Here's just two new songs I managed to make with the free time I have acquired! Enjoy!

Last week, my friend invited me to an event which would take place in Yokohama, and had something to do with high school students. I wasn't too sure what I was getting into, but speaking with high school students is always fun since they are not as shy as university students, so I decided I would go and help out.

So on Sunday, I headed off to the station to meet all those gathered for the event. We left at about 8:20 and arrived at around 9:30 at our destination. We walked into the building, and found out that all the high school students were already waiting for us. We were given a number, and we then split into our proper groups.

After being explained our task for about one hour, we were served food. This was most likely going to become a new product, since we were asked some feedback upon it. During this whole time, I tried talking as much as I could to the two girls next to me. I wanted to make them comfortable with me and likewise feel comfortable with them. Since we would spend the rest of the day together, I wanted to make it as pleasant as possible. I started nicely, but then made more and more jokes, stupid ones too, and surprisingly, they responded well to it all. They added on to the jokes and we had some good laughs. We finished the report, and waited for the rest of the groups to finish. Then, it was time to leave and walk the town of Yokohama.

We headed out to the China Town. Now I've been there more than enough times now that I can almost tell where we are in the middle of this crazy place. My grandmother herself told me she has only been to Yokohama twice in her life. Crazy. We walked a bit here and there, then found a place to eat a small and VERY HOT Chinese dumpling. It was good, but I ended up burning my tongue on it. The professor who was following our group was the one who ended up paying for it, which was very nice of him.


We walked some more and then headed out to the Yamashita Park, near the main port. I still love the feeling this city has when it comes to being near the sea. You can just feel the air and the atmosphere change as you walk along the side of the water.

This took us to the Marine Tower, which was another one of our goals. Before getting there, I grabbed myself a strawberry milkshake at McDonalds, which made everyone laugh. We also passed the Hotel New Grand, which I had seen once before during a past trip here. I ended up explaining to the group the history of this building, which I know so very well (thanks to my dad.) We climbed it, using the stairs and not the elevator, and received a nice card for it too! The view from up there was quite... astonishing! I haven't climbed the Sky Tree yet, so I don't know how that feels, but here was most likely better since we could see the sea. Actually, we could see the Sky Tree from where we were.

After making our way down, we headed back through China Town, grabbed some ice cream cones and headed back to the first building. From there, we prepared our presentation. We had to present how we felt about the city and give feedback on the different places we went to see. I took charge of the group, directing everyone on what to do and write, and got our whole team rolling and ready on time. I also ended up making a few funny comments during our presentation which made the crowd laugh. That was amazing to do in a different language.

After the whole event was over, and I had said goodbye to the new friends I had made, I headed off to one of the best ramen shops I had ever been with Ayaka (Japanese) and Heiki (Finland). I had been there once before and so I knew it was worth the walk and wait. After about an hour and a half of just that, we sat down and chowed down our delicious meal.

We split at the station, and Heiki and I headed back to Tokai after a long day. I really enjoyed the experience, and I have to thank those high school students for it.

The other day, I was doing weights in the dojo's basement with some of the boys, and a guy named Nomura had been doing some exercises using two dumbbells of about 8 kg each. After I was done with one exercise, I went over to the bench next to Nomura's while he went to chat with a few other friends. I was tempted to take his dumbbells, since he didn't seem to be using them seriously, but I decided to go pick up those of 10 kg instead.

When I started doing my exercises, I heard him yell out something. I wasn't really paying attention to their conversation, to be honest, but I caught that one. He had said that I had taken his dumbbells, speaking indirectly to anyone listening, but not expecting me to catch on. On top of that, he had used the term "Mamo-ri" instead of my real name "Mamoru" to make sure I didn't understand. But many people had addressed me by that name before so this time, I caught on. I caught on and simply told him that no, I had not touched his dumbbells and that they were still where he had left them, near the bench next to mine.

He was slightly surprised, put down the new dumbbells he had already picked up, and returned to his bench and quickly changed the topic of conversation with his friend, most likely slightly embarrassed.

Not a huge feeat, but I think that catching on to a conversation while not paying attention is something one can only achieve with a certain knowledge of the language. In other words, progress has been made.

Today, the new students took their Japanese placement test. Yet I did not. This semester, I'm not taking Japanese language classes. I had aimed to study for one year, and then take some time to focus on judo, since while having Japanese classes, going to practice all the time is virtually impossible (if you're studying seriously, of course.)

But that doesn't mean my studies stop there. I continued my studies throughout the summer, and will pick up the pace again from now on. I purchased a fair amount of textbooks to help me along the way, as well as when I make it back home. The choice I have here compared to back home is ridiculous. My Japanese isn't perfect, of course. Therefore, I might as well study as much as I can while in Japan, right?

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Mr. Sato has been taking fairly good care of me. But it has come to a point that I can't even believe. First, he helped me at the Yokohama practice. Then he invited me for supper and drove me back to the university. He also said that he would drive me back every Thursday.

But it did not stop there. The next practice on Friday morning, after the warm up, the fighters for that weekend's tournament lined up to throw, as they usually do. They called out whoever they wanted as partner and got to practice throwing before their tournament.

Now I never thought I would ever do such a thing since I'm not part of the team and I have no tournaments. Yet as we were doing our normal uchi-komi during the warm up, Mr. Sato called me and told me that I would be joining those throwing to practice the combination he had shown me the night before. I could NOT believe it. But as the athletes were called up to line up, I kept my eyes on Mr. Sato who soon called out my name and told me again to get in line. That way everyone knew.

My first partner was Fubuki, but I went and asked many different fighters, including Honma, the coach who had accompanied me to the Touin Gakuen University. I think I threw over 30 times in those seven minutes, the most I have thrown since I have been here. Many were wondering why I was up there and one even asked me if I had a tournament coming up. I didn't care, I was up there. It was an opportunity to throw, and I didn't waste any time.

Once that was done, I was quite exhausted. I always wondered why the fighters would take their time throwing. I understood why, haha. Mr. Sato told me I was done for now, and the practice continued. About five minutes before the "randori" started, Mr. Sato once again called out my name. But he also called out Haruka Tachimoto's name. He brought us to one side of the dojo, took a chalk and a belt, and just as he had done for many of the team's top athletes, he made me draw two circles onto the mats. After that, he showed Haruka and I what he wanted us to work on. We had to practice a specific foot sweep while hoping in the shape of the circle. We did this maybe 40 times. He would come back from time to time, show us something new to work on, and we were off again. Haruka is quite a strong athlete and knew much more than me what to do, so she gave me tips here and there. After that, he told us we were done, and we could go back to the normal practice. I thanked him and joined in as much as I could.

By that point, I was quite exhausted. It has been a while since I had done so many repetitions without breaks. The club doesn't really usually run that way. But it just gave me more energy. To have someone look over you while everyone else seems not to care can be quite... moving. Motivating. I am very greatful for him taking the time for me.

Recently, I just completed one year of living in Japan. It also represents one year of living in Tokai which is also the longest amount of time I have lived alone... I'm currently at the same tournament I came to watch with the team soon after my arrival in Japan. In other words, I've been here for a while.

Ever since my father and sister came to visit me in April, Mr. Sato had started telling me that once I finish my classes, he would take me to a different university to practice. Somewhere a little less stronger than Tokai, where I could get a more... fitted practice. Well, according to Mr. Sato of course.

About a month ago, I went out to dinner with my friend Ryoko. That night, we had a nice talk, and she ended up inviting me to a soccer game. She had purchased four tickets, and one was still free. I said I would check my schedule, and according to the time, I ended up being free.

This expression was written in our textbook last semester. It means that it would be silly for me to come to Japan and come back without climbing Mount Fuji. And so, I climbed Mount Fuji. Easy right?

In reality, I had already set as a goal to climb Mount Fuji before I even came to Japan. My sister had done so with Anzu three years ago, and so I had heard a lot about it which had only made me want to climb it for myself. If you want to read about my sister's adventure, please visit:

http://franceinjapan.blogspot.jp/2012/08/conquering-mount-fuji.html

About 3 days before climbing it, I asked my friend Shingo if he could reserve a spot for the both of us at one of the mountain huts. Normally this kind of reservation is done waaaaayyyy ahead of time. In fact, I had planned to climb the mountain with Miguel, who loves climbing mountains and had already climbed it once before, as well as with Shingo and Arisa. But the day we had picked, the weather didn't seem good, so we ended up cancelling. Now this time around, the weather didn't seem good either, so reserving last minute wasn't a problem. Not many people were going to climb it during this type of weather. I didn't have much of a choice.

You see, due to the temperature at the summit, the mountain is only open to climbers during the summer. I was running out of time, and so I had to make a fast decision. On August 31st, I would climb one of the world's greatest mountains.

(The night before)
I packed the necessary clothes, water, and my shoes in my room. I fell asleep, getting ready to climb a mountain the next day. To say the truth, I didn't believe it would be too difficult. I mean, people in their 70s and 80s also climb this mountain, so how hard could it be. That being said, I haven't really climbed many mountains in the past. I wasn't too nervous.

Morning came, and I woke up to my alarm. I showered, ate breakfast, put on my clothes and headed out to the lobby. I found Shingo eating breakfast. Once he was done, he also came to the lobby, and I noticed he was wearing very short pants, and regular shoes. Also he only had brought two layers of jackets. I couldn't believe it. I told him that he should get better clothes. He said he would be fine, but still went to change his pants into jeans... He also brought another jacket, but kept his normal shoes. He said that's all he owned so it would have to do. From the stories I heard from the past, I couldn't help but worry. We left he dorm at around 7:50 in the morning, late for the plan we had made.


After a quick stop at the convenience store to grab our food for the trip, we got on the train at around 8:10. It took us around three hours to get there. Finally we were there. Already 11 o-clock, we wanted to climb as soon as possible. We grabbed more food from a convenience store nearby, as well as a cord for my phone which I had forgotten... and after discussing with the lady at the information centre, we settled to ride the 12:40 bus to the first station of the mountain.

Most people who climb this mountain only climb it from the fifth station. They take the bus up to there, start climbing and reach the top in around four to five hours. Now Shingo and I wanted to climb from the first station, which takes another two hours, or so they say. We started climbing at about 1:10 P.M.














 Now it usually takes two hours to get from station one to five. It took Shingo and I about an hour and a half, so you can imagine the pace at which we where going. By this point, my head started hurting just a bit. I started feeling dizzy, so I made sure I drank a lot of water. Due to the sweating, I didn't need to go to the washroom once until we reached our mountain hut. Good thing too cause it costs about two dollars to do so.















The way down was actually quite difficult. AND LONG!! For more than half the way down, it was just a zig-zag of a sand road. It never seemed to end. Shingo seemed to be tired and refused to go faster, so I ran on ahead, going down at a fairly fast pace. Why was I in a rush: it started to rain. Also, as we picked up our bags from the hut, we were told that it would rain hard around 7 A.M. So I wanted to make it back as fast as possible. But I ended up slipping and slightly hurting my ankle as I went down. I made it to the 5th station, a different one from last time, and waited for Shingo to come. He came about one hour later. We ate a ramen, and waited another 3 hours for the bus to come. I made sure we got on the first bus, not willing to wait another hour for the next bus.

After arriving back at the Mount Fuji station, we rode the train back to our dorm, arriving at around 3:45 P.M. I was tired, cold, stinky, frustrated, but satisfied. I had climbed Mount Fuji...