we generally ate our dinners with the fukudas and takashi’s mother at her place. every meal was an adventure, as any number of unfamiliar items were continually placed in front of me. i ate everything, near enough, with a minimal of facial muscle distortion, and soon began to distinguish what sorts of things i liked and what i didn’t. japanese food is very good.
the first night there my dad and i went to bed early, due to jet lag, and woke up accordingly early on thursday morning. that day we went to work with takashi at the wycliffe center [takashi and my dad on the way to the station to go to the center]. (i should actually put “center” in scare quotes, since it was a one-room office with a living quarters directly above). my dad wanted to see the office for obvious reasons, and i was excited to see how wycliffe was doing things in other parts of the world (it’s really a fascinating organization, with divisions in most of the world’s countries). there are 5 or 6 people that work in wycliffe japan, of which takashi is the director. we hung around the office for a bit, and i got to know some of the employees a bit. i also learned how to type japanese on a windows computer, which was, to say the least, fascinating. i really wish english had as interesting a writing system.
more began to unravel then in the mt. fuji debacle. takashi had asked a pastor friend of his (takahashi-san), if he wouldn’t mind showing us around the base of mt. fuji. the plan was, my dad and i would take a bus on friday morning to fujiyoshida station, in a town at the base of the mountain, and mr. takahashi would meet us there. he would drive us in his car up to the 5th station of fuji (which is “open” all year round, and from which the traditional hike to the summit begins). that way, we would get as close as takashi wanted us to get, without attempting to do something as foolish as climb to the top. takashi and my dad (who had been somewhat wary of doing mt. fuji out of season in the first place, and who was probably wiser in me in that the many stories of people dying on the ascent made him take heed) cheered this plan as excellent, but to me it was the worst of all possible plans. i could think of nothing more unsatisfying than to drive to the base of the hike, look up to the top, and then turn around and head back, hearing, “now wasn’t that fun?” i was definitely in a conquering sort of mood, not a be-conquered sort of mood. but there was nothing i could really do except act disappointed, which i did in such a way so that my dad would get it and not takashi (i didn’t want to offend our host).
anyway, after that, takashi conscripted the wycliffe secretary there, misao, to take us on a tour of the shinjuku area, which she did [shinjuku 1] [shinjuku 2]. we visited the bus station to get our tickets to fujiyoshida, and went to a christian bookstore in the area, where i picked up a very nice japanese bible, written in furigana (kanji with the hiragana readings). then we took leave of misao, caught a train from shinjuku to soshigaya-okura, and walked the mile or two back to the fukudas, where we arrived just in time for dinner!
my dad and i talked before going to bed that night about the fuji situation. he understood my disappointment and said he wanted to climb himself. one way or another i convinced him that we should bring all our gear in our packs the next day to fuji, just in case we could get the takahashi’s to give us leave to climb the mountain. he agreed, and so we filled our hiking packs with 4 liters of water each, tons of trail mix, my stove and fuel canister (empty at the moment), warm clothes to combat the near-freezing temperatures if we should reach the summit, and various other necessities. then we slept, and i dreamed of standing happily on the crater of the volcano i so wished to defeat.
