Oh, the Places You'll Go: Sydney's Visit: Part 1

Sydney came to Japan and
promptly fell alseep. Lame.

Sorry its been a while since my last post, but I have been too busy having fun to stop and write! When I last wrote, I had just come down from the mountains of Nagano. I write to you know safe and sound from the confines of my nice warm bed. Between Nagano and this nice warm bed were Tokyo, Akame Falls, Kyoto, OBC, and Tokyo again. Oh, and Sydney showed up! In order to keep this as readable as possible, I think I am going to make this blog a two-parter. That should allow me to include as many pictures as possible also. I do love the pictures.

Let me start with a brief rant. The night bus is terrible! I have ridden it a total of three times now, and it is an experience that I would rather not repeat. Slightly cramped, busy, lots of bouncing. Not all that conducive to sleep. On the other hand, it is a very cheap and efficient way to travel. Hop on a bus in Tsu, wake up in Tokyo the next morning. Handy.

With Sydney slated to drop in on Tokyo at around 3 in the afternoon on Wednesday the 4th, I decided to take the night bus in order to get to Narita on time. The night bus got me to Tokyo station at about 7:00, so I actually ended up having to kill about 5 hours. Tough job in Tokyo. That was meant to be sarcastic, but given that I knew almost as little about Tokyo as its possible to while still knowing of its existence, it actually was a little tougher than I expected. I ended up taking the easy way and just walking around. Turns out there's rather a lot to see in Tokyo. I went to Shibuya and Harajuku stations and just sort of wandered around for a couple of hours. Shibuya is possibly the coolest place I've seen in a while. Shibuya station is the home of one of the busiest intersections in the world as far as pedestrians go. Every time the traffic signals switch to red, they switch to red in all directions. The five-way intersection then fills with a few hundred people all swarming in opposite directions. It was honestly a bit like watching the entire population of Asian Lanesboro move through an intersection at the same time.

Sydney was a pretty happy
camper too!

After wandering Shibuya for a few hours, I hopped on the Narita Express and went to find Sydney, and find her I did. Japanese people don't really do public displays of affection, so I think we might have weirded out the locals with what might have been the longest hug on record. I was a pretty happy camper. After the aforementioned hug, we hoped on the Nozomi Express Shinkansen and headed home. We ended up back in Tsu at around 10:00 pm. Sydney didn't sleep much on the plane and I didn't sleep at all on the bus, so by the time we made it home, both of us had been awake for a solid 30-40 hours. The best part of the whole thing was definitely waking up the next morning and teaching English. Sydney was kind enough to join me, and she definitely made teaching easy for Thursday and Friday. All of my students really enjoyed having a new person to question and new English to learn.

After a few days of teaching though, we decided it was time for a brief holiday. So, we hoped on a train and headed to Akame Falls. Akame Falls is in Mie (my prefecture) and is home to a river with 48 lovely waterfalls. It also hosts a few hotels, both western style and Japanese. We were pointed towards a specific place called Sansuien Onsen by my friend Marshall who had stayed there a few years ago with his lovely girlfriend Ai. Sansuien was beautiful, and the falls did not disappoint.

I will let the pictures do the talking for most of the rest of the description. Sansuien is about a 10 minute ride from the station, so they run a car service to and from the station, hotel and the trail head for the hike. We got picked up around noon the car took us right to the trail. We hiked for about three hours, and the place really was mind-blowing. Not very many places make me wish I had invested time in photography classes, but this was definitely one of them. The people at the park office were almost as wonderful as the scenery. Sydney and I needed a ride to the hotel when we finished out hike, and they staff were kind enough to call the hotel, walk us to the proper waiting area, and serve us some delicious tea while we waited. As soon as we got to the hotel, we realized two things. One, we had come to the right place. Our little cabin was gorgeous, and the whole place looked just amazing. The second thing we realized was that Sydney was not going to be doing much conversing with the staff. Almost nobody spoke English, and the one staff member that did would have been in a zero beginner class at OBC. It was a Japanese intensive night and morning for me! I was pretty proud of myself though. We made it through with relatively little difficulty and had a pretty wonderful night.