Mt.Fuji – A Bike Trip Round Lake Kawaguchi, originally uploaded by walrus713.

It has been more difficult to update than I had imagined. With only two weeks in Japan, I try to “accomplish” as much as possible during the day for maximum experiences in the smallest amount of time, but this has the inevitable result of a tired body. But enough excuses.

So, I’ve been at Mt.Fuji area from the 28th to today, the 30th (it is now 9:30 in the morning.) The train ride (bullet train, or shinkansen in Jap.) here was absolutely gorgeous, for only after 20 minutes departing from Tokyo, the landscape changes from heavy industry and packed residences to mountainous regions with farm land and quaint villages. As I watched the transition, I didn’t get the sense of a huge contrast of culture from city to countryside. It made me realize that despite having been in a large city, the people, in general, were quite peaceful and relaxed, despite their (probably) busy schedules going to work or school. So, it was a uniformity among the culture that I realized going from city to country…and that is fairly uncommon.

It has been cold and cloudy here for the last couple days and started to rain this morning. Yesterday, I took an incredible bike ride around the lake which I’m on. There are 5 lakes surrounding Mt.Fuji, and I am on a lake to the north of the mountain. Unfortunately THE mountain (of Fuji) has not been visible due to the clouds .You can make out only 1/3 of the bottom. While it’s unfortunate, people usually consider themselves lucky if they get a clear day on which to see it. However, as you see in the photo above, there were plenty of other beautiful mountains (around 1600m) for the eye’s delight. My bike ride led me to see a bunch of small villages which gave me a lot of insight to the culture. I’ll post my writings from my notepad at a later time.

So now I head to Kyoto, which is one of Japan’s most important cities, for it’s one of the few historically significant areas that has been untouched by the bombings of World War II. It contains thousands of temples and shrines. I’m quite excited to see these things in person, but it seems somewhat of an oxymoron that I desire to see these attractions of a religion that believes that desire leads to suffering…hmm… well, I think I would suffer more knowing that the money to get over here would be a waste if I didn’t make the most out of it.

Thank you for the comments so far, those of you that had posted, and I look forward to seeing you soon when I get back.

I arrive in Kyoto this evening, and I hope to post first impressions when I arrive. Arigato gozai-mas!