Best view of Fuji yet!

We woke up and looked out of our dining room window to see a nice clear view of Mt. Fuji totally covered in snow. Wow! So, Erik took the camera and drove to the top of the Commissary/BX for a less obstructed view.

You can really see why this is one of the world's most famous mountains.

While he was parked on the roof (and avoiding going to work), Erik also took some pictures of our fair city, Fussa. Notice Che Guevara (why?) in the first picture and a white statue of liberty (why again?) in the other. We never noticed the statue until this picture. We'll have to go out looking for it in town to see if it's connected to a business or an avid New York fan. Just goes to show you there are weird people everywhere in the world.

Our home

This is our tatami room. Truth be told, it was not this clean 5 minutes prior to me taking the picture, but this is what it looks like ideally. The phone is actually an intercom to let people in the building. Next to it is a control for our heated floors...we haven't tried this function yet. Every machine in our house has a ton of buttons, so we haven't gotten them all figured out yet.

On the table is my latest ikebana design. Our fishes, who were mentioned in an earlier blog, have all gone to meet their maker. Despite this turn of events, I ambitiously purchased 8 new fish. I love the fact that two have red noses and two have red bottoms.

This is our larger balcony. Erik bought me a greenhouse and I love it. What a wonderful husband, eh? My friend brought her children over and they helped plant beans, basil, and mint.

Erik put the pictures on the blog and for some reason had this picture first...I took the liberty of moving it a little further down the line-up. This picture wasn't the easiest to take because the room is so small. Anyway, just wanted to point out that you have two flush choices: big or small (you use your best judgement to determine which). Also, there is a bidet button, which my landlord kindly translated for us as "for sensitive place of the women," a "wash bottom" button, and a dry button. You can adjust the intensity for each button as well.

This was the only way to get the bed and the dresser in the picture. Can you find me? I'm in the picture twice! Most Japanese people sleep on the floor on a futon, so I'm a little embarrassed about our royal bed. I literally have to jump into bed each night.

Japanese bathrooms have a sink, tub, and shower. The toilet is in a separate room. Please read the following sentence with your most sarcastic voice: The washer is my favorite machine in the house. Actually, it's gotten 100 times better now that Erik and I have figured out the "child lock" function. Please don't laugh, it was really aggravating. Any time we interrupted the cycle, we couldn't get the door unlocked. And, seeing as we would start the washer and see on the display "5 hours remaining," we needed to learn how to interrupt the cycle. The machine is a washer/dryer in one, but this is a misnomer. It should be called a "washer/get my clothes hot and wetter" machine. Plus, the only way to get hot water in it is to fill the tub or sink and connect a hose. Okay, it's still way better than a washboard!

Here's the ofuro (bath). Whose toy frog and firefighter duck I wonder...? As a side note, if this picture included audio you would hear our fan that runs 24/7 (not by election). To the right of the tub, but not pictured, is a control pad. We can set the height and temperature of the water and it fills the tub automatically for us. There is an handy dandy intercom button on it to the kitchen "Eriiiiiik, I'm need more shampoo." The control pad also plays a very cute song to let you know when the tub is ready. It sounds just like "Santa Claus is coming to town."

Oku-Tama

We went out on the weekend to do a little hiking in the Chichibu-Tama National Forest. We had a guide book that told us of a 3.5 hour hike into the mountains. When all was said and done the total hike took about twice that. Since we planned on a small hike, we went totally unprepared. When we finally found our way up to the peak of Mt. Oodake, we only had about an hour of sunlight left. For the last two hours of our trip down the mountain we were in complete pitch black and it was a steep descent. Really scary. We prayed for help and safety along the way and ended up making it back to town safe and sound, no injuries. Thank God. He provided us with a few unusual sources of light: a Nintendo DS, a Japanese electronic dictionary, and a cell phone, all with backlights and all of which had batteries that died by the time we reached the foot of the mountain. Pretty amazing.


The journey started out with a cable car up the side of the mountain to reach this scenic outlook. In the distance (way in the distance) is Tokyo, about 40 miles away. On a clear day, you can see the skyscrapers of downtown Shinjuku, Tokyo Tower, and Tokyo Bay. From here we, started hiking. Here are some of the pictures on the way up.

This is a the main street in a little temple town about a third of the way up Mt. Mitake.

Here are some of the houses in the town. Notice the thatched roofs. Pretty cool, huh?

At the end of the town is the temple. This is the gate and stairs to the temple.

And this is the temple itself.

From the temple, we continued on. This was a nice paved path through a bamboo forest. It was also our last paved path of the journey. Notice that the number of people dropped off significantly. Most people come to the temple and go home. We continued on...

A really nice waterfall (and nice picture, if I do say so myself).

Erik climbing. This is what the path quickly became. And this is also the same environment we had to climb back down in the pitch dark of night. Yes, without protection, we could have had major injuries. Yikes.

More climbing.

And here are some pictures on the way down.

What Erik looked like in the glow of the Nintendo DS. We didn't even plan on bringing it with us, but figured the train ride was long and Zelda would keep us occupied. Good thing.

Only lit up from the flash of our camera, but look at the surroundings.