A Touristy Three Months

Fantastic Four on Mt. Fuji

At the beginning of October, we took an international student trip to Mt. Fuji!  Obviously, Mt. Fuji is one of those places that every foreigner must go to while in Japan but sadly, it was a slightly disappointing trip.  As beautiful as the mountain was, our school didn't stay very long at the mountain.  It was a three hour drive from Dokkyo University to Mt. Fuji which was a scenic drive.  Throughout the entire ride, each international student was paired up with a Japanese student to encourage us to use Japanese as much as possible.  Luckily for me, I was seated next to a student who visited UWSP in the Dokkyo summer English program and I actually got to meet him so it wasn't as awkward for me as it was for the other students :) Once we got to Mt. Fuji, we hiked for a couple hours and then stopped to take a bunch of photos...and I mean a bunch of photos.  My closest friends (Benny, Joe, and Sandra) and I have become a tight-nit group, so much so that we even call ourselves cute little names..like the Fantastic Four..Fabulous Four...Family of Four..and the list can go on.

One of the most popular "Western" holidays celebrated in Japan is Halloween and boy, do they go all out here!  My friends and I ventured in to Tokyo the weekend prior to Halloween to see everyone go all out and they did not disappoint.  One of the major night-life areas in Japan, Roppongi, was literally packed with individuals dressed in costume ranging from cats, nurses, zombies, and Alice in Wonderland characters.  It was truly a sight to see and experience for anyone living in the area for a short period.  The Halloween atmosphere in Roppongi was exhilarating - there were thousands of people from various countries coming together on this Holiday that didn't even originate in Japan and having the times of their lives.

After the upbeat night-life of Roppongi during Halloween, my friend Joe and I enjoyed a short day trip to the Sakitama Ancient Burial Mounds located in Saitama prefecture the first weekend in November.  It was a beautiful autumn day to spend walking around this large park filled with ancient burial mounds.  This was a sight I was particularly interested to see because of an Asian art history course I took in my third semester of university.  It was really amazing to see visit an actual kofun and see haniwa that were buried in the area from thousands of years ago.  Another benefit of visiting the kofun park was to get away from the Tokyo city-life.  Where I live in Japan, there is not much nature to visit, so to get out of our regular concrete surroundings was quite refreshing.  The Sakitama kofun park was made it seem almost like back in Wisconsin - where you can actually see grass, trees, wild plants, and even a little farm life.

The same weekend of the Sakitama kofun park, my university had its school festival.  School festivals in Japan are a common tradition starting in junior high school through the university level.  During these school festivals, many of the student organizations have a food stand and there are always some performances being done.  At my university, there are many student organizations focusing on dancing so I had the joy of watching several of these groups perform a mixture of modern dance styles such as hip hop and R&B.  Watching all of these dance groups made me a little envious of their abilities...but I'd much rather watch them perform amazingly than strut my silly moves on the stage.

After a few hours at the school festival, Sandra and I headed in to Tokyo to watch another dance performance for a bit and walk through Ginza..in the middle of the street!  It was really quite strange to walk in the middle of the main road in Ginza.  For whatever reason, they blocked off cars from driving on the road so that people going shopping could have freedom of where they wanted to go.  Taking advantage of this opportunity, we walked straight down the middle as the sun shined on our faces.  This was my first time to walk around in Ginza, which wasn't terribly exciting but fun nevertheless.  Ginza is a big shopping area, filled with high-street fashion, jewelry, and various other stores.  Of course, almost all of those stores are "a bit" out of the price range of a university student but it was fun to window shop all of the shoes and jewelry  available.

The following weekend after all of the festivals and dance performance, Sandra and I indulged on a lovely French dinner cruise in Tokyo Bay.  A huge thanks to my sister, Akina, who actually won the dinner cruise tickets at a wedding but gave them to me upon her return to the U.S.  The entire dinner and cruise expenses were all paid for with the tickets my sister gave me, so it was a night to remember without putting a dent in our wallets!  In celebration of our lovely evening ahead, we bought a bottle of wine to share during our cruise.  The cruise took us through all of Tokyo Bay so we saw many of the popular sights through our window-side dinner table.  It was very beautiful to see Tokyo at night from the bay with all of the lights illuminating not only from the skyscrapers of Tokyo's metropolis but as well as the lights from Tokyo Gate Bridge, Rainbow Bridge, and a large, lit-up Ferris wheel from Odaiba.  After our wonderful dinner and cruise, we made our way for some karaoke, as we are the karaoke queens, and became "those people" desperately running through the train stations to catch the last trains home!  It was a successful evening from start to finish and yes, we made it back home on the trains :)


Finally, we come to the Fantastic Four's weekend getaway to Nikko!  Benny, Joe, Sandra, and I planned a weekend trip to Nikko located in Tochigi prefecture, roughly 2 and half hours by train from our apartment.  Nikko is one of those "must see" sights when you are staying in Japan, and we were very pleased with our visit!  Nikko is one of those locations where you should NOT go for JUST a day.  There is so much to do and see in the area that we couldn't even do it all in a weekend.

Our first day in Nikko, we spent the afternoon visiting Lake Chūzenji and Kegon Falls.  We were really lucky to have a lovely, sunny, autumn afternoon at the lake and Kegon Falls.  The lake was one of the cleanest natural water sources I have ever seen in all of my time in Japan!  It was so beautifully clear and calm that the Fabulous Four rented out a swan boat to further enjoy the beauty of the sunshine, lake, and surrounding mountains.  We stayed a hostel for the weekend (my first ever!) which actually turned out quite nicely.  We all bunked up in the same room and cozied up watching a movie next to the heaters during the chilly, mountain evenings.

Smell, hear, speak, and see no evil!

The next day of our adventure in Nikko consisted of visiting the famous shrines and temples.  Nikko is also the famous location of the three monkeys of "hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil".  Of course, we had to take a group photo in front..but since there were four..we added our own touch of "smell no evil".  After an entire afternoon of visiting the shrines and temples, we stopped in this Japanese garden right next to the temples area and we were so glad we did.  The garden was just beautiful with a small pond surrounded by red Japanese maple trees and bright green moss.  Because of Nikko's location in the mountains, it is also very well known for the serene, surrounding nature consisting of mainly forests :)

Natural hot springs in Yumoto

Wild monkey in Japan

Our last day in Nikko, we had to do a hiking trip through a forest on a mountain.  We started our 3 hour trek at Ryūzu Falls right outside of Chūzenji and made our way to Yutaki Falls and Yumoto.  Our hike started out a bit chilly but was well worth it, especially since we got to witness one of the first snowfalls in Nikko.  After a few hours in the wind and snow..it was a little more cold than I would have liked but the nature we saw was one of a kind.  Also, one of the biggest highlights from our weekend in Nikko was our sighting of a real, wild monkey in a tree.  After we had made it to Yumoto, we wanted to see some of the natural hot springs Yumoto is famous for but during our walk to the natural hot springs, we ran in to our little monkey friend in the tree.  It was really cool to see a wild monkey, but it got a LITTLE bit scary when the monkey climbed down from the tree, stood on all fours and gave us a little stare before it ran off in to the woods.  Can't say that you see a wild monkey everyday!  We made it to the natural hot springs, which were smelly but worth the short walk to see naturally warm water seep up from the ground.  It was also another beautiful sight to see the steam from the hot springs mix with the flurry of snow in the air.

Welll....it has been a busy two months and the short summaries I wrote don't do my experiences justice for how memorable they are.  And it's hard to think that I have only been in Japan for nearly three months and I have already done so much.  Not to say that I'm running out of things to do..it's just amazing how time flies when you are having fun and enjoying life, especially in a foreign country :)  Life is good here in Japan - I'm really having the time of my life - and I will try my best to continue sharing my experiences here on this blog.