Spring has arrived! (finally)

Kelly has posted a bunch of Trailwalker pics on Flickr. Check 'em out if you haven't yet, and if you have, check 'em out again!

Almost two weeks removed from the Trailwalker I can look back on it as a really good experience. It almost kind of seems like the whole thing never happened. Like it was all one big dream. On of the most amazing things about the whole experience is how I never really felt tired the whole time. I was tired physically of course, but never sleepy. And my mind was completely alert the whole time. It wasn't until we crossed the finish line and went into the cabin and sat down that it really hit me. I was asleep shortly thereafter.

Physically I'm mostly recovered. There's still one spot on the back of my left heel, the achilles really, that hurts. But other than that, it's like it never happened. I've even gotten back into my regular running and working out routine. And it's very nice to have my weekends free from hiking and things like that. I feel like a normal person again.

We just finished up Golden Week. The weather was absolutely beautiful. By far the best weather we've had since probably October. No rain the whole time and warm. I even busted out my shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops. It's funny because many people in Japan believe that you shouldn't start wearing short sleeve shirts until June, no matter how hot it is. It can be 80 degrees on a beautiful May day and if you're wearing short sleeves, they'll ask you, "Aren't you cold?" But we gaijin don't always adhere to these "rules," so on Sunday I was on the train going to Dion's house for a barbecue wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Everybody was sitting around in their long pants and light jackets and sun hats staring at me like I was crazy. And I just stared right back. It's springtime people! Enjoy it!

I didn't do much during Golden Week. As I said we had a barbecue at Dion's. Kelly and I rode around town one day taking advantage of the nice weather. We went to a really good sushi place on the other side of Fuji called にこにこ (Niko Niko.) And on Tuesday, John and I went to Tokyo for a Giants game. That was fun as always. The Giants won 5-1 over the visiting Swallows. Heroes of the game included 阿部 (Abe) the 1st baseman, ラ三レス (Ramirez) the left fielder and ゴンザレス (Gonzales) the starting pitcher. As you can see, the Giants are very multicultural.

Back at work now for a short 2-day post-Golden Week work week. It would be nice if they could make up another holiday and actually turn Golden Week into a week instead of a 5-day weekend. But it's Friday now, so we're almost finished. No major plans for this weekend. I think we're going to some sort of classical concert in Shizuoka tomorrow. Should be fun.

Well, back to grading diaries!

Brief Oxfam Trailwalker wrap-up

We did it! This will not be a very long blog post. I'll post more details about the hike later when I'm feeling a little less groggy, but I'll give the basic details now.

We started the hike Friday morning. The starter pistol went off at 9:05 (uncharacteristically late for Japan.) We finished the hike at 11:44pm on Saturday night. Altogether our time was 38 hours and 39 minutes. We came in 55th place overall out of about 160 teams. The first 20 to finish were trail runners. This means they basically run every part of the trail they can. So basically of the teams that didn't run the course, we came in 35th place. All four of finished, which we were really happy about. Many teams lost members along the way due to injury or exhaustion. Of the teams made up of people we know (ALTs from our prefecture) we were the 3rd team to finish and the 2nd to finish with all 4 members.

So that's the basic info. I want to write all about the hike, but just can't find the energy to do it right now. I can say this: I don't think words can give an accurate account of how difficult this was. It was, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have ever done. There was a time in the middle of the night Friday night when I questioned if I could finish. We all did. The rain turned parts of the trail into a complete mess. One stretch that took us a little over 4 hours on our practice hikes took us over 7 hours because every step we took was into ankle deep mud. I laid down at checkpoint 5 for about 45 minutes but never went to sleep. So I ended up doing the whole hike without sleep. It was extremely challenging. But we made it. So, like I said, I'll write in more detail about all of it in the next few days.

What I can tell you now is that my body survived amazingly well. I actually made it through the hike without a single blister on my feet. I'm hurting all over, but the worst looking part of my body is my fingernails and the skin surrounding them. That's an accomplishment all on its own.

So anyway, the Fuji Crew did it! Thanks everybody for your support! It was a great accomplishment and we're very happy about our results.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

The big day is almost upon us. We've been training and fundraising and preparing for about 6 months now for the next two days of complete torture. Reading various thoughts and posts on Facebook from the many ALTs around the prefecture that are doing this hike, I find that most of us have the same feelings right about now. What were we thinking?

But at the same time I know everybody is also excited and full of nervous energy leading up to the start tomorrow morning. The weather forecast is calling for a good deal of rain and some pretty cold temperatures. Weather forecasts are notoriously bad in Japan, but I have a feeling this one is going to be accurate. It's pouring outside right now, at least. What I'm hoping for is to at least get started and get the first few hours under our belt before the rain kicks in. It'll be a lot easier to stay positive if we're not already soaked when the event begins. But, no matter what, we're all going to gambatte! We have no other choice. We can do it!

So for my last post before the hike, I'll give some final details so all of you back home can be thinking about us.

• Fuji Crew fundraising total (to date): 143,033yen (Thank you very much!)
• Start time: 9:00am (I was wrong in my last post.) 7pm CDT Thursday.
• Arrival at Checkpoint 4 (estimated): 7:00pm, 5am CDT Friday. This is the first place we will see our support crews made up of friends and family (including Kelly!) They'll have some positive energy, food, and changes of clothes for us.
• Arrival at Checkpoint 7 (estimated): 8:30am Saturday, 6:30pm CDT Friday. This is where we will take our longest break and possibly try to get a little bit of sleep.
• Finish (estimated): 8:00pm Saturday, 6am CDT Saturday This is where we pass out.

As you can see, we're shooting for a little less than 36 hours. It's going to be tough, but we feel like we can do it.

Well, keep us in your thoughts as we go and I can't wait to report back on how it went with pictures, stories, etc. Let the Oxfam Trailwalker Japan begin!

Kyoto, School, and Hiking - Busy Times!

A lot has happened since my last post, as usual. We had a great time in Kyoto. It was really nice the first few days we were there. The weather was nice and it was relatively warm. We were able to take lots of pictures and see some cool places. We went to a big market on the first day we were there and bought some household decoration type things. We also saw many temples like Kinkakuji and Kiyomizudera, and a really cool place called Fushimi shrine where there is a long, long pathway lined with thousands of torii gates. Kelly recorded a short video of it. It started to rain a few days into the trip which put a damper on the rest of our activities. Most of what you do when you are in Kyoto involves being outside, so we had to deal with it. Living in Japan, we have gotten very used to keeping an umbrella with us most of the time. I always used to prefer small, collapsible umbrellas, but now I like to use the bigger kind. They're more tedious to carry around, but when you spend a lot of time walking around outside in the rain, they're definitely more effective. We actually got into a good routine when we were sight-seeing and Kelly wanted to take a picture. I would go over to her and hold her umbrella over her while she took the picture. It worked out pretty well.

We ate a lot of really good food while we were there including what we both proclaimed to be the best sushi we have ever had at a place called Tomizushi. It was a very small restaurant, and we sat at the counter and just told the chef what we wanted when we were ready for something else, and he would make it right in front of us. It was so good and fresh and a great way to start our trip. Other interesting restaurants we ate at include a tofu restaurant where almost everything we ate was made from tofu and a delicious tempura restaurant where the tempura was cooked right in front of us. It was pretty amazing.

We put some pictures up on Flickr that we took with our iPhones during the trip and the rest will be up on Flickr eventually. I'm glad we got to go down there finally. It's one of the must-see places in Japan.

The new school year got rolling this past week. We had a big turnover of teachers, especially in the English department. We had 5 English teachers leave and 4 new ones come in plus one who returned from maternity leave (which can last years in Japan.) All of the new teachers seem very nice, so I'm looking forward to getting to teach with them. One of the teachers who left was Morita-sensei who was by far the most helpful person to the ALTs at our school. She was always willing to drop everything to help us even if she was in the middle of something. She even helped out Jeff and Gwynn when there was an unfortunate key incident during their visit. She will be missed greatly.

The new ichi-nensei are cute and small and nervous as usual. As well as extremely excited to be in high school. I'll have my first class with new students on Tuesday. Really looking forward to that. They are sure to make my last four months fun and exciting.

We had our last practice hike last night before the real deal in two weeks. Last night we did Checkpoint 7 to the Finish. Altogether it was only 20km, but it's a very difficult stretch. The people who designed this course decided it would be a good idea to put the most difficult sections right at the end. Why? I don't know. To be cruel, I guess. In the last 20 km there are three mountains that you have to climb up and then down. Basically it works like this. You start off from CP7 and walk along a gravel road for a while until you come to a mountain. You climb the mountain a long way. It's very steep in places and just an altogether long ascent. When you get to the top, you go back down the other side, as would be expected. A long, steep decline. At the bottom of the mountain is CP8. From CP8 you almost immediately start climbing another mountain. This mountain it extremely steep. There's even a section where there is a rope along the trail to hold on to to prevent falling backward. This was actually a nice change because it gives you a chance to use your arms for a bit rather than solely relying on your legs. You finally get to the top of the mountain and of course, you immediately go straight down. When you get to the bottom of the mountain, you cross a road and on the other side of the road? You guessed it! You start climbing another mountain. By the time we got to this mountain the sun had come up which made climbing it much easier. When we got to the top, there was a nice view of Mt. Fuji very nearby.

We made the descent to Lake Yamanaka where the finish is and then slowly made our way bus by bus, train by train back home. Altogether the hike took us about 7 hours which isn't bad. But it was definitely taxing on the old legs. My left knee started tightening up on this hike and the hike last weekend. I think my legs will definitely be happy when this is over.

This was our first hike to do with all 4 of us together since back in January, so it was good to get together and check on our pacing and strategy. I think we've got a good system worked out, and I have full confidence that we'll complete the hike. We've now all done every part of the course. We're taking next weekend off from practice hiking to give all our wounds a chance to heal. Then we do the real hike on April 23-25. Our starting time is 8:00am. That's 6pm CDT on April 22 for anybody back home who wants to know exactly when we're starting. I'm getting really excited about it. We've reached our fundraising goal, and now all we have to do is do it.

Here are some pictures from the hike:


This is from before obviously. These pictures (on my desk at work) are the step by step pictures of the trail that we use to make sure we don't get lost. They come from the Oxfam website on full pages but we decided to cut them out and put these booklets together to make them easier to carry around during the hike. It worked out well last night.


John and Ashley at the top of the third mountain of last night's hike. It was about 5:30 in the morning here. John, as you can see, is a self-proclaimed non-morning person.


Me at the same place. The shining area you see in the far right is Yamanaka-ko. It's one of the Fuji Five Lakes. You can also kind of see the base of Mt. Fuji in the background.


Fuji-san starting to peek out from behind the clouds with Yamanaka-ko in the foreground. This side of Mt. Fuji (the northern side in Yamanashi Prefecture) gets much more snow than the side we see all of the time.


John, Linton, and Ashley coming down the final mountain.

Spring Yasumi!

Today at school was the closing ceremony for the school year. The school year here goes from April to March as I've mentioned before so when everybody returns in April, the students will have moved up a grade and a new batch of students will be coming in.

The next two weeks are officially "Spring Vacation." This doesn't mean that everybody gets to stay home for two weeks and enjoy a free vacation. Many students will likely be coming to school everyday for sports practices and other club activities. Some others will probably come up for extra tutoring and studying if their grades were not up to par this past year. But there won't be any classes or any official things going on. That is until March 30, a random Tuesday, where despite the fact that it's "Spring Vacation," all students and teachers have to be here for the teacher farewell ceremony. In Japan, many teachers get tranferred from school to school at the end of the year and they have very little say in when they go or where they go. The joys of being a government employee. So on March 30 everybody comes up and they have a big ceremony where the leaving teachers give speeches and then everybody who is staying packs up their things and moves to their new desk for the next year. It's quite a sight.

Anyway, we teachers have very little duties during this break so many people take time off. You have to take your paid leave days, you don't just get to go free. So next week, Kelly and I are both taking the whole week off and going to Kyoto for a few days. Kyoto is one of the most historic cities in Japan, and we have yet to make our way down there, so this week is when we're going to go check it out. We're looking forward to getting out for a while and spending a relaxing time sightseeing, taking pictures, and as always, eating some good food. I'll tell you all about it when we get back.

Well, I hope everyone has had good spring breaks and what not back home. The weather here has been going back and forth between warm and sunny, cold and rainy, warm and rainy, cold and sunny. Today is cold and sunny. I think tomorrow is supposed to be warm and rainy. I'm ready for spring to get here for good. We're maybe about a week away from cherry blossom time. I can't wait!

First Night Hike Recap

We had our first night hike on Friday night. We were doing Checkpoint 4 to Checkpoint 7 minus a stretch of about 6km of open road at the beginning. Altogether the hike was 38km.

We met up at Gotemba Station at around 7pm and took a bus for about 20 minutes to the place where we were going to start. After stretching a bit and getting our headlamps on, we began the hike. Other than the Mt. Fuji climb, none of us had ever gone hiking at night before. So this was sure to be an interesting evening. We walked down a road for a few minutes and then got to the point where we were supposed to turn onto the trail. We turned right and immediately we all stopped, clearly taken aback by how incredibly dark the trail was. After kind of getting over our brief moment of alarm, we started up the trail. I was in the lead at the beginning and my alarm returned when I turned the first corner and in the light from my headlamp I saw a pair of glowing green eyes. A black cat was standing in the middle of the trail. I was like, "Are you serious?" The cat quickly ran away though and we returned to our hiking.

The first stretch was a pretty long one, about 12 kilometers I believe. We basically climbed up a mountain and then back down the other side. There were some pretty interesting moments.

At one point we came across a point where a tree had fallen over right in the middle of the trail. We couldn't really see a good way to get around it, so we ended up just having to climb over it. Only a few minor scrapes occured. There was also a point where we came into this stretch of trail with tall, thick bamboo on either side. It was flat at that point and I got a strange sensation like the scene in "The Fellowship of the Ring" where the Hobbits are in that clearing and Frodo senses that the Ringwraiths are coming and the camera does that crazy zoom down the road. It was a bit creepy. The coolest part of that stretch however was when we got to the top of the mountain and took a short break. We looked out in the distance, and though it was extremely dark and a little cloudy, we could see the snow on the top of Mt. Fuji in the distance. I would have loved to get a picture of it, but it was way too dark so it'll just have to be a picture in my mind.

We finally got to Checkpoint 5, a really nice temple, and stopped to apply some bandaids and eat some onigiri. At least I ate onigiri. Linton had a homemade bacon sandwich which I decided was a great idea for the future. We stayed a little longer than intended at CP5 and then finally I downed a Red Bull and we got going. We got a bit lost trying to get started on the next part, but once we figured out where to go, we made great time. CP5-CP6 has a lot of open road so once we got on the road we got set on a nice, brisk pace and went for it. There's not much to note about that section, really. It'll be a welcome easy part when the actual hike comes.

When we got to CP6 around 2:45am, we realized that we had not seen a single person, car, or anything since we left the bus stop when we started the hike. In fact, the only other living thing we saw besides each other was that black cat. It gave us a sense of really being alone out there. Kind of cool and creepy at the same time.

We left CP6 at about 3am and headed out for the last stretch. This is where things got interesting. By this time, as you can imagine, we were quite tired. We were starting to slow down drastically. We got to a point around 4:00 where we had to go straight up a very steep trail to get up a mountain. It was no gradual incline. It was tough, but it got even worse about 15 minutes up the trail when it started to rain. We managed to get to the top before the big rain started. We quickly threw on our rain gear, wrapped up all of our stuff in plastic, bags, and set out again. The rain was really picking up and fog started to set in. It got to the point where the leader would literally have to stop every 30 seconds or so to see if we were still on the trail because it was so hard to see. We couldn't see more than about 5 meters in front of us. There was a point where we knew we had 2km until our next landmark on our map and we just kept walking and walking and walking. We were sure we were lost. We stopped and had about a 5 minute meeting to decide whether we should go back or keep moving. We decided to keep moving and we're glad we did. It turns out we were still on the trail, it was just taking us a long time because we couldn't see.

We still had quite a long way to go. We were pretty exhausted and started getting delirious. Ashley was asking random questions to keep from going to sleep while walking. I think Linton started whistling. I just walked in complete silence. We were being put to the test. Once the sun came up it got much easier for us to see. That definitely helped our pace. We got to the final stretch of open road and by this time it was really pouring. We walked along the open road for about 4km until we finally made it to town, saw a person for the first time, and made it to the train station just before CP7. We got to the station at 8:15. Altogether the hike took us 12.5 hours. Not too bad!

We learned some things from this hike. We definitely know we're going to be tired at these points, but we learned that positive thinking is the way to go. And we have to continually support each other. We each had a funk during the night at different points, so we have to remember that that's going to happen and not get frustrated if somebody is slowing down or getting edgy. We have to fight through the tests.

We have a few weeks off and then we're going to get back on it after the spring vacation. Sorry no pictures from this last hike. It was pretty dark. The next hike will be a day hike so I'll try to get some up from that.

Thank to everybody who has donated so far. We're getting so much more support than we imagined and getting close to our goal. I think we'll have no trouble reaching it and going beyond. It's really great so thanks a lot!

Oxfam Trailwalker Japan - Fuji crew!

Well as I mentioned a month or so back, on April 23-25 I am participating in a team-challenge to raise money for Oxfam International. The event is a 100 kilometer hike that takes place over 48 hours through the forests, hills, and mountains of Japan. It is called Oxfam Trailwalker.

Oxfam Trailwalker takes place in 12 countries around the world, and it is said that the Japan Trailwalker is the most challenging of all. Take a look at the site to read all about the trail and information on the hike.

So you may be thinking, "What does a 100km hike have to do with rasing money for charity?" I'm glad you asked. Each team of four that competes in the challenge is responsible for raising a minimum of 120,000 yen which is roughly equivalent to $1,346. The money that is raised goes to help people in need in places like Congo, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, India, Mogambique, and South Africa. To read more about how the money is used, look here. Last year, Oxfam Trailwalker Japan raised 49,246,830 yen.

My team is made up of Ashley Janssen from Minnesota, John Land from Alabama, Linton Rathgen from Christchurch, New Zealand and myself. We are called Fuji Crew.

So how can you help? You can go to our Just Giving site where you will find more information about our team as well as some pictures and information about how to make a donation. The donation on the site will be in Euros so your money will be transferred from Dollars to Euros to Yen. But no matter what, it'll go straight to Oxfam and help us to reach our goal of 120,000 yen by April 9. Anything above that amount would be great too.

If you have any questions about the event or anything else, let me know. As we do more practice hikes, I'll start to post some pictures on here and we'll continue to update pictures on the Just Giving site. You can see some of Ashley's below.

Thanks for reading and please help us out.