Shizuoka and Christmas!

Well, a few days ago I went to Shizuoka! Shizuoka is about 180 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.

We went by Shinkansen (the bullet train). Let me tell you... the trip took 1 hour and 30 minutes... with several stops.... so about 1 hour of travel time... 180 kilometers an hour.
It was pretty neat :) It takes longer to get from Chiba to Tokyo on a regular train....

Anyways, Shizuoka is just south west of world famous Mt. Fuji! Therefore, the train runs right beside Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is 3770 meters high. It's interesting because the city beside Mt. Fuji, Shin-Fuji, is at sea level. So yes, there are NO mountains or even hills in front of a 3770 meter high mountain and the ocean, which makes Mt. Fuji look HUGE. HOWEVER! As I seem to not have any sort of luck with seeing Mt. Fuji (still haven't seen it from Tokyo... which apparently is rare), it was raining when traveling to Shizuoka. So I did not see anything except a VERY faint outline of it's bottom third.

When we arrived in Shizuoka, we were greeted by cloudy weather, luckily not rain... We headed off to a place called 日本平 (Japan Flat). It's a little mountain in the middle of Shizuoka City that was supposed to have a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji, and in summer, have many pretty plants, flowers, tea farms, mandarin orange farms, rose flowers, and more. Of course, it was very cloudy, 6 degrees with a brutal wind from the ocean that made it seem pretty close to freezing or colder. So we couldn't see Mt. Fuji... cept a few short moments where we saw a faint outline of the lower parts of it. We had a great view of Shizuoka though, and a great view of the Ocean, so not all hope was lost :).

After just wandering around for a while longer, we headed back to Shizuoka Station (静岡駅) (btw, if any of you ever go to Japan... for no matter how long, a VERY useful kanji to know is 'station': 駅。　おぼえて　(Remember it) :) ). We went to somewhere in the station... oddly enough I don't remember where... ah! Wait, we went to a bagel cafe! Very good teriyaki chicken on a blueberry bagel there...

After that, we decided there was nothing left to do as it was too late, so we headed to our hotel. It was POURING. Luckily, I happen to have a wonderful jacket that is water proof :) Just my feet got wet. We arrived at our hotel and slept until 9 the next morning.

We got up, had a small breakfast, left, and found another cafe to have more breakfast in. We also read the 'what to do in shizuoka' booklet we got while there. We ended up wanting to go to a park that used to be the site of an ancient castle that has since been destroyed. The park is still there though.

The park was nice, and the day was WONDERFUL. The weather was great, 18 degrees or more I would guess. Perfectly clear, and sunny. After the park we headed off to a buddhist temple. The temple was not the reason for going there though. The temple is built at the base of a mountain. (this is still in the middle of Shizuoka City). However, there are paths heading up the mountain that lead to a shrine eventually. There is a wonderful view of Shizuoka and the surrounding area there. I got many pictures, that can be viewed here .
Sadly, there were clouds starting to come in from the north, that hid Mt. Fuji for my pictures... Luckily, at least I was able to see Mt. Fuji a few times that day.

We decided to take an experimental way down the mountain down a side trail off the back of the mountain. It took quite some time to get back to the station.... (2 or so hours) hehe. Oh well, 'twas a nice walk. We grabbed a couple of bento boxes and hit the Shinkansen back for Tokyo once again.


Christmas has also come and gone now for me. I spent the day in Tokyo, mostly looking for new headphones and a case for my new ipod nano video (green) that I got from my parents ;). I did find some stuff, and got it. Had dinner with Asako at a realllly neat restaurant (looked very ancient-like), and went home. Not too much happened other than that :P I did go to Asako's parents place on the 24th and had a very nice evening there though. I FINALLY got pictures of them there... but not on my camera, so I'm just waiting for them to send me the pictures, and they will be here :).

I've also added two extra pictures to the Chiba album:
A christmas one
A funny one

Merry Christmas all :)

MC!!!

Thats right! I'm back and MCed!
MCed?
Moved and Cell Phoned!
That's right! I've moved finally in to an apartment. It's a small one (like all places in Japan), but quite perfect for just me. I actually moved here Monday... (5 days ago), but didn't get internet to blog about anything until today.
Also!
I got my cell phone! It's very neat... like all phones here... It can play TV for free, play music, but of course in order to use the music feature you need windows... go figure, not even MacOSX support, how stupid. Oh well, it could only play wma files... which is stupid too, not even mp3.... *sigh * oh well. It can surf the web, use email, all that jazz, has a gagillion other features...
here, the feature page for it. http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/904i/f904i/

Tomorrow I'm going to Shizuoka by Shinkansen (bullet train), which means I'll be going about 280 kilometers an hour :D I'll also be passing by Mt. Fuji on the way there! So I'll grab many pics if the weather is good...

I'll make a more detailed post on that afterwords... I'll also upload pictures of my place and Shizuoka when I get back... Right now it's 12:36 AM and I should sleep as I have an early start tomorrow.