Shopping in Japan, Pt. 1

From someone who grew up in a fairly rural area and goes to school in the suburbs, it is truly magical to be able to walk five minutes to a huge variety of establishments. Japan has a few types of shops that unique to the country and very very awesome.

The Combini

"Combini" or "Kombini", which is short for  コンビニエンスストア, konbiniensu sutoa, is exactly what it sounds like. A convenience store. However these are nothing like the grungy, over priced, truck stop convenience stores of America. Combini are wonderfully bright and clean places with polite staff, hot food, yummy prepared food, and anything else you'd usually get at a convenience store, except cheaper. It's not as cheap as going to a supermarket, but cheaper than a vending machine. The selection is usually pretty good, and they are everywhere. It's common for salarymen to buy their lunch, coffee, or cigarettes here. Some of my favorite things to buy from combini are onigiri, Boss Coffee, ice cream, and buns.

Pictured above is my favorite canned coffee: Boss Coffee in the rainbow can. Canned coffee is a huge thing in Japan. They are sold hot or cold at combini, Aeon, cafeterias, and vending machines. Most of them are sweet with some sort of milk in them, cafe au lait is very popular. Anything labeled "black" however, is intensely bitter. The rainbow can is a good in between. I don't much like coffee, but american style energy drinks are hard to find here, and if you can find them they're expensive. Japanese energy drinks are strange, hard to read, and never contain the amount of caffeine an american is used to drinking. 3 hour lectures are the pits. 

The case on the left is filled with various kinds of meat on a stick. The case on the right is full of one of my favorite hot snacks/meals: steamed buns. These steamed buns are usually filled with meat, vegetables, or red bean and run just over 100 yen each. The quality is also good, you wouldn't guess on first bite they came from a convenience store. They're not dumplings, the outer shell is a soft, dry bread unlike dumpling's chewy damp exterior. I'm not sure if they're supposed to be a comfort food, but they sure are warm and filling on a cold day. 2 or 3 combini-sized buns are enough for a meal for me, though I have seen buns that are literally the size of my entire hand.

My last combini favorite are known as onigiri, or rice balls, a common food in Japan. As the name implies, it's a triangular shaped ball of rice, often wrapped in nori (seaweed), with various fillings. Tuna mayo and pickled plums are two common fillings. Usually I have no idea what's in the middle of because I can't read the packaging and the ingredients and flavors are unfamiliar to me. The packaging of ready to eat onigiri is truly ingenious. As you can see in the picture above, the corners are labeled 1, 2, and 3. The green stuff (seaweed) is actually layered between plastic and doesn't touch the rice ball. If you open the wrapping in the correct order, it pulls the sheets of plastic out and leaves you with a nori wrapped onigiri. This packaging keeps the nori dry and crunchy until you're ready to eat it! They are a cheap and fantastic snack. 

Metro-A-GoGo

Japan is known around the world for their incredible public transport system.  There are a system of buses, the JR line (train), in my area a two part subway system consisting of the Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway.

Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway Map

JR East Map

Looking at a map of the rail and subway system is terrifying, but in reality it is very easy to use even though there is little signage in english, To buy tickets you use automated kiosks which can be set to English. You can buy a one use ticket or get a rechargeable card known as Pasmo (JR lines) or Suica (subway lines). I'm not sure why there are still two separate cards, as they can be used interchangeably, i.e. I use my Suica to take JR trains. Suica cards can also sometimes be used to buy items at combini and vending machines. You have to put down a 500 yen deposit for the card itself, and then can buy a commuter pass if you wish. Fares are a bit on the expensive side, and are dependent on how far you're traveling from your current location. If you're a student and have the proper documentation you can get a 75% discount on a monthly pass. My pass at a 75% discount is 8,790 yen, or 80.43 USD.

The average commute for a Japanese person is an hour each way. It's very clean, very safe, and very punctual. It's also how many people, including me, commute to work every day. This mean at rush hours (about 7-11 and 5:30-9:30) the trains can be packed. For my morning class at 9:20 some of the trains often look like this:

It looks pretty horrible, but it's actually not so bad. The only thing is you can't really carry a backpack and if you can't reach a handle it's easy to flop onto your fellow passengers as the train rocks. People don't really mind because it's unavoidable. You might have gathered I didn't take these pictures; even as a gajin I'm hesitant to take any photos on the trains or metro because of the one danger: pervs. A few years ago there was a serious problem with trash human beings groping women and taking upskirt photos on trains and at train stations. It's much less of a problem than it was, but it certainly still happens. Luckily I have not had any issues with such wastemen, which is probably best for them.

That is the only common worry on trains, otherwise it's so safe people sleep on them. On literally every train I ride there's someone sleeping. Usually a salaryman. Most people do this so much they automatically wake up at their station. I've fallen asleep once or twice, and the conductor announcing the station woke me up. The cars themselves are clean and mostly new-ish. The seats are unstained and comfortable. Some trains have no monitors in the cars, some have old LED style crawlers, and the newest ones have full color monitors. 

At Shinjuku Station

Like the signs in the stations themselves, the information in the cars is in romaji (roman letters) and kana/kanji (syllable symbols and Chinese characters). The above picture shows the signboards for trains arriving soon. About every minute or so they'll change to romaji. Because of this it is very easy to get around, as long as you know what station you need to get to. I think my initial difficulty didn't come from the language, but rather that I'd never had to ride public transport. Once I understood how trains and schedules and lines worked it was much easier. Despite the crowding and expense I love love love public transport here, and I'll be very sad to leave it.

Decent of Fujisan and Onsen

The decent of the mountain was much easier than the ascent, but it was no means fun. Almost the entire trail down consisted of brutally steep switchbacks, and the trail itself was made of loose volcanic gravel.

I'd heard that going down a mountain was tougher on your body, but I never believed it until then. It was nasty on my knees and ankles, even with really good boots. I can't imagine what it was like for anyone who wasn't a 20-something with good joints.  I fully expected to eat it and roll down the trail like some sort of stupid gaijin, which might have been preferable. It seemed like it would be much faster to slide down the trail on a cardboard box, and more comfortable too.

Nothing notable happened on the way down. Our guide let us go our own way after a time, we just had to meet the group at the bus at 11. I think we got back to the 5th station by 9:30, and we were majorly hungry.

Cranberry and vanilla swirl

The first thing we did was get ice cream. It was supposed to be cranberry and vanilla, I don't think it tasted much like cranberry at all but it didn't really matter. After that we had Tempura udon,which might be my favorite kind of udon.

On the top there's cabbage, mysterious pickled crunchy vegetables, and my favorite tempura. It's a type of ground fish paste shaped like a celery stick then fried. Sounds disgusting, but it's actually delicious. I eat it a few times a week. After eating we bummed around the tourist trap gift shops until it was time to get on the bus. 

Bye Fujisan

From here we drove to an onsen in a town near the base of Fujisan. Onsen are traditional japanese baths that are usually geothermal. For obvious reasons I don't have any photos of the onsen, but I can describe the process. 

After you put all your belongings and clothing in a locker, you go to the first part of the bath, which is the actual washing part. In a big open area there are little stations with mirrors, plastic seats, and corded shower heads than can be switched to a tap function. As described in the picture, you're not supposed to wear clothes into the shower room and you're supposed to sit to shower. This is common even in homes. Japanese don't keep the water running and they don't stand while bathing. The onsen provide shampoo, soap, and conditioner so you don't need to worry about bringing your own. I think most westerners would be mortified by the nudity.

There were a couple different tubs at the place we went. When I say tubs, I mean massive Jacuzzis with special things in them. There were three indoor tubs; the first tub we soaked in had black Himalayan salt, the second had calcium from stones, and the last one I didn't go in was a massive copper cauldron filled with cold water.  There were two outdoor tubs: one was made from fujisan's rocks and the other was made from a traditional Japanese wood that can hold water. That last tub was room temperature and a good way to finish our trip. I don't think the baths here were actual geothermal springs, but the IES program is going on a trip to Nikko,where there are geothermal onsen. 

Once we got back to Tokyo Yurika and I took the metro home, and so concludes our expedition to Fujisan.

Night on Fujisan and Accent to the Summit

We stopped for the night at about 10,800 feet, which was below the 8th station. There are larger accommodations at the 8th station, but for some reason we didn't stay there. The mountain hut, as they call them, did not beget the name hut. It was a fairly large building with an open first floor. There were low, traditional style tables where we ate. We got a hot dinner of curry rice and hamburg which was very welcome indeed.

The back and sides of the building were two floors of bunk beds. Sort of.

Behind the curtains were blankets and pillows, and your head rested just behind the curtains. I wouldn't call it private by any means, but with that many people sleeping next to each other it was certainly warm. I'm certain Yurika slept more than I did. We went to bed shortly after eating dinner as we were tired and there was nothing to do. I slept for a few hours, then woke up. The place was still busy until late into the evening, but not noisy. At 10 there were still groups coming in from the trail, and it's wild to think people climbed those rock faces with only headlamps. It's entirely possible but it seems a tad dangerous to me.  Surprisingly it was clear outside and I could see down onto the surrounding towns. I couldn't get a good photo because phone cameras aren't made for that sort of thing but it was really cool. It was also cold, but not bitterly so. One thing I noted during the expedition on the whole was how dead silent it was. After the 6th station there were no sounds except human noises, and when we stopped moving it was eerily silent. Without the hustle and bustle of the hut I'm sure the view that night would have been even more stunning. 

I realized the reason I couldn't sleep was because of the thin air. When you laid down to sleep it felt strange, not like a fish out of water, but some less severe form of the same idea. Many people were taking hits off personal oxygen canisters thought the night.  I fell back to sleep around midnight, and we were woken up at 1 by people getting ready to hike to the summit. Yurika and I got out of bed at about 1:45 thinking we were early for our group. For breakfast we had bento, or would have had bento.

The brown cylinders are thin fried tofu known as aburaage, something I'm particularly fond of, wrapped around rice. I'm not sure what was in the sushi rolls, and the can is green tea.  Anyways we didn't get to eat much of it because our group forgot about us. It was lucky Yurika checked with someone, and we had to put our food in out bags and join the group outside. They repeatedly tell you if you don't feel well not to try and reach the summit, especially because after about 15 minutes of hiking you're not supposed to go back down the trail. I had considered not going for it because I did poorly the past night and the hike the day before was difficult. But since I was all the way there and Yurika was going to try I figured I'd risk it. I was banking heavily on the oxygen canister I bought on the mountain hut. It wasn't a very long hike to the summit and it was much easier than the day before. It was slow because there were a ridiculous amount of people climbing, a veritable traffic jam. There was a chain of lights winding up the mountain, it looked like some sort of religious procession. Yurika had a hard time with this part of the trail, and we were both glad to have the extra oxygen. We got to the top shortly after 5 AM.

Summit Selfie

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures from the top and we didn't hike the crater rim. I didn't have a problem with the weather until we reached the summit. It was bitterly cold there, and that's why we didn't stay and there were few photos. A phone camera requires you to use bare fingers to activate the shutter, and after taking my two pair of gloves off for a few photos I decided it wasn't worth it. We'd stopped moving to, so we weren't staying warm. I'd never much worried about frostbite in my life, but here it seemed like a possibility. I had wool socks on, but they weren't thick wool socks and certainly not hiking socks. My toes started to hurt, then didn't really feel like much at all so I was thankful when we started moving down the mountain.

Sunrise on the summit of Mt. Fuji

Fujisan Acsent

If you're friends with me on facebook you already know that last weekend Yurika and I climbed Fujisan. It was a very difficult hike, much harder than I thought it would be, but we did it. I've climbed two mountains in my life now: Fujisan and Monadnock. Fujisan became a world heritage site in 2013 and about 300,000 people climb at least part of it every year. It is an active volcano that stands at 12, 388 feet. There are a couple trails up the mountain. I took the Yoshida Trail as it was the only one left open. The 13th was the last day ascending trail was open so we just made it. After that day visitors can only come up to the 5th station of the trails, which are generally accessed by car and have shops and restaurants. The 5th station of the Subaru Line is at 7,545 feet, and is where we started.

The trail a little way past the 5th station.

Up until the 6th Station (7,841 feet), it is a very foggy dirt path through evergreens. The mist was super cool and a tad creepy, it would roll in and out periodically. We were lead by a hiking guide, and our group consisted of mostly Japanese people between 25-40 or so. I was the only gaijin, and I saw very few gaijin on the trail. All of them were equipped in full hiking/climbing gear, which was a bit overkill in my opinion. You can't camp or cook on Fujisan, only stay in the mountain huts and eat the food they sell there, or bring your own. There's also no drinking water unless you pay for bottled water at a hut, so you have to carry all of your water with you too. Right before the 6th station we had a lecture on altitude sickness, which I didn't think would be too much of a problem. After the 6th station the terrain became very rocky and very very steep. 

Somewhere past the 6th Station.