Home...

We are home. At last.

It was a long flight, we left Tokyo at 4 p.m. on Friday and landed in Edmonton at 3 p.m. on Friday. How's that for time travel?

We have both been awake for more than 24 hours at this point, not having gotten any sleep during the flights and now must force ourselves to stay awake for another 4 to 5 hours to minimize the 16 hour jet-lag that will hit us.

Now that we have fast internet we will post all the stuff we missed while in Japan. Maybe it will be Shaun's project to keep him awake.

Day 16

But first...

This is a video we took way back when we were in Takayama.

Today

We went to Tama Zoo a little outside of Tokyo. We spent the better part of the afternoon there and that is all we basically did today.


This zoo was very large and had quite a few animals. The most interesting was the Chimpanzees. These little guys had a cool system for getting fruit which involved them using sticks as tools. I had figured I had seen everything zoos had to offer until I saw the chimps using a vending machine...

We are going to Osaka tomorrow and again may not be able to post pictures or video we will be there for 3 days. Then our last night will be back in Tokyo and after that you will all have to endure us being in Edmonton again.

Talk to you soon.

-Shaun

Pictures, Pictures...

...and more pictures

So I uploaded a bunch of pictures to flickr (link on the left) and I will now go about adding some pictures to the previous posts.

If I really feel crazy I spend ￥400 more and upload a few videos.

Make sure you take a look I went to a lot of trouble for you... ;)

-Shaun

GAH!

You heard me

I`m trying to get some videos and pictures up but it is taking a very long time. I`ve gotten one Video up and I have 2 more on their way. Tonight I`ll come back to the manga kissa (internet cafe thing) and get a whole bunch more pictures up.

We are planning on going to Akihabara so I get to look at all the cool Japanese technology.

Check all of our past posts, I will be adding pictures to them in the next 24 hours or so.

-Shaun

We made it down alive!!!!!!!

We are safely down from Fuji. The climb was a lot harder than we had anticipated. They tell us oh don`t worry, children and the elderly do this all the time, but what they neglected to tell us was that we weren`t taking the trail the children and the elderly take, we were taking the steepest most direct route straight up the mountain face. It was challeging especially with my ankle but we made it up to the 8th station where we had a very unrestful night of sleep on the wooden floor with a bean pillow (I can`t believe I haven`t blogged about bean pillows yet-- they have been the bain (bane?) of my existence for the last 2 weeks.)

The Japanese sleep on these horrible pillows filled with either raw beans or rice husks. Makes for a very hard kriky neck kind of sleep. Bean pillows like the bean bags we used to play with as kids. So bad that Shaun actually bought me a new pillow to carry through the country with me, but we left it at Shin-Fuji and so I am back to sleeping on the bean pillows.

Anyways back to Fuji... We slept on the floor where our blankets were thicker than our mattress pads and so didn`t sleep all that much. We were also feeling the effects of the altitude (3200 meters) and so burning lungs, pounding hearts and queasy stomachs didn`t help the sleep situation. At two a.m. when the group left for the summit against local advice due to weather conditions we decided to stay at the 8th station. It was cloudy and no one saw the sunrise so we didn`t feel too bad.

We have gone through most of Japan now, the tour is done and we are on our own for the next week (fingers crossed!). We are in Tokyo for today and tomorrow and then down to Osaka for 4 days to visit Kobe, Nara, back to Kyoto and Osaka. Today we do laundry and we will find an internet cafe to post all of our pictures!!!

Cheers!

Sirina

Leaving Miyajima

Today we leave Miyajima in preparation for the Mt. Fuji climb. As of yet, we have not seen Fuji-- it has always been too cloudy when we have gone near. The trail is supposedly well marked and the biggest danger in the climb is altitude sickness so we plan to take it slow and climb from the fifth station to the summit over a day and a half or so. Tonight we stay at the base and prepare and tommorrow we will take a bus from the base to the fifth station where we start our climb. We spend the day climbing from the fifth to eighth station where we will stay in a hut (read: shack) overnight and then begin our climb again the next morning (read: 2 a.m) so that we arrive at the summit for sunrise.


Yesterday we had a 4 train, 2 tram, 1 ferry boat day-- it was absolutely exhausting. In addition to all the travel we made a breif stop in Hiroshima to visit the peace park and bomb museum so all in all it was a very heavy day. It was also interesting to read history from the other side. Very rarely do you get to read history from the loser`s perspective. The Japanese take full responsibility for starting the Pacific War through their surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, but did you know that the A-bombs were dropped while the Japanese were attempting to negotiate peace? And with no prior warning? And amid protest from 69 of America`s leading scientists? What gets me the most is that they still dropped the bomb even while the Japanese were trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps they needed a way to justify the Manhattan project and the 2 billion dollar expenditure and `ending` the war with the A-bomb was a good way to do it. It all still rings very true today. Okay I`ll stop depressing you. Shaun has run away to share our watermelon flavoured kit kat bars with other group members, so we`ll leave you here.

Cheers!

Sirina

Map of Japan

That is a map. We are currently near the place called Beppu.

Everywhere else we have been is on the map itself.

Recap:
Tokyo
Takayama
Kyoto
Nagasaki

/Dirty Dirty Hotlinker