A Nice Quiet Weekend: Cheesesteaks and Mountains

This weekend was a great weekend. It was a quiet weekend compared to last week. No hitting the town, no city lights, just another adventure in Japan filled with great friends. I would say that having great friends is what makes my Japanese experience all the more exciting. We are there for each other, and provide laughter for each other. We also share our knowledge of what we have learned (which is a true bonus for me since I am the slowest learner of the Japanese language by far)

So you may wonder, what makes a quiet weekend in Japan? Well I will tell you….

Friday night me and my girlfriends stuffed our faces and talked like men. We were crude, rude, and had lots of stories to tell Mel from our weekend in Tokyo. We also shared with her the pleasures of a Philly Cheesesteak. Now you would think a sandwich as good as that would have made it to the meat and cheese loving country of the UK. We also reflected on how strange it was that things we don’t crave at all in the States we get this insatiable cravings for here in Japan. A lot of it is completely unobtainable such as a turkey sandwich- or anything from a deli really- that is why we can easily justify paying 11$ for a Subway club.... buthingsss like ~ Mexican and cheesesteaks, those two items when craved can easily be made- granted they are makeshift and unlike the ones you would get at home, but they satisfy the urge.Definitelyly not El Magueys.

So the Liz, Mel, Tif, and I sat around Mel's table eating gooey gorgeous cheesesteaks and homemade potatoes and told crazy stories of backstreet alleys and meeting random strangers in Tokyo. We have a great knack at meeting lots of random people. Since Mel is not recontracting, she was not at the conference, so we took Friday evening to fill her in on all the dirt.

Saturday was beautiful. Not really as far as weather was concerned, but as far as life is concerned. A small group of us had plans to celebrate our pal Simon's birthday. He had asked us to go paragliding and mountain climbing to celebrate his aging. So he organized a crew of us to go...

If you are unaware, in Japan there is a whole season dedicated to the element, rain. And with our luck, that season up and started on Saturday. Luckily we knew in advance, so we cancelled the paragliding bit the day before... but hiking was still on. We all met at Narus in Kakizaki, a town about an hour away from me. Surprise, surprise, and a fact well worth noting...Liz and I were the first to show. Funny how when I show up first or early somewhere, everyone else is late. Shouganai. We sat there as the sky was pissing down rain, looking at each other saying are we really going to do this? All of us knew it would be a good time, but all of us were kind of like, ~hiking up a mountain, in the rain, can't we just go do karaoke somewhere and save this adventure for another day?~ because that was the if it rains backup plan. But...No, this was to be done! We wersummittingng the mountain, rain or not, and surprisingly we were all up for it. (Granted I did my usually are you serious huff, but everyone knew I would do whatever, seems to be a character trait I am just starting to notice)
So we all braved the elements and started up Mount Yoneyama.

The hike was easy, no scaling rocks or anything of that sort. There was a well trodened path, lots of stairs, and even natural stairs or worn divets made on rock near the summit. We would come to clearings that would offemagnificentnt views of the inaka Dave sang me the tune he wrote for the last openmic that I missed whilI i was in Tokyo, he has a knack of writing corny song lyrics and interesting tunes.
We guided our ways along sheer dropoffs, it was a bit slick from all the rain, but we all made it up safely.
When we got to the top of the mountain, the sun had already began to set. Due to the rain that had been falling all day a mist shrouded the valleys below. It was a beautiful site.

mel after summiting the mountain
Atop the mountain, on the summit, is an A-frame cabin. The cabin is open to public use. When we got to the cabin, there was a group of five older Japanese people. I am not sure they knew what to think when a group of foreigners showed up at the setting of the sun, and began to kompei and begin a boxed wine challenge.

We partied away bay candlelight, devouring our dinner we had lugged up in our packs, which consisted of various delicacies such as sushi, onigiri, soba, and edemame. To my biggest surprise two of our friends from Kashiwazaki showed up nearly an hour after the sun had set. They had tried to come up on the Kashiwazaki side of the mountain, met a road block, drove around the mountain, started the climb, and towards the end, they were using their ketai (cellphone) as thier only means of light.


Behind the cabin is a shrine, with a tatami room in the back, a few of us took refuge in there trying to save the people whom we are sharing the cabin with a little sanity. We left Dave and Satako in the cabin attempting to sing strange Japanese songs with them.
I should probably also mention that the clouds were low and the mist ovetheeh mountains was intense. When you stepped outside, not only was it pitch black, but even equipped with our handy headlights, the mist left the visibility about nil- ok, maybe you could see about 6 inches in front of you, but for real that was it. This made our evening stroll between the cabin and the shrine, which was seriously no longer than 10 meters, an amazing feat and adventure in the still of the night.
After our great night of sleeping in the wilderness, I had to be up early and down the mountain before everyone else because I had a birthday party to go to. Chieko's grandson turned 2 on Sunday. So I booked it down the very slick mountain in the morning, got lost driving around the mountain, and got back to Arai just in time to shower and meet Karmen, Chieko, her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandkids for our lunch outing. It was great, for some reason the crazy antics of Shunpei, get me cracking up all the time, he has the bubbliest of smiles.