Remembering Fuji-san

3 years ago, it was a Friday the 13th and my friends and I set out to climb Mt. Fuji. You can check out all my Fuji-san related posts at http://japan.ronjie.com/search/label/fuji-san. Or just sit back and watch the 40-minute video below.

UPDATE: As pointed out by reader Grin Isobe, the rest of the videos do not seem to play after the initial "You are watching rTV" intro video. You can try to watch the full playlist directly on YouTube instead (link: http://youtu.be/YqejpzhTHxA?list=PLEE9D3FB80DC97AA9), where everything might be playable. But please note that because I used some copyrighted music in the background, some parts of the video are not available in certain countries. Also, you might have to click the forward/next button to move to the next video in the playlist. So sorry about all this inconvenience!

UPDATE 2: The video works now! I think YouTube playlists don't work too well embedded if you have the same video in the playlist twice so... :D

HND-HKG in-flight views and food

We're about to take off!

Haneda Airport International Terminal

I'm back!

So I left Japan last September 9 to go on a holiday in my home country, the Philippines, and I promised I would blog about the Japanese food there. Well, oops. I didn't have time. It's because the reason why I went on a holiday there was actually to meet my very first, newborn son for the very first time. I was actually a week too late already but at least I got to spend time with him on his 2nd and 3rd weeks on earth. And man, if you're a parent, you know what those first few weeks entail. But, it was all good.

So anyways, I do have a few things to blog about, with some related to food in Japan. This first one is all about the Haneda (Tokyo International) Airport International Terminal from where I took off. I have lots of pictures. Check 'em all out below.

Not-so-known Japan: Premium Outlets!

My first experience of outlet malls were in Northern California, practically 20 years ago already. I remember US$1.00 GAP t-shirts and what not. Not having that much money then though, I think I just settled for a GAP cap (I love owning GAP caps) and I think a belt and maybe one or two shirts. It might have all cost me just under US$20. This is 20 years ago, though. During that time maybe those GAP shirts were selling for like $5 to $7? Unfortunately, that's what I look for still - shirts for a steal. Nowadays, GAP shirts are like $10 to $20 or more, and I'm happy to find $5 shirts at outlet stores or on clearance sale racks.

I also look for shoes at outlet stores, and I'd usually go for $40 shoes (that were previously as high as $150 maybe), and if there's something I really want I can go for as much as $60 on shoes. Any more than those prices, no way. I might have bought watches, too, and maybe I would have $40 to $60 upper limits on watches as well.

I've had outlet mall experiences in other parts of California, as well as in New Jersey where I think there's no tax on wearable items. I've had some outlet store experiences in the Philippines as well. But basically, I have my $5 and $40 limit on shirts and shoes and watches as I mentioned. Now when I heard about the Premium Outlets in Japan, I got sort of excited.

But that excitement didn't last very long. The nearest one is in Gotemba. It's at least an hour and a half from my place. Too far. That's the one problem with these outlet malls, though. They're in far away places because they need the really low real estate values so that they can still realize profits. However, a couple of good friends visited Japan, and they wanted to tour the Fuji-Hakone area. They found out about the Gotemba Premium Outlets, and wanted to go make a side trip there as well. As you might know, I already posted my Odawara-Hakone-Gotemba-Fuji video a few weeks back, and to the Premium Outlets we went indeed.

Guess what stuff I found and bought? Nada! Everything was still way expensive. The cheapest shirts I can find were $10. And these are plain, meant-as-undershirts kind of stuff! Anyway, even the restaurants there, except for McDonald's maybe, are a bit on the expensive side as well, and we just settled for Tully's Coffee hotdog sandwiches, which we could find all around Kanagawa and Tokyo as well.

So we went home with nothing except... And this is the best part. And you've probably seen this already in my O-Ha-Go-Fu video: The best views of Mt. Fuji! I think with the trip to the Premium Outlets practically "free" since it was just a side trip for our Hakone Area tour which was already paid for, I think it was worth it. Unfortunately we did get there when there were more clouds in the sky already and so it wasn't the most optimal sighting of Mt. Fuji. But it felt great nonetheless. Imagine, (window) shopping with Mt. Fuji in the background.

From carbonaramara.com

Anyway, if you wish to go to the Gotemba Premium Outlets from the Kanto (Tokyo/Kanagawa/Saitama/Chiba) area, check out their website by clicking this ad-supported link. Or just take the Odakyu Line express or rapid express train bound for Odawara, get off at Shin-Matsuda Station, walk towards the JR Matsuda station and take the JR Gotemba Line for Gotemba. At Gotemba, there are free shuttle buses to/from the outlet mall. The last bus from the outlet mall going back to Gotemba Station is around 7pm, so make sure to catch that or else you will need to take a taxi. From Tokyo, Saitama, or Chiba, just go to Shinjuku Station to get to the Odakyu Line. UPDATE: If you are taking the Odakyu Hakone Free Pass like we did, it's a free ride around Hakone as well as to the Gotemba Premium Outlets as well.

Odawara-Hakone-Gotemba-Fuji

I had a couple of friends visit over from Singapore and the original plan was to visit Hakone to get a good view of Mt. Fuji. We bought the Hakone Free Pass so that we can go around the Hakone area freely.

We first made a pitstop though at the Odawara Castle. And then we went on the Hakone Sightseeing Cruise on Lake Ashi (also known as Hakone Lake), the Hakone Ropeway (i.e. cable car / cable-suspended gondolas similar to the one connecting mainland Singapore and Sentosa), and Hakone Tozan Cable Car (i.e. train being pulled by cables, like San Francisco's cable cars or the Peak Tram going to Victoria Peak in Hong Kong).

Finally, we went out of our way to the Gotemba Premium Outlets in Gotemba, only to find the best views of Fuji-san for this day trip. From Gotemba Premium Outlets, it took us 3.5 hours to get home inclusive of all the waiting for the infrequent night time trains. Had I known earlier, we could've gotten home an hour and a half earlier if only we had spent around 500 yen more each and used a different route. But anyway, we had a blast.

Last view of Autumn Colors, Kawaguchi Lake, Mt. Fuji

Or, you can view these videos directly from YouTube:
Episode 14: http://goo.gl/blKqC
Episode 14.5: http://goo.gl/lnMqE

Shinkansen, Osaka, and views of Mt Fuji

If you can't view the above, you can watch it directly at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja-PGnLWlGY

Description on YouTube:

A 2.5-hour trip compressed to under 15 minutes! Views of Mt Fuji, minus the snow cap, can also be seen. The camera memory card actually ran out of space before reaching Nagoya, so technically it's just the 2-hour trip compressed to 15 minutes. Please note then that while the train speed was around 200 kph, because of the video speed-up, the view feels like 1600 kph!

Background music created using GarageBand.

Videos on YouTube

In case you cannot access the full videos on Multiply or Facebook, here they are, in 4 parts, on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h68W5ZiN59c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhXbnnC4tDo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoWSfQ8i1kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A04XxGWgpE

These are each under 10 minutes; if you want to download them to your computer, you can use the free YouTube Downloader. In case you wanna view them instantly, here they are, embedded in this webpage.











Anyways, here's a cool video of the Mt Fuji climb by a more professional climber and video blogger.  It was done during daytime and off-season (no people!) so you can see what the terrain and what the views are really like.  No sunrise or sunset here though, but probably even cooler - you get to see Mt Fuji cast a triangular shadow over one of the adjacent cities.  The website address is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5cReCc6lDU, but the video is embedded below for your convenience.  It's a little over 21 minutes but it is a good overview of the 8-14 hour trip people would take.

International Sunday

Last night, I slept again from 5pm to around 10pm.  I had my brunch of katsu-kari (curry with deep-fried pork cutlet or "tonkatsu") and some Japanese bento meal at ~3:10pm already.  Then I slept from 5pm to around 10pm.  I had a 6" "instant" pizza, and ice cream for dinner.  I slept at around 4am already, I think.  I woke up at around 12noon, but as expected I was a little too tired.  But surprisingly, I didn't have any real muscle or heel pain, not like just right after the climb.

Anyways, I was too tired even to prepare or buy lunch.  I just edited my videos from the Fuji trip and then whoah, it was 4:30pm already.  I had to go to the 5pm mass at the Atsugi Catholic Church.

I just found out that the videos on Multiply, where I have my Mt Fuji videos hosted, play only up to the 10:00 minute mark.  Yikes!  If you can find a way, download the whole video to your computer and watch it offline.  Alternatively, if you have a Facebook account, and I'm your friend there, you can watch it from these links:

Part 1. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=463002935927
Part 2. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=463007370927

I took the 4:50pm bus and made it in time for I think the Glory song - I wasn't sure because it was in a foreign language.  This 5pm mass is actually a special International Mass, in celebration of the feast of the Assumption today, the 15th of August.  Very interesting mass.  The 1st reading was in Portuguese, the Responsorial Psalm in Japanese, the 2nd reading in Spanish, the Gospel in English, and the homily in both English and Japanese.  The prayers of the faithful were in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Japanese, in that order.  The Our Father was in English.  The recessional song ("Santa Maria del Camino") was in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Japanese.

Then after the mass, there was a little party.  There was my lunch!  God making lambing.  I was looking forward to this as well as this was a chance to meet some fellow Pinoys.  I approached one guy who was apparently with a rather large group of 20-something fellow Pinoys.  My opener was "Pinoy kayo?"  He said yes but he and his friends were too shy, the only thing I got out of him was that they are not from Atsugi itself, that they were all here on training for 1 year, but they did not arrive here all at the same time.  And then just like that, he said he had to go.  Okay.  On to my next Pinoy.  I approached a more mature group and then proceeded with my opener question to the lone man amongst the otherwise group of women.  He was a little more accommodating and was encouraging me to dig into the food before it all runs out.  I guess the difference between this group and the first group I approached was that the former is composed of people who are here or have been here for a long time (say 2 years or more).  I guess I belonged more to this group than the first.  Apparently, not many Filipino going to church here in Atsugi are from Atsugi!  Yikes, I wanna meet Pinoy Atsugi-ites!  Anyways, it's all good.  Finally I met the choir lead singer/organist, Rinna, and then she introduced me to a slightly younger group of 2-year or longer residents.  I also met and interacted with Nina, Mickey, and another lady.  Mickey is a 20-something student who graduated from Don Bosco Manda and is here with a Monbusho (Japanese ministry of education, etc) scholarship but haven't found a school yet so he's currently an English teacher; he's been here for 2 years.  As usual, these guys aren't from Atsugi!

Anyways, it was fun meeting them and I hope to see them again next time.  I just confirmed that there is indeed an English mass here in Atsugi also on the 1st Sunday of each month!  That is great news.

At the party, in addition to the sushi, pasta, fruits, and sausages, I had lechon manok, kutsinta, biko, and sopas.  Yummy, Filipino food!  I don't really like sopas, but serve me sopas here (once in a while) in Japan, and I can finish thehole batch you cooked.  I most especially loved the lechon manok.   Yum-to-the-nth-power-mee.  It was a pretty good lunch. :-D

I took off at around 7pm and went to KFC to buy my dinner for the next two days (6-piece chicken and "emu-saizu koru-suro" or M-size cole slaw).  I also passed by the convenience store to buy milk and juice.  Then back home.  I ate my dinner at around 9pm already.

3776

It's difficult to tell the whole story in words. At some point, we thought we had left behind one of our trip buddies. At some stretches, I was all by myself. I fell once, it hurt, and I had to bring myself back up. On my trip to the top, it was all mental; you had to push and tell yourself you can, but at the same time you had to be smart and stop and rest if your body says so.

After this trip has exhausted my physical and mental faculties, it was my emotional side that had to show. I was only very thankful to God because he brought me, an inexperienced mountain climber, to the top of one of his glorious creations, and back down and home safely and practically without a scratch. I was also thinking all the while of Mara, and how I love her. I had to climb up and be back home safely and in one piece so that I will be there with her on December 27th this year.

Well, a picture says a thousands words, they say. So a video of ~38 minutes in length, and at 30 frames per second, would then be around 35 billion words.

Let this (two-part) video just speak for itself:
Part 1. http://wwwronjiecom.multiply.com/video/item/10/3776
Part 2. http://wwwronjiecom.multiply.com/video/item/11/3776_22

Friday the 13th!

So what?  I don't believe in superstitions, because I believe only in God.  I hadn't actually realized it was Friday the 13th until I wrote this blog post (which is actually two days later).

Anyways, last night before going to sleep, I watched another movie online and...  5am came and I still can't sleep.  I fell asleep at 7am already!  Yikes!  And then I woke up (because I had to) by 11am to prepare.  But actually, I got up at 12pm already.  Oh by the way, yesterday, I packed everything already for today's trip.  So, a cold shower first.  Then, my supposedly spaghetti-and-gratin lunch turned into a salty chow mein dish and not as yummy doria.  It wasn't a very pleasant eating experience.  Nonetheless, it was still carbohydrates - my source of energy - and so I had to finish it all up.  Thankfully I had banana which was the best dish of my 3-dish lunch.  Then, final preps, and 2pm came and I was ready to go.  Save for the lack of sleep.

Gratin, by the way, is like baked ziti but it doesn't resemble the baked-mac-looking baked ziti I have tried at some "Italian" places in the Philippines.

2pm came and my two trip buddies slash next-door neighbours were not yet so ready-to-go just yet, and so I double checked the bus schedule at the bus stop.  Per my "research" online, we could take the 2:15pm bus, so that we could be at the train station by ~2:35pm to meet up with our two other trip buddies, and then we could take the 3:03pm train to get to Shinjuku by 4pm.  Guess what.  The next bus was not until 2:37pm.  Uh-oh, we're going to be late!  And we didn't have oxygen cans yet - we still had to buy them in Shinjuku!

Anyways, so we can't do anything about it except inform our two trip buddies who might be early to arrive at Hon-Atsugi.  It was so hot today by the way.  And I was already wearing one thermal.  My mountain climbing bag was already 12kg, with 4L of fluids (2L of water, 2L of sports drink) and 7 additional layers of clothes.  I haven't ever been in less than 10 degree weather for more than 30 minutes before - usually if I'm in 10 degree weather or worse, I would go indoors already after no more than 30 minutes.  So anyways, I took all necessary precautions.  Like the fluids.  The cost of these 4L of fluids is just under 200 yen.  If I buy them at Mt Fuji it might cost me 4000 yen!  I also brought knee and ankle braces.  A walking stick.  Some Biogesic (paracetamol) medicine.  A low stool (because it's difficult for me to stand up from a squat or sit-on-the-floor position).  An umbrella in case it rains on the way between home and the starting point of the Mt Fuji climb.  A scarf, a pair of gloves, two knit headgear (bonnets/beanies), and a cap.  Two hankies for covering my ears and sunglasses for my eyes in case it becomes sunny.  A face towel to wipe away sweat.  6 packs of granola bars.  12 chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.  9 macadamia nut choco cookies.  An extra pair of shoes - because my Nike running shoes was "smiling" already.  I glued it up but who knows, what if it gives in!  Better to carry an extra half kilo of insurance than walk up and/or down a 1.4km climb without any shoes at all!  I also brought my wallet, of course.  And my two cellphones (Japan and Philippine numbers).  And my Palm TX - which functions as my English-Japanese dictionary, and my movie player.  And maybe a couple other things.

Anyways, better to be safe than sorry.  Better to carry all that weight and make it to the top, than having to go down because I am not prepared to complete the whole trip.

So, we got to Hon-Atsugi at around 3:05pm already, two minutes too late for the 3:03pm train.  Surprisingly, the train was late and so we were still able to get on the train.  We got to Shinjuku just around 4pm.  We met up with Kim-san, the trip organizer, and we met his girlfriend and also his cousin, both for the first time.  Then a little later Dr. Kim arrived.  Then there we were, 9 of us, trip buddies for this Fuji climb.  We hurried first to find oxygen cans for bringing up to Fuji.  But we didn't have enough time anymore and we weren't able to buy our dinner!  So we had to buy dinner at the 5th station of Mt Fuji, where our climb starts.  Off to the bus station we went and then somebody shouted "Ronj!"

It was Coy, my friend from the Philippine, who is about to graduate from her masteral degree this August/September.  This is only the 2nd time I've seen her during my Japan trip, and whoah, this was a big coincidence.  I found out she was going to Mt Fuji as well.  I told her we were late for our bus already and that we should just catch each other at Mt Fuji.

On the bus, I planned to either sleep the whole time, or watch a movie.  I attempted both but didn't really get to finish either one of them.  Oh well, I hope my staggered sleep last night (6pm to 10pm and 7am to 11am) was enough.  On the bus we checked the hour-by-hour weather forecast, and it said sunny!  Great!

Our bus left at 4:50pm.  We arrived at the 5th station at around 7pm.  And so we split up to look for, buy, and eat dinner.  We ended up eating at the restaurant where they have hot meals.  Two guys got kare-raisu (curry rice) which was 950 yen but was probably just 1/3 of that, 2.3km below.  I had tempura-udon which was only around 650 yen.  It was yummy.  But actually, it wasn't enough.  But, ah, we were in a hurry.  We must be at the summit by 4 or 4:30am to catch the sunrise, and back here before 11am to catch our bus trip back to Shinjuku.

After some group photos, minus one (the person taking the photos), we started our climb at 7:45pm.  After about two hours we were already past the 7th station.  I thought that was fast. After the 7th station, there's the 8th and 9th station.  So supposedly we were 1/4 of our way up.  Then, the climb became harder and harder as we got closer and closer.  Ah, one of life's many lessons.

Fuji-san!

Today I had to wake up really early because we had to be at the meeting point near Hon-Atsugi by 8:45am, for our TPU-organized field trip to the Fuji-Hakone area.  So that meant we (PhD students) had to leave from our apartment at 8:00am.

But alas, I had a hard time sleeping yet again (maybe 4am?) and so I woke up only around 7:50am - if not for a phone call from one of my fellow PhD students.  My alarm clock which I set for 7am did not work for me at all. :(

Anyways, so obviously no more shower or breakfast or the "2nd thing" you should do after waking up, and then off by bicycle we went to Hon-Atsugi.  We probably left around 8:10am already, and we arrived at the meeting point at just before 8:45am.  Right on time.

And so the 2 hour bus trip, first to this place called "Fuji Harness," which is a guide dog training facility.  http://www.fuji-harness.net/  The dogs of course are very cute and very adorable.  Unfortunately no baby dogs, which are even cuter.  The purpose of this trip is actually to admire the beautiful architecture, which has no less than Mt Fuji in the backdrop.  The complex is a very nice piece of architecture indeed.  There was a demo show to show us what the guide dogs are trained for.  It is funny that the show's host was speaking to all of us in Japanese but he spoke in English to the dog!  But other than that, it wasn't really an entertaining show.  No acrobatic acts like running through rings of fire or somersaults.  The host was just showing that the dogs would guide blind people:
1. given a choice between two doors/paths, the dog will choose the wider one so that he (or she) can guide the blind person continuously through the door/path;
2. away from obstacles that the blind person could bump his/her head into;
3. away from obstacles that the blind person might trip on; and
4. safely up and down stairs, protecting the blind person from falling over from the stairs if there are no rails.

We had lunch at the cafeteria, a pre-packed bento and a small aluminum bottle of green tea.  There were so many stuff in the lunch: two kinds of fried chicken (one is a katsu or cutlet), fish, fish balls, rice of course, a tofu roll with veggies inside, other veggies and mushrooms, a pork cutlet ("tonkatsu"), siomai (dimsum with pork), and I forgot what else.  Our non-pork and non-beef eating fellow students of course didn't have the pork stuff.

After lunch and some "snaps," as one Indian PhD student would call "taking photos," we went again on the bus for maybe a 30 minute or so ride to the Hakone area to go to the POLA Museum of Art.  http://www.polamuseum.or.jp/english/  It was very interesting architecture, yet again, and this time this one has a special engineering feature: base isolation.  Base isolation protects the building from earthquake forces by "isolating" it from the ground which shakes violently during an earthquake.  By the way, architects here are engineers as well - but only of buildings.  Civil engineers are engineers of bridges, usually, and other "civil" structures.  In the Philippines, architects are building designers, and civil engineers perform the engineering design for buildings, bridges, and other civil structures.

Anyways, first stop was a short lecture given by one of the museum staff to give a brief introduction to the feature exhibits currently on display, which is collectively called "Nihon-ga" which means Japanese paintings, as well as to other exhibits around the whole facility.  Very interesting.  There were also Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso paintings there.  I wonder if they were the real thing!  There were also boring displays of old perfume bottles and something else that was too boring to remember.  We also spent a little bit of time at the museum shop where there were more interesting items than in those two boring exhibits.

And then another 2 hour bus trip back to Hon-Atsugi.  We estimated that we probably spent half this trip (5 hours) on the bus!

When we got to Hon-Atsugi, I wasn't feeling like coming home to Nilagang Baboy and Nilagang Chicken just yet, and so I joined two of my colleagues for a gyudon dinner at Matsuya, a competitor of Yoshinoya and Sukiya.  Filipinos in the Philippines might be more familiar with Yoshinoya.  Anyways, gyudon as you know is just (apparently boiled) beef rice topping with egg.  Apparently, the egg is raw and you put it directly in the rice and beef.  Maybe it is supposed to cook in there but apparently not really.  I guess this is the Japanese version of Tapsilog.  The set meal was not bad; 490 yen for that big gyudon bowl, with miso soup and a side salad.  And, all-you-can-drink iced water.  :-)

And then after that, a 30-minute bike ride back home in this still very hot summer early evening.  I got home with all my clothes drenched in sweat.  I changed first and then went back to the office to do some work and upload photos as well.

"Good Morning, Japan!"

I started today very early, woke up very early - 6am (thanks Mara!) - but slept a little again and then woke up around 6:50am, one hour before the meet-up time at the school for today's technical tours.  Surprisingly I was able to do all that I need to do - including taking breakfast and taking a shower, among others - and I got to the meet-up place on time.  It helped that I bought ready-to-heat-then-eat breakfast food, a kind of hotdog embedded in some bread.  Nope, it wasn't really like a hotdog sandwich.  Anyways, it was good.  The hotdog here is a little different from the usual ones we in the Philippines or in the US know - you can still see some chunks of pork fat inside.  It's almost more like a sausage, like longganiza, but it looks like a hotdog from the outside.  It appears that it's the usual type of hotdog here, much like the red, Tender Juicy hotdogs we have back at home is the usual there.

Anyways, so off we went to Tokyo on a rented mini-bus that sits probably 15 or more people comfortably, with reclining chairs and all that.  I saw a 3rd McDonald's here in Atsugi, as well as a Denny's.  And then, surprise, surprise.

MT. FUJI, appearing with a white tuque (bonnet/beanie) of snow, suddenly appeared in the background behind the dark/green Mt. Ooyama that stands guard on Atsugi, as if saying "Good Morning, Japan!" and thus, this blog entry's title.  I thought I would've entitled this "First Tokyo Tour, Day 1," but after seeing the glorious heavenly creation that is "Fuji-san" (that's what they call it here; "san" also means mountain), I could've also entitled this blog post as "Surprise, Japan!"  And it was indeed a pleasant surprise.  Of course I took some photos.  :-P

Now, I could've also entitled this blog post as "Where's the rain?"  And that was the other surprise of today.  Two days ago, the forecast for today was rainy and cool, with day-time temperatures below 20 degrees, and night time temperature below 10 degrees.  The forecast yesterday for today, was cloudy, but pretty much the same temperature range as previously forecasted.  Today went and passed and guess what - it was a very fine day, with temperatures reaching 23 degrees in Atsugi and in Tokyo.  And it was clear skies here in Atsugi, thus the surprising view of Mt. Fuji.  This is the first time I saw Mt. Fuji from a distance; I "climbed" Mt. Fuji up to the tourist center, by car, 5 years ago, and it was freezing cold then, at least for me, although it was still springtime, with temperature below 10 degrees and quite breezy weather.

To give you an idea of what I saw, you can check this link out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skyscrapers_of_Shinjuku_2009_January.jpg

Anyways, first stop on the tour was Shimizu Corporation's Open Institute of Technology.  The top 5 Japanese construction companies here are high on R&D, and Shimizu is one of them.  They have plenty of laboraties, including a wind tunnel testing laboratory, a vibration (shaking table) testing laboratory, an acoustics lab, a geotechnical centrifuge lab, and so on, and they have introduced plenty of building services technologies.  They also have built "green" spaces, which attract plenty types of insects and urban birds, and are actually host to some fish, ducks, and one bird that looks like a crane.

Where are the photos?  My camera lost battery (I didn't charge it last night), and I left my spare battery at home.  *sigh*  And then my phone camera - oh what a problem it usually is - it "requests for 5Mb space" - on the main storage system.  I have plenty of space on my mini-SD card inside my phone (like around 8Gb) - but it does not recognize it!  I think it's a Windows Mobile issue.  I don't like, and I don't recommend Windows Mobile.  Mine is Version 6.1, by the way.  I do have some photos, including of Mt Fuji, and I requested some of my fellow students and colleagues to take some photos of me, and share their other photos with me.  Hope I can get those soon.  I still haven't uploaded any of my photos!  Let's see if I can do that later tonight.

Anyways, one of the highlights of today was...  We got to be "tested" in one of Shimizu's wind tunnels.  As in, "We."  Basically, we, 4 at a time, can step on platform, and then we get to feel what it is like in very high winds with speeds up to 30 m/s (108 kph).  WOW.  And that's not a gust speed, it was the mean speed, so it was 30 m/s continuously for a few seconds to a minute.  It was quite uncomfortable, of course, and actually I found it difficult to face the wind itself continuously.  The photos we had were funny.  I hope I can upload them very soon!

Anyways, next stop was... lunch at Shimizu.  We had authentic bento box lunch, I think taken from Shimizu's canteen, but courtesy of TPU.  It had shrimp, duck, chicken, and fish, as well as the usual sides of veggies, mushrooms, some shabu-shabu-type of food, and of course, rice.  Yum.  And we had green tea in a bottle with the meal.

Next stop was the Tokyo Sky Tree construction site.  Actually we're not allowed to go into the construction site, so we just viewed the whole thing from about 100m away.  The Tokyo Sky Tree is a communication/broadcast/antenna lattice tower that is intended to be 634m tall, with a triangular base, but circular top, made almost entirely of steel.  It is currently 349m tall.  You can see how tall it is currently because they have a sign posted just outside of the construction site.  You can read more information at www.tokyo-skytree.jp/english/.

Next stop is Japan's currently tallest completed structure, the Tokyo Tower.  It is also a broadcast tower much like the Sky Tree, and its shape is more traditional, like the Eiffel Tower.  It is 333m high.  It is taller than Japan's tallest building, the Yokohama Landmark Tower, which is just nearly 300m high.  You can read more information at www.tokyotower.co.jp/english/.

It was my first time to go up Tokyo Tower, while previously I just took pictures of it from a distance.  The tickets cost more than 800 yen, I think, and that is probably one reason why I didn't go up the last time.  That ticket is the cost to go up the first observation deck at 150m height, which has two floors.  You need to pay an extra 500 yen, I think, to go up the higher "special observation deck."  Anyways, one of the features at the first observation deck is looking down the tower through "lookdown window" - not really so scary, each was just probably 0.6m x 1.5m in area, so unless maybe more than two people step on the glass, something might happen.  Generally, people were scared to step on the lookdown window.  Even people much lighter than me.  You wouldn't feel height-sickness at all, because the tower itself is enclosed, so you don't feel the lower pressure and stronger winds that you would normally experience at altitude.

When we were up Tokyo Tower, the Tokyo skies were quite cloudy already, and so we didn't get to see Mt Fuji from Tokyo Tower.  Likewise, it wasn't worth it to go up toe the "special" observation deck.

On the bus trip, I saw two Pepper Lunch restaurants - not like the ones in the Philippines in size; they are just small restaurants.  I would think the food tastes are the same here as in the Philippines.  We'll see.  The food at the Yoshinoya chain of restaurants, by the way, doesn't taste the same here and in the Philippines.  I tried Yoshinoya the last time I was here.

And that was it.  Back to Atsugi we went, and surprisingly the trip was just an hour.  Traffic only met us in Atsugi itself as it was already around 5pm then, nearly after office hours already.  So apparently, even here in Japan where the trains are very efficient, it is faster to go by car (or in our case, private bus).  Of course, it is a different scenario in Tokyo itself, where, like New York, parking might be a problem.

Near Atsugi, I think I saw Mt Fuji again but because it was getting dark, it didn't look as white as it was during the day time and you don't really know that it's Mt Fuji except for its shape.

What a day!  Love it. :-)