Fuji-san, my first Japanese adventure!

I have been very busy traveling since I arrived in Japan because I am so excited to see as much of the country and culture as possible. I am very lucky to have come with the Irish JET’s community, which is much small than other JET groups. There are only 40 of us. We all got to know each other well at Dublin and Tokyo orientation and welcome each other to stay at our houses. This makes its a lot cheaper to travel and see more of Japan. So far I have been able to visit Kyoto, Hamamatsu, Kanazawa and of coarse Tokyo. Over the next few entries I will talk about my trips around Japan and what I have enjoyed most about being in Japan so far. I will also try to compare my life here and my life growing up in Ireland and living in Manchester.

My first and greatest achievement so far in Japan is climbing Fuji-san! We don't have mountains as big as this in Ireland, our tallest mountain is called Carrauntoohil and it is only 1038 meters. I know that most people won’t agree but I really enjoyed climbing Mount Fuji and I think that I might climbing it again next year. A few in my group got altitude sickness but thankfully I was fine. I really liked the trail of lights from other climbers on the way up and the view of the city lights below.

Unfortunately we where half way between 9.5 and the top for sunrise but it was still amazing.

Then from the top the clouds where beautiful! This was some of the other ALTs from Shizuoka who climbed with me.

It felt like I was living in a cloud.

The worst part for me was climbing back down. This is us beginning the great descent!

This is my friend from Ireland who traveled all the way from Kanazawa to climb Fuji-san. We are thinking of trying another mountain next year.