One Day till Mt Fuji???

I woke up really late today because I stayed really late last night at the office, to finish as much as I can before TPU closes tomorrow!  And today, we'll be doing some shopping for gear and necessities for our Mt Fuji climb.  Supposedly I should be at the office already by 10:30am to help Kim-san move to his new desk - because he's graduating already!  He'll be Dr. Kim soon.  Anyways, Kim-san's current area is an ideal position and so one of the next senior students, Jiang-san, had already "reservate" the area so he was moving there.  Meanwhile, I "reserved" Jiang-san's seat.  So when I got to the office I moved my stuff first.  I knew I was going to be busy today and so I ate my 2nd batch of franksilog (frankfurters, sinaing/rice, and itlog/egg) at the office.  I also started copying files to my hard drive so that I have the option of doing some school work during the summer break while TPU is closed and the electricity is down (hence I cannot access my school PC even remotely).

But wait, when I arrived at the office, there was "bad" news.  The last couple of days we were weary of this typhoon that started from around north of the Philippines and which has made its way to Korea and forecasted to hit Japan from the west.  There was a chance it could make the weather really bad on Thursday and so Kim-san, our Mt Fuji trip organizer and 2-time Mt Fuji climber, postponed our bus reservations a day later.  Yay!  One more day of rest before Mt Fuji.

At around 3pm, it was time to go for our Mt Fuji shopping already.  5 of us went by bicycle.  We first went to the 100-yen store at AT.  My Fuji trip buddies bought flashlights, gloves, sunglasses, and hats/caps.  Next stop was downtown Atsugi where we wanted to buy Oxygen supply cans.  The store which sells them was closed!  So we went to SATY, a mall / department store, hoping to find those O2 cans there instead.  No luck.  Instead, there were some jackets selling for only 500 yen.  Wow, that is extremely cheap!  3 of us bought jackets.  I didn't bring the jacket up to Fuji though because it is not water-proof.  The other 2 did.  My trip buddies also bought sunscreen lotion.  So anyway, next stop was the shoe store.  As expected, I didn't have any shoe size so I had to make do with my Nike running shoes.  3 of my trip buddies were able to buy hiking shoes at relatively cheap, sale prices at around 4000 yen.  Wow.  I have this difficulty of finding shoe sizes in Singapore and in Japan.  I had this problem years ago in the Philippines but thankfully now, there are more people with big feet like me and so they do sell the larger sizes but mostly only for non-formal footwear like sports shoes and sandals.

Anyways, after that we went back to AT to buy food and drinks for our climb.  Actually earlier today I received my online order of Nature Valley granola bars from Amazon.co.jp.  Plus last Sunday when I did my grocery shopping, I already bought 4L of this Gatorade-like Aquarius sports drink by Coca-Cola, but more similar and more in competition to Pocari Sweat.  So, I only needed to buy another carton of juice and milk which I didn't buy last Sunday because I thought my week is only until Wednesday and that Thursday and Friday will be devoted to the Fuji climb.  Anyways, I saw one pack of Dried Green Mangoes for sale and I bought it. :-D

Actually, whenever I do get a chance, I buy these Philippine-made products (like these dried mangoes and Magic Flakes) so that hopefully they would think there is a market here and so they would continue to import from the Philippines.

And so, that was the shopping we did.  We all went back home of course, and then I had my last batch of BBQ ribs.  Ate it together with steamed pechay.  Then back to the office, to do my last minute work before TPU closes tomorrow.  I stayed quite late at TPU, along with probably 4 other guys.  Literally there was no tomorrow, not until 6 days from now.