Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Mount Takao

After the Halloween party, most people were too tired to do the usual karaoke until 5am thing, so we went our seperate ways. I, for one thing, felt like drinking... so I did. The next morning I had quite a headache from the cheap convieniance store wine but was determined to keep the good times rollin'. So I decided to hike up Mount Takao which is the closest escape from the concrete playground that is Tokyo. I left in the afternoon, so by the time I got there, most people were on their way down. The scenery was phenomenal. As soon as I stepped off the train it was like being in a whole other world. There were trees everywhere! And Hills so steep they were only a few degrees shy of being cliffs. Armed with a chocolate bar and a bottle of Gatorade I began the steep ascent. It took me nearly 2 hours (mostly because I stopped to explore sidetrails and take a zillion pictures.) The path was clear, in fact paved, and the route was littered with statues and shrines. Near the very top was the main temple and shrine (Buddhism and Shintoism coexist) where there were great statues of the Wind and Thunder Gods as well as monks doing their evening meditations. When I had almost reached the top, I passed a young man who seemed to be in a rush. I nodded and walked past him, but he suddenly turned and came back. He told me that he would go with me to the top. Grateful for company, we marched off together. While we walked we talked as best we could. After reaching the top, it was quite clear that it was getting dark and we were the only ones left that high up the mountain. I was unconcerned about this, but Akki appeared to be afraid of the dark. Later on, near the bottom, he explained that there were scary stories regarding the spirits of this mountain and thats what he was afraid of. But as long as there were two of us, he was okay. We got along incredibly well and when we got to the bottom, we met up with his friends who had just started dating that day on the mountain. They thought it absolutely hilarious that Akki went up alone and came down with a foreigner. They invited me for dinner and I was happy to join them. We went to a Korean Barbeque (you order raw meat and cook in the middle of your table) where all three of them work. So it was a very friendly atmosphere and the two guys were hilarious. Talk ranged from Canada to porno to the ability of Yoshi's girlfriend to break a man's heart with a simple little sex-y (pronounced sex-why) gesture. It was pretty amazing how we managed to spend 4-5 hours together having a great time even though noone could speak the other's language with any fluency. What a great frickin' weekend.

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