It is 12:58 PM on August 16th, 2017. We’ve been back from Japan for over a week now and the terrible jet-lag has finally subsided. I am not yet back into full routine yet however as I’ve had a lot of work to catch up on and the jet-lag made me very tired when I wasn’t working.
I’m currently in my clubhouse/fortress/office/greenhouse listening to music from the Shire (hobbit) and finally have a few moments to get a journal entry in. I’m very behind on my blogs and need to get many posts written in this blog as well as the family blog and my namesake blog. As for this blog one post I’m looking forward to writing is climbing Mt. Fuji (written click here) from Sengen shrine (the very bottom). This is the path of old, the one that pilgrims used to take. It took us 11 hours to reach the top and we all did very well. It was a successful adventure indeed and one that I’m sure we’ll often talk about while drinking wine on cool Pacifica nights while watching the sun set. I’ll save the details for the official post. Another reason however that I’m looking forward to writing is is there really isn’t many posts on the subject of climbing the mountain from the very bottom. 99% of hikers go from the 5th station and there are plenty of posts about that, but not many from Sengen shrine.
As for the routine, I’m growing wheatgrass again and it should be ready for drinking in one more week. We also haven’t started up with karate again mainly because of the jet-lag. I find myself sleeping until 7:00 AM which I really do not like, I need to get to bed earlier and thus wake up earlier. By waking up early I can then work out in the gym without distraction, drink my wheatgrass and vegetable juice and thus be ready to start the day extremely energized.
I’m also blaming my lethargy on the jet-lag. I really haven’t been motivated to do much of anything except play Warcraft which I started again when I had a bunch of free time as a bachelor. I am determined to craft all purple gear and that is taking some time as well as gold. I need to clean the fish tanks and once I get my bonus have the house trim painted and a few shingles repaired.
As for Japan it was wonderful catching up with everyone but being so busy made the trip go extremely fast. It didn’t start off so well the first day of travel. I had bought two separate plane tickets in order to save money which you’re really not supposed to do. The problem in doing so is that they could not check me all the way through and I had to collect my baggage at LAX and then re-check in. Also if the first flight is delayed and you miss the second one I’m not entirely sure they would help me out even though it was on the same carrier. However, the plane was not late, it was the second flight I had problems with. We left LAX on time but an hour and a half into the flight and just as we were to cross the Pacific Ocean the plane turned around. The captain said the backup systems would not start and that is one of the parameters needed in order to cross the large ocean. So we went back to LAX and had to wait over 6 hours for a new plane and crew to be ready. We also waited about an hour on the flight waiting for the secondary pilot to arrive who was stuck in traffic in LA.
This made me arrive in Tokyo much later than expected and I arrived at the capsule hotel around midnight. I had planned on meeting my friend Brandon out for a night in Tokyo which didn’t happen. I was determined to drink a beer however and headed over to The Hub and had two beers in Tokyo. Those first two beers are always the best of the trip when one first arrives in a place as wonderful as Tokyo.
The next morning I headed out to Saitama to meet up with my family. The following morning we went to Hotel Mt. Fuji in Yamanakako to meet up with our friends and to hike the mountain the following day. It would be a while before our friends arrived to we went to Oshino Ninja which taught us all about ninjas and even had ninja costumes for the kids to wear. Then we went to the hostel, took a nice hot spring then a nice dinner. After Mt. Fuji we spent a nice relaxing time at the hotel and then headed back to Saitama.
Well, I was interrupted while writing this post so I’ll stop here. I’ll write two separate posts later, one for Japan and one for just Mt. Fuji.
