Yashima and house party

the damage, green = 1000yen, yellow=1500, red=2000, bamboo=3000

there is some story about a guy shooting an arrow and killing a bunch of people so there is always references to this around town. Here its on a manhole cover.

Today Roman and I climbed the tallest mountain in the area - mount Yashima and we had a house party at Adams place at night. 

Mount Yashima was quite far off so we took the bikes and braced ourselves for the 30 minute ride.  That doesn't sound like a long time but honestly with the heat and humidity it felt like we were being roasted alive.  Any small chance at shade brought welcomed relief. With our sunburn we had to be extra careful. 

The first day I got to Japan I saw many people wearing full length tops and pants which seemed like a great idea right as we were biking. 

Once we arrived at Yashima the climb was actually much nicer than the bike ride even though the incline was quite steep.  That is because the mountain is lined with thick tree canopy that provided a shadowy oasis.

We met lots of elderly Japanese people who trekked the mountain as if they were walking in a park.  We had 3 or 4 of them actually pass us without missing a breath while we were huffing and puffing. 

We got to the top of the mountain and had a great view of the surrounding area.  What you notice right away is that there is a lot of construction of buildings horizontally as opposed to vertically like sky scrapers.  I guess that is to prevent damage of earth quakes. 

Coming back down was relatively easy.  We had lunch at a rotating sushi restaurant.  Basically all the food was on a conveyor belt and you took the ones you want.  We devoured our lunch and tried a lot of new sushi that I have never encountered in Canada before.  The best one was the giant eel sushi which had a really buttery texture and just melts in your mouth! 

Night time Adam had his house party and we had a great time playing silly drinking games and socializing with Japanese and foreigners in the area. 

It is currently 4am here now everyone kind of crashed for the night but I am totally awake cause I took a quick nap 

Peace from Aji Cho.

Chillin with my buddas. They all had wool caps on for some reason. Maybe they get cold in the winter lols.