opinios

Before I go into it, I never usually do this. Really. Ok, I might have done it once before, but I swear it is not something I do regularly. I was tired at school today - one of our sliding doors was rattling in the early hours of the morning and I couldn't sleep, so I got up at about 4.30am, and the resulting fatigue hit me after lunch.

So I snuck into the staff toilet and sat down in one of the cubicles (lid down, pants up). The cubicle is so small that I could lean forward just a little bit and it was the perfect place to have a little nap. I needed the catch-up, ok? There was half an hour before my first afternoon class and the kids were making a racket running up and down the hall, but I was able to shut most of it out and pass out for a good 10 or 15 minutes.

Until I got sprung.

It came unexpectedly - someone was shaking the door that my head was leaning against, from the outside. I got startled and stood up immediately, my mind rapidly searching for the Japanese for "I'm nearly finished!", when I realized that there was no-one there.

From a few snippets in the hallway I managed to hear the word jishin (earthquake) a couple of times. Of course.

It was Mother Nature who sprung me. After the sizeable quake in Hokkaido last week and the large tremor in Tokyo last weekend, I should have almost expected it.

Not that I felt any less embarrassed at being sprung...

Well, I am studying like mad in the countdown to this year's Japanese Proficiency Exam. Having flown through level 3 last year I am taking a crack at level 2 this December. But the only flying to be done this time round is likely to be my hands in the air (out of frustration, not out of joy).

Yes, the jump in difficulty from level 3 to level 2 is enormous, and I am beginning to ponder the wisdom of my decision. But, I've paid the 5,000 yen entry fee and on the off chance that I might scrape through, I'm going to give it everything I have. If I was to sit the exam right now I would guess that I would probably get about 20%, but there is still (a bit of) time. Kim is also having a crack at the exam this year - level 4 - and has a much higher probability of passing as her nihongo has really come along lately (surprisingly, since she actually started doing the occasional bit of study!)

Because I won't be thinking about much else, over the coming months I plan to write mainly about Japanese study: books available, methods, useful internet resources and the like.

The most interesting part of studying Japanese is the kanji character set, so let me start with one of the best dedicated kanji study sites, kanji clinic.

Although the design is terrible (really Mary, yellow on black is hard on the eyes), the author writes a column for the Japan Times about studying kanji, and scrolling through the archives of these columns there are lots of useful tips and links. I find kanji characters fascinating, but there are so many of the bastards, so reading as much as possible about the different methods you can approach your study of the kanji with is imperative.

Another great site is rikai.com. For the student of Japanese, this web site is honestly amazing. You can input the URL of any Japanese web page, and it will spit out a version of the page which provides the reading and English meaning of all of the kanji characters on the page. [Note: for people who can't read any Japanese, this doesn't mean it translates the page into English. You do need to be able to read hiragana and have some knowledge of Japanese grammar to get the full meaning, but you can probably get the gist]. There is also a great kanji flashcards page on this site too, very comprehensive and complete!

For studying in the wee hours of the morning though, a computer simply cannot beat a good old-fashioned book, and after trying a few different ones, I have become an evangelist for James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji 1, the best-selling seminal text for teaching kanji characters through mnemonics.

Although it addresses over 2,000 characters (almost enough to read a newspaper), this book only teaches you how to write and understand the meaning of each character - not any of the Japanese or Chinese readings. So once you have completed the book, you will then still have to do additional study to learn how to read them (that's where my precious electronic dictionary has come in handy). However, for those who live in Japan and have a higher level of conversational Japanese than written Japanese (usually the case), this task then becomes simplified: each time you happen on a new character on the way to work, there is less learning to be done because you have the meaning under your belt already. I have found this true for many of the characters that appear in day-to-day life, such as on advertisements in the train and in signage on the street.

I actually bought a similar book a while ago entitled Kanji ABC, by Foerster and Tamura, and worked my way through creating stories using their method. However, I found their method to be massively flawed, for reasons I will detail another time. In short, if you are interested in learning all the kanji (an ominous sounding task), then I firmly believe Heisig's method is the only way to do it. Buy the book.

More late, back to the study! I am only up to character number 1,201. And after that there is the readings of each character, vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension, listening...

On the whole Japanese summers are horrible. The heat and humidity are unbearable; houses and apartments are not built with any insulation so the energy costs escalate as air-conditioners run 24/7, the cool air dissipating from the building as soon as it is released. And even worse, many buildings such as public schools don't even have any ceiling fans, let alone air-conditioning, so that lessons become a real trial. And this year the summer has come late, so even though it is September we are still suffering.

But there is one thing that I have really enjoyed about this summer, and that is the cicadas. Growing up in Adelaide, the sound of summer at dusk was the much quieter call of the cricket, so hearing the brash and noisy chorus of cicada trills everywhere I turn is quite a novelty for me. And they can be loud.

Once I got over their likeness to the scary moths from Silence of the Lambs, I became fascinated with these peculiar insects, and did some reading about just how such a small thing can make such a racket.

It turns out it is only the males that make the call - the females make no sound (no contrast with the human species shall be drawn!) The male cicada has a membrane attached to its abdomen, and by flexing a muscle it can cause the membrane to buckle up and down, emitting a loud buzzing or shrilling sound, to attract females during mating season.

The membrane is similar to that toy that was so popular in the 80s, the pop-ball. It was like a rubber tennis ball cut in half, which you turned inside out and placed on a flat surface. After a few seconds it would make a loud "pop" and fly up into the air, returning to its original shape. You could also "arm" it and drop it on the ground, where it would immediately pop up back up again. Hours of fun.

BUT the most amazing thing about cicadas is their lifecycle.

Can you believe that these guys burrow into the ground for between 13 to 17 years, just to eventually surface for less than a month to breed and consequently die? Their sole mission in life, the one thing that they must think about constantly during that extended period of eating sap from roots, is to pro-create. That's it. Hide away and build it all up so that you can emerge, sow your seed, and succumb to death, leaving a former shell of yourself behind (literally). Amazing.

Also interesting is that:

Musical instruments have also been inspired by the cicada's membrane.

Cicadas have no sting.

In Shanghai, cicadas are eaten as a delicacy.

Bob Dylan's song "Day of the Locusts" was inspired by the cacophany of cicadas he heard while receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University, even though cicadas and locusts are in different entomological families.

There you go, a bit of trivia for the day.

A bit of a longer post than normal, skip to the photos on 35 degrees if you can't be arsed reading the whole thing.

Climbing to the top of Mount Fuji through the night to watch the sunrise is one of those things that most foreigners have on their list of things to do before they leave Japan. I don't know if all of them manage to tick it off, but I definitely did this weekend, and I would have to say it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.

And one of the most brutal.

Getting reliable information on climbing to the top of Mount Fuji out of season is like trying to convince your buddy Albert that he will need to take warmer clothes when hiking at 3,700 metres: damn near impossible. The information on the city of Fujiyoshida web site claims to list official information on things like buses, toll gate open times and the like. But it conflicts with the times that officials tell you over the phone and again with the signage on the way up to the fifth station. Anyway, if anyone else tries the climb during the month of September, the toll gate is definitely open til 9:00pm. I can't vouch for any other month of the year - try calling the Kawaguchiko tourist information centre to check. Not surprisingly, you can't believe everything on the internet, no matter how pretty a font it is written in or how official-looking a page it is retrieved from.

Officially, the summer season for climbing the mountain closes on the last day of August, and with the close of season comes the close in support for the thousands that still want to do it - including public transport. In September the last bus from Kawaguchiko to the fifth station during the month of September leaves at 1:20 in the afternoon. Considering the severe state of disorganisation that we were in at 9am on Saturday, getting to the base of the mountain from Tokyo by 1:20 was distinctly out of the question, and for a while there it looked questionable as to whether we would get there at all. But luckily I was able to apply my irresistable charm to some friends who live in Fujiyoshida (Martine we owe you one!) to arrange a last-minute ride to the fifth station, and from there everything else fell into place.

Finding that fine line between not carrying too much but not having too little is a tough one. I pretty much used everything I packed so was pretty happy with the selection. There are a few lists out there of recommended things to take on the hike, but here is another one (I fit it all into a 35 litre backpack). I started off in shorts and t-shirt as it was a mild night, but that was to change after the seventh station.

Matt's list of things to take to climb Mount Fuji:

Gore-Tex waterproof and semi-windproof pants and jacket

Thermal underwear t-shirt

Neck warmer (bought for the Hokkaido ski trip last winter)

Fleece

Those snowboarding gloves I bought last winter

Cargo pants (a bit too trendy but very useful because of the pockets)

Beany (Australian for "woollen hat")

Spare t-shirt to change into the next day

Thick socks that I forgot to wear on the way up but turned out to be useful for changing into the next day for the ride back to Tokyo

Petzl head-flashlight (plus spare batteries)

Broad-rimmed hat ("Terry Towelling" style, for the trip back down in the morning as UV rays up top are harsher than below the clouds)

Sunscreen

Sunglasses

A 2 litre bottle of water plus a couple of 500 ml sports drinks

Scroggin (fruit and nut mix often referred to as "Trail Mix" by North Americans)

Video camera

oni-giris that we bought on the way

goggles (I didn't take them but wish I had)

If we had have climbed in October or in one of the spring months, I probably would have taken another fleece as the summit would probably be even colder and windier than it was. I can't imagine trying to do it in rain.

At about 7 pm on Saturday our friends dropped Nick, Al and me at the fifth station, said goodbye and good luck, and drove back down to the warmth and comfort of the real world, leaving us stranded in the soullessness of the car park.

Being such glorious weather and given the number of people that climb Mount Fuji even after the season is officially over, we were counting on the restaurants at the fifth station to be open. They weren't. And all we had was a grab bag of oni-giri, some chocolate bars and a kilo of scroggin.

We managed to text-message some other friends who were going to join us for the climb to ask them to bring some bentos for dinner for us (it involved walking half way back to the toll gate and holding the phone up high in the air to get reception). Unfortunately, they were even more disorganised than us and didn't make it to the fifth station until the next day. So we were stuck with a less-than-ideal dinner as preparation for the big climb. The signs were ominous.

One of the difficult things to consider was what time to start off - we wanted to arrive at the top in time for sunrise, but not too early. Shivering our nuts off at the summit for two hours wouldn't have been the ideal prelude to that golden ball rearing its head to mark the start of a new day.

But waiting around in the car park at the fifth station listening to the running engine of a bus certainly wasn't an option either, so at about 8 pm we began the short walk to the sixth station in the hope that a more peaceful place to kill time would avail itself. It was an easy stroll, and just around the corner we huddled down in such a recess, away from the wind and with a stunning view of the city lights below. It was then that we wished we had a pack of cards, as we were about 9 hours from sunset with only 5 hours hiking ahead of us.

Much to our surprise, even though the fifth station had been a ghost town, the rest of the mountain was still alive all through the night. Entrepeneurial mountain hermits were selling overpriced Snickers bars, instant coffee, cup noodles and futon space, and the price went up proportional to the elevation (500 yen for a Pocari Sweat near the top!)

Rest points further up the mountain gradually became dictated by the increasing numbers of tour groups - there is nothing more frustrating than being stuck behind a group moving at snail's pace, with their ridiculous souvenir Mt Fuji wooden staffs jingling bells. And the rocks became more and more treacherous, too. Not to the point of having to do any actual climbing, but considering it was the middle of the night it is no wonder people die every year making the climb. I just kept feeling incredibly lucky that it wasn't raining.

Each stage got relatively steeper and our bodies fought hard against fatigue, sleep and the increasing cold, but the stretches were pretty much in keeping with the estimates on my map... except for the last leg. The suggested ninety minutes for the slog from the eighth station to the summit took us about two and a half hours; admittedly we had to contend with the crowds (and I thought we would avoid them going off-season!) But a "false peak" shattered our hopes when we thought we were nearly there, and in the wind it just felt like it was going on and on forever.

When we finally reached the summit it was upon us before we realised it (after the previous letdown we were naturally a bit skeptical). And wasn't it worth it - when hiking by torchlight we hadn't paid any attention to the view behind us, but when we arrived and turned around it took our breath away (what was left of it, anyway).

I have to say a few words about young Albert: even though the foolish bastard did come ridiculously unprepared for such a climb (he thought that his Eastern Canadian heritage was enough to get him by without a hat, gloves, jacket, scarf...) Luckily Nick and I had some excess clothing to save his freezing arse, but at least give the man credit for making it to the top in a pair of shorts!

We got our pole position for the show that was about to unfold, and the pictures tell the rest of the story. Sure, being in a plane is a similar view, but it's not quite the same as feeling like you're on the top of the world, surrounded by a dense cloud cover that extends as far as the eye can see. As it ever so slowly unveiled itself for the shivering, red-eyed masses, our sun looked every bit the heavenly entity that so many cultures have worshipped it as over the years.

When the sun was high in the sky, highlighting the fluffy cloudscape in bright yellows, we wandered over to take a peek inside the crater. The wind was intolerable though, volcanic dust flying through the air like miniature wasps with our eyes as their target. I can see why people bother to lug goggles all the way up just for the time they spend on the summit. We decided to pass on making the 60 minute trek around the edge of the crater and started our descent, still on a high and in awe of the view before us.

Once out of the dust the only distraction I had from the magnificent view was that karaoke favourite "Top of the World" running through my head.

The descent to Kawaguchiko was quick (2 and a half hours) but the terrain is not as fun as many like to report. There are plenty of nasty rocks to break up the momentum from sliding through the gravel, and although physically we just had to slog it out, the view of the clouds stayed with us for an amazing two hours before we hit the cloud line to distract us from annoying rocks and near tumbles. Albert and I took time out to appreciate the view for one last time while Nick pressed on ahead, and when we passed into cloud everything became enshrouded in mist and the magic that it creates.

Nick had beat us to the bottom and was looking as weary as we felt. But there were high-fives all round as we congratulated each other, headed to the nearest restaurant for a ramen and beer breakfast to celebrate, and consequently passed out at the table.

An artist from Belgium by the name of Schaaflicht has submitted this very clever piece, which he calls simply Rosita. If you are interested in seeing more of his work then check out his collection of photos here.