing and walking and standing and walking should definitely help my blistered feet and extra sore muscles :) (I'm sure the walking actually did help with the sore muscles but it wasn't fun still!)
I met up with 2 of my friends, whom I met while studying abroad in Japan in 2023, at the Expo. They were meeting up with me in the late afternoon, so I spent some hours at the Expo by myself first. I grabbed some delicious Malaysian food and a mango drink for lunch and then made a game plan while sitting.
My friends and I were only able to win one lottery and were not able to make any reservations beforehand because we picked one of the busiest Japanese holiday weekends to go to the Expo so it was packed! So I couldn't go into may of the pavilions I walked by but looking from the outside was enough for me. I stopped at a mini commons are that had 3 countries in it since the line was short and I needed an AC break. It was really worth it though because, being one of the few foreigners there, I got a personal tour of the country of Armenia and learned a lot.
I went to another exhibit about a large black globe of the night lights on Earth made entirely of wood and laquer. It was really cool to see videos on how it was made and then see it in real life.
After perusing some more outside I decided to get second lunch and headed to the African restaurant. I orderd a North African style beef stew meal and it was so good! By the time I finished my food my friends had arrived.
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We met up and walked around to view all of the beautiful pavilions. The Expo is so huge that we planned to explore half of it the first day and the other the second day.
The first country pavillion we waited in line for was Spain and then India, both splendid.
What we discovered was that our favorite part of the Expo was the Commons. There were multiple commons throughout the Expo and the commons hosted dozens of countries, each with its own small square. I loved seeing so many countries and learning about each one. I was even introduced to some countries I hadn't heard of before.
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I ate a crepe for dinner, then we enjoyed the light and firework show from the upper walk. It was a cool lights and water show with a finale of fireworks. It was also really cool to see the whole Expo at night from up there. The next day it was too windy to walk on the upper circle so that was our only to see the Expo from above.
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Day 2 of Expo, we went to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, multiple Commons, and our reservation at the UN exhibit. We finished exploring the other half of the Expo and saw the beautiful architecture of all the pavilions.
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5To finish off our time in Osaka we got some Bingsu (throwback!) on the riverside.
The next day, we headed to Nagoya. It was great to play tourist again in Nagoya with them and it felt just like old times. We went to our favorite spots, Book Off and Osu. We window shopped and walked around Osu commenting on which shops we remembered and which we observed were new. I, of course, got my favorite dango from my favorite shop and all was well in the world.
I last-minute asked my host family if I could eat dinner with them a couple of days prior and they said yes, so I enjoyed my evening and dinner with them. After a lovely meal of my host mom's Shabu Shabu😊 I hopped on the shinkansen to my friend's house in Shizuoka.
My other two friends were going to be meeting us in Shizuoka at different times, so I spent the morning with my college friend and we watched the new Demon Slayer movie (so awesome!). One of my other friends met up with us for lunch at the fish market for fresh seafood bowls 😋 Next was a rock beach and a pretty shrine with Chinese food for dinner.
The next day our last friend joined us and we went shopping, had the most delicious sandwiches I've ever had, went to the castle (Tanjiro was there too!), and had amazing Indian food for dinner.
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On the last day, we went to amazing Thai food for lunch, enjoyed an art museum, and then said our goodbyes. I stayed one more night at my friends before my flight the next day.
On August 15th, I bused over to Haneda Airport and picked up my suitcases that I had mailed earlier.
I then headed to the baggage claim, ready to pay for my two overweight bags and lose a bunch of money. But! One of the ladies checking boarding passes asked me what I was doing in Japan and I said that I lived here for a year. We switched to Japanese and she was asking me questions about my stay, where I was etc. and I think the man loading the bags overheard that conversation. When I went up to load my bags he spoke to me in Japanese and when he saw how heavy my bag was he was encouraging me to lighten my bag if possible and shuffle my stuff around and I told him that was impossible because they both weighed the same 😂 We had a funny little back and forth until he said "it's fine, just put your bags on and go." At first, I couldn't believe my ears! But he let me go without paying any overweight fees even though they both were about 20 pounds over the limit! I hope that man wins the lottery 💛 I thanked him and went on my merry way. Which didn't last very long because I realized I was leaving Japan, so I glumly sat waiting for my flight until I officially left the country 😭
And well. Then it was over. I was picked up by my mom from the airport 30 minutes after I had taken off in Japan, and went to a family friend's wedding the next day.
It has been unusually easy adjusting back to the US, maybe because I'm in my home Alaska. Sometimes it feels like I never even went and I made it all up in my head but I know that's not true haha. I'm sure I'll be hit hard with reverse culture shock in waves as the time goes on :(
I appreciate everyone who has read my blog at all or kept up with my Instagram or Facebook posts and stories. I have really enjoyed this past year and hope it isn't too long until I am back on here 😉Well, until next time 👋
P.S. I apologize if my writing is terrible 😂 I've gotten so used to simplifying my English and speaking Japanese that I fear I lost a lot of my eloquence with my words, but I'll work hard to get that back 👍
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