Today is Christmas! Which means I will be on a plane to Hong Kong. I will be back in Japan on Janurary 4th. I will have plenty of pictures for all to see as well. Hope everyone else has a great winter vacation.

My friend invited me to go and watch a Karate tournament that her friend was competing in. The tournament was interesting. I watched as little kids battled as well as old men try their best. There was different levels for men, women, age, and rank. I saw some of the higher level men really beat each other up. It was surprising how brutal the tournaments can be at times as I saw one competitor, who had a really bloody hand, punch another so many times that the other person’s gi was turning red. Surprisingly though, my friend’s friend won first place in the lower level women’s competition.

It has been over a week since I went to Edomura (Edo Wonderland) to receive useful Ninja training (read previous post). Actually, Edomura is a theme park that is built like an ancient ninja city. Edomura is up near Nikko, so I went with my friend Matt who works for ECC close to there. When we got there the weather was slightly cold yet still very nice. Edomura was amazing, there were ninja’s everywhere just walking around. The entire area looked like it was the set of a movie as there was no modern looking buildings to be found anywhere. We saw a few ninja shows, a cool water show, and a parade thing. We also saw some interesting ninja museums, like the ninja tools museum, and the katana museum. They also had some cool areas, like the prison area where they had amazing wax figures in some of the old Japanese torture devices. There was also a ninja maze, and a ninja haunted temple thing, and a ninja house, and many other ninja things. Yet with all the cool ninja things to see and do, the trip was also very informative. I learned a lot about the famous ninjas of the past, and about the biggest of the ninja clans, and lot of ninja history as well. Afterwards we decided to walk to the train station. It was getting dark and the temperature was maybe dropping below freezing, not to mention that I was unprepared for cold weather as always, yet it was still fun trying to find our way back to the train station.

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It has been a really long time since I’ve posted anything, but that is because nothing interesting has happened. Well actually, I went to Edomura last week and did some other stuff, and… okay so I’ve just been busy, or lazy, or tired. But now something really worth posting has happened: I almost got run over by a car. (Some of you would not be surprised by this fact)

Anyway, I was on my way home from the grocery store today, and to pass the time while I walked I was making an email on my cell phone. Which was also what I was doing as I was standing on a corner waiting for the light to turn green so I could cross the street. So with a bag of groceries in one hand and a cell phone in the other I was unaware of the incoming danger. All of a sudden I heard an extremely loud screech - a loud bang - and squealing. My ninja skills were then immediately activated as I did a back flip (jumped backwards ) out of danger while the car, who had just been in an accident, came to rest at extally where I was previously standing. Satisfied that my ninja training was put to good use I continued home unscathed.

Here is Mt. Fuji as seen from where I live. Yes, I could see Mt. Fuji from my house! It was supposed to rain Sunday, but instead, when I woke up we had the most brilliantly clear and warm day. After staring at Mt. Fuji for 20 minutes though the wires, I decided to climb Mt. Takao yet again. Since it was a Sunday, I got two of my friends to go with me as well…

The weather was absolutely perfect there. Also, there were very few people as not many Japanese are as spontaneous as I when it comes to traveling. I took path 6 this time to be different from the last time I climbed Mt. Takao. It was surprisingly beautiful at points…

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Here are the videos of the kids in Hakone playing taiko for me. Sorry about the slightly poor sound quality.

The kids are not that good, but it was still very interesting: Download (1.2MB)

One of the kids holds the poster upsidedown while another yells ‘hantai’: Download (800KB)