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The weekend before last was a three day weekend so I took advantage of that and went to Tokyo. I did a lot of Christmas shopping. I could have easily found Christmas presents in Iwata and Hamamatsu, but Tokyo is even more awesome.

I left a little before 8:30 on Saturday so I arrived in Ikebukuro, where my hotel was, a little before 1:00. As I got close to Tokyo some guy walked into the train car I was in, listening to his ipod and singing along really loudly. He walked through the car singing and dancing. Some high school kids got up and started dancing, too. It was hilarious.

After dropping my luggage off at the hotel I ate a quick lunch at Becker's near the station. I read the menu and saw a meat and egg croissant. So I thought it would be ham and egg. It turns out that I didn't read the full name and it was a meat sauce and egg croissant, which meant that it was like spaghetti meat sauce, lol. It was a kind of weird combination. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something I would get again. I also got barbeque and bacon fries which were tasty, but didn't have enough cheese. Probably healthier that way though, lol.


My first shopping destination was Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. In the center of the mall there was a dance performance going on. It was pretty!


There was also a rose display thing. These were a little old looking, but the color was sooooooo pretty!



Later there was a woman in a really pretty dress playing the flute. 



My first purchase of the trip was a bottle of nail polish from Its'demo (no clue what that name means), which is a cute cosmetics store.


They have a collection of polishes there with really cute glitter! They have several different combinations of hearts and Mickey and Minnie and crown shaped glitter. I got one with pink and lavender hearts and silver Mickey and Minnie glitter. I used it the next day. I had some trouble with the Mickey and Minnie glitter pieces not laying flat. But on the last nail I did I pressed it down with my fingers and then used topcoat to cover up my fingerprints. That worked pretty well. It didn't stand out a whole lot over the gold polish I used first, but I think it will be super cute over some other colors!


At Sunshine City I also bought some lotion (White Musk Smoky Rose scent) from the Body Shop. It's a really nice perfumey scent and lasts a long time too. I've been looking for a good scent for winter and this is really nice. All the Japanese lotions I've seen in stores are almost all floral scented and don't last long at all. So yay!

I also bought a cute light blue sweater that is a little bit sparkly and has pearls on the front. I kept thinking about buying it and went in that store like four times before I ended up just buying it. Oh, and I bought a new pair of boots, too. The pair of shoes I was wearing were kind of falling apart and I had forgotten to bring other shoes. I had also forgotten clothes for Monday (so the sweater purchase was actually necessary). I guess forgetting stuff ended up not being so bad, haha.

Here are a couple pictures I took in Ikebukuro on my way to the station.



Next I went to Shibuya. I first looked around 109 for a while and then went to Ichiran ramen for dinner. Yum! 




After spending some time looking at CDs in Tower Records I headed back to Ikebukuro. As I was looking at the map to check the price of the ticket I needed to buy, a man came over and asked me where I was going. I understood what he said, but I just told him that I didn't understand and walked up to the ticket machine. He then started pointing frantically at the English sign and was like, "There's English over here." I then told him I could read kanji (Well, some...) I put my money into the machine as he ran back over to me and hovered over it and pointed to where the ticket would come out. I was afraid he was going to try to steal my ticket or my change. It wouldn't be a big deal since it was only 160 yen and I was only getting 40 yen in change, but still. He grabbed the ticket but then handed it to me. I then quickly headed towards the gate. As I got close to the gate he grabbed my arm and said (this time in English), "Now help me. Give me 300 yen." I quickly ran through the gate. Well, that was weird. His scam wasn't very well thought out. He spoke to me in Japanese most of the time and if I was able to understand him I probably didn't need his help anyways. The next day when I went back to Shibuya he was at the station again just standing around and I avoided him.

When I arrived in Ikebukuro there was some guy at the station doing a puppet performance. He was playing classical music and making the puppet play the violin along with the music. It was so unimpressive, lol.




Outside of the station they were decorating for Christmas. Normally I would be annoyed with Christmas stuff so early, but I was Christmas shopping so it was actually nice.

I headed back to the Sunshine City area to go to Bookoff. On the way there I saw a crowd gathered and wondered what it was. A bunch of people were surrounding a TV outside of a store watching some baseball game. I guess something special was going on? I don't know, haha.


I spent a while at Bookoff and then went back to my hotel. The next day I did more shopping... of course! I wore my dress from Axes Femme and my new boots. Yay! 


I first visited Harajuku. There was a candy store called Candy a Go Go. The girls working there wore really cute clothing and handed out samples. 



It was similar to candy stores at malls in America except cuter. I bought a little bit of candy. I got some grapefruit slices, black currant gummies, mango gummy bears, a gummy flower, and a gummy Euro coin.


Then I saw another store I had never seen before. It was a store filled with K-pop merchandise! They had several TVs in there (I think about 15) playing various music videos. Some girls got really excited about one of them and started singing along and dancing a little bit. They screamed every time one of the members came on the screen. It was entertaining, lol.


I bought a random drink with TOP from Big Bang on it, haha. It was only 120 yen which I was surprised about since it was imported. I had no clue what it was but it ended up just being orange soda, which was good.


Haha, the can cracks me up!

After spending some time in the craziness of Takeshita street, I headed over to Omotesando which has a completely different feel even though it's just a few minutes away.




That tree is sooooooo pretty in real life. My camera could't capture all the rainbowy sparklyness of it!


I bet Omotesando is sooooo pretty when the trees reach their full fall colors.


I went to Kiddyland and bought a cute little plate for soy sauce and dipping sauces and stuff. It's so small and cute! 


I then headed back to Takeshita to go to Bodyline (a cheap lolita store) since it hadn't been open yet earlier.


After Harajuku I went back to Shibuya and ate lunch at Freshness Burger. I was excited to see that the beans burger was back. That was my favorite burger there and I hadn't seen it on the menu since returning to Japan. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as it used to be. The flavor wasn't bad, but it was kind of mushy. Sad. :(

Then I went to Loft for a while and bought a couple cards. Japan has such pretty Christmas cards!

By this point my feet were hurting because of my new boots. Walking around so much when they were new was probably not the best idea. So I went back to Ikebukuro to drop off my purchases and change into my other shoes. I had been afraid that they would fall apart but they were actually holding up pretty well.

Before heading to the hotel though I stopped at Auntie Anne's to get an apple cinnamon pretzel. It was delicious! :)


After eating my pretzel and changing my shoes I headed out to Asakusa. I had never been there at night before and I liked it even better than during the day.


I had read online that many of the souvenir stalls stay open until 7 but that some close earlier. Quite a few of them were closing earlier that day. Many closed around six or earlier. I still had enough time to buy a couple of gifts though.


Sensoji Temple is neat at night!









I didn't get any food from that stall, but I thought it looked cute! :)

After Asakusa I went to Akihabara to go back to the doll store I had visited during the summer. I bought stuff to put together a doll! I tried putting the eye decals on but they didn't stick. I'm going to try again, but if those don't work I'll have to buy some spray stuff. I saw it at the mall in Hamamatsu, but it was 700 yen so I don't really want to buy that to use just once.


Haha, all this stuff looks kind of creepy when it's separate. The head was especially creepy because I had it on a chopstick while I cut the hair.


I started off the next day with a visit to the Pokemon Center. First I took a picture of some cute owls in Ikebukuro.


A giant Pikachu was outside the Pokemon Center. Kids could go inside and bounce around! It looked like fun!

After doing a little shopping at the Pokemon Center I went back to Ikebukuro. Before shopping I ate a quick lunch at Andersen, a bakery. One of the things I had was an apple crumble pastry and it was sooooo good!



I'm not sure who these characters were, but they were trying to attract people into the arcade.

I couldn't find what I was looking for in Ikebukuro so I ended up going to Shibuya again.

As I was about to exit the station I saw an ad for Big Bang's concert tour! I would really like to go, but Jonathan and I are going to Sapporo for Christmas so I need to save money for that. It's really too bad because I will actually be in Tokyo (because we're flying to Sapporo the next day) on the night of one of the concerts!


After doing some shopping in Shibuya (and having success, but not what I was originally looking for) I then went back to Ikebukuro to pick up my luggage at the hotel and head back home. It had been a great trip! It had been a long time since I had done a shopping trip like that in Tokyo. Since returning to Japan every time I've been to Tokyo I've been with Jonathan and he doesn't like shopping like I do. I think three days of shopping would be torture for him. So I took advantage of getting to spend all my time shopping! :)

On Monday night, Jonathan and I climbed Mt. Fuji. It was his first time, but my second time (here's the post about my first time: Fujisan! I Climbed a Volcano!).

The forecast I saw for Mt. Fuji was constantly changing, but it consistently said that Monday night would be clear. It showed PM rain, night clear, and AM rain, but the rain was only supposed to be a few millimeters. As we rode the train from Iwata to Fujinomiya station it got cloudier and cloudier. It was raining in Fujinomiya when we arrived and started raining even harder while we waited for the bus. Shortly before the bus arrived it started to clear up a bit.

The bus took about an hour and a half to reach the 5th station of the Fujinomiya trail. It winds up the mountain through a really pretty forest. It got really really foggy and creepy looking (I guess the bus driver knows that route pretty well because visibility was sooooo low!). It was cool looking, but my outlook for the climb wasn't good.

We arrived at the 5th station and waited for a while to adjust to the altitude. The bus had taken us to 2,400 meters. While we waited, we looked in the gift shop and bought our walking sticks and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we had packed.

The weather at the 5th station wasn't good. It wasn't raining hard, but it was misty and there weren't any good views. I was hoping the forecast was right and that it would eventually clear up.

Last time my friends and I started climbing around 8:30 at night and I didn't reach the top until about 4:45 in the morning and missed the sunrise. This time I was determined to see the the sunrise so we started climbing around 7:00. A man working at the start of the trail told us that we were kind of early and would reach the top too soon. He thought it would be better to wait and climb later since it was cold at the top. But based on how slowly I went last time we went ahead. 

The climb to the 6th station took only about twenty minutes and then the climb to the New 7th Station took about an hour. During this time we saw some people climbing down, but not many climbing up. Most of the time we were alone and when we turned off our flashlights it was really dark. We couldn't even see lights from the stations. It was kind of cool and creepy at the same time. The misty rain was really annoying though and was making me wet and cold. I really really hoped that it would clear up, but my outlook wasn't very positive.

While resting at the New 7th Station it cleared up all of a sudden and we got some really cool views! We could see cities and stars and it was so pretty! It was crazy how suddenly it changed.


We also saw lightning really far in the distance the whole night which was neat. 



Last time I was disappointed that I couldn't get any good pictures at night, but this time Jonathan got some really good ones. He recently bought a new DSLR. Most of the pictures in this post we taken by him.

For most of the hike we were by ourselves. We usually saw a few people at the stations, but it was mostly people who were spending the night there.

I have a diagram that shows how long it should take to hike between the stations. Last time my friends and I made good time between the first few stations but took longer and longer and longer between the later stations. This time, even with taking several breaks (often just sitting down right in the main path of the trail since there was no one else) we took about the same amount of time that's estimated on the diagram. We arrived at the 9th station before midnight. Maybe a little after 11:30?


I think we began hiking again around midnight. It took us about half an hour to reach Station 9.5. From there it's only supposed to take another thirty minutes to reach the summit. But 9.5 to the summit is really really steep though and we were already worn out from all the hiking so we took a ton of breaks and it took us over an hour to reach the summit. We reached the top around 2:00. It was really creepy up there and no one else was outside (I knew there were people sleeping in some of the buildings up there though). We sat in the doorway of one of the buildings, sheltered from the wind, but it was still really really cold. It was just a few degrees above freezing.

Between 2:00 and 3:00 a few groups of people reached the top and wandered around and asked me if I knew where the trail continued to reach the highest point, but I didn't know. They disappeared so I guess they found it.

Around 3:00 more people started arriving. It was getting even colder though and I started feeling sick. I was afraid it might be altitude sickness and I was really hoping it wasn't because I didn't want to have to go back down and miss the sunrise! Luckily I think I was just hungry because I ate a few Pringles and drank some water and felt better. I still didn't feel great though, but it was a good sign that it wasn't altitude sickness.

Sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 the sky started getting lighter, so we headed towards the east side of the summit. The view was so beautiful! I started feeling a lot better (I think the pretty view plus getting up and moving around really helped). We found a good place to sit and wait for the sunrise.











Haha, the old guy in the background is funny.


A little after 5, the sun appeared. Sooooo pretty!











After enjoying the pretty view for a while we headed towards the highest point. We passed by the post office on the way there and Jonathan sent a postcard to his parents. It's such a tiny little post office! It was in a different building than it was last time, but I don't think it was any larger. It's really funny because there are bunk beds right behind the counter! They have a short commute to work, haha.



Jonathan made the observation that Japanese people rarely wear bright clothing, but it's very different on Mt. Fuji!



That's the highest point in the background. I didn't go up there last time, but I kind of regretted it. There was a long line up there, but some people were just walking past the line. We figured out that the line was just for people taking a picture with a sign at the top so we got out of line and went to the top. The sign wasn't even really at the highest point. I think the highest point is right behind where Jonathan is standing.


There's a weather station at the top. I thought it wasn't used anymore but I just read that it was manned until 2004 and now it's automated.


The view from that point isn't any better than the rest of the summit, but you might as well go there if you've climbed the rest of the way. But if you don't make it up there it's not really a big deal.

We started our climb down around 6:30. It's horrible! It's steep in many places and even when it's not steep it's still easy to slip because of all the loose rocks and dirt. It's less tiring than climbing up so you don't have to take many breaks, but it's more difficult.



We didn't take many breaks on the way down and usually just briefly stopped for a few minutes at each station. At one of the earlier ones we stopped to eat a snack. We finished up the peanut butter cups I had made. So tasty! They were a really good snack for hiking Mt. Fuji. I took raisin breadsticks, dried fruit, Pringles, and peanut butter cups. The peanut butter cups and Pringles were the best snacks and helped a lot!




I gave this to Jonathan a couple years ago. It was kind of a joke, but he really likes it, haha. He meant to take a picture at the top but he forgot and took one on the way down.


One of the stations was getting a delivery. Those crazy vehicles drive stuff up the mountain!


We eventually got back to the 5th station around 11:45. It took us about seven hours to hike up and five hours and fifteen minutes to go down. Last time it took me about eight and a half hours to hike up. I guess I am in a lot better shape than I was last time!

When I got home yesterday afternoon I got some chicken and rice from Family Mart. It was my first real meal in a while! So tasty! I went to bed at 7:20 and didn't get up until after 7 this morning. I've been up a few hours now and still feel a little sleepy. I'm sore too!

There's a Japanese saying that says something like, "A wise person climbs Fuji once and a fool climbs it twice." At first I felt like it might be true when the weather was horrible. It just couldn't be as amazing of an experience the second time. But then the weather cleared and I saw a beautiful sunrise! I'm so glad I climbed Mt. Fuji again and actually got to see the sunrise. Though now that I've seen the sunrise, I don't think I'll climb Mt. Fuji again. If I just had to hike up that would be fine but I really hate the hike down! It was worth it for the super pretty view at the top though! :)