Ten tremendously thrilling days

It's already been more than 10 days ago since I arrived in Japan, but until now I didn't really have the occasion to update this blog, sorry for that. It took some while before I got the login-name and password for the internet in my dormitory and once I got that it took until now before I had the time to sit down and try to produce an interesting account of my activities here.
Those past ten days surely have been lively, exciting and a lot of fun. I came to Japan together with Ignas Jorritsma, a friend from high-school. Normally he's studying international economics in Tilburg (the Netherlands), but this year he'll be an exchange student at the university of Oita on the Japanese island Kyushu. Before going there, he's spending two weeks in Tokyo, so we've been roaming around the city enjoying the last weeks of our holiday. Since we've both been in Tokyo before, we've already seen most of the tourist hotspots. Therefore, we tried some unconventional sightseeing and explored several Japanese passtimes. After arriving in the youth hostel in Asakusa in the north-eastern part of Tokyo we went to a public bath in that neighbourhood. This quite simple and regular Japanese custom was a perfect way to relax after a long flight and dragging our luggage from the airport to the hostel. Not just the three different baths ranging from cold to very hot and a special electric massage-feature (when sitting between two rows of electric chargers electric shocks electrify the body) were worthwhile, but especially the Japanese customers made it a nice experience. A businessman who had been travelling a lot ceased the occasion to practice his english by talking to Ignas and I tried if I could communicate in Japanese with another guy who appeared to be a buddhist priest of a local Tendai temple! Now there's already one example of Japanese culture without the exotic exterior. Instead of seeing him in his priestly robe in a temple burning incence and reciting sutra's I was just sitting next to him in the bath chatting about studying languages and buddhism in Japan, but my Japanese was not good enough to get into details. However, it was interesting to hear about the many temples in that area of Tokyo. If I remember correctly, he said that only in Asakusa there were about 260 temples (most of them small ones).
In the evening we went to eat in an izakaya near the youth hostel. We actually wanted to get a good bowl of soba or ramen (Japanese noodles), but only after we had taken a seat we discovered that we were in an izakaya. This means that they don't serve big dishes but small portions of food to accompany the drinks. To have this for dinner is more expensive than some noodles but also more fun and you can spend more time enjoying the food, the drinks and the atmosphere. Wether more expensive or not, I wanted to go there anyway because it was called Tanuki, just like the association of the Japanese Studies department in Leiden. It appeared to be a good choice, cause it was a very nice place with friendly 'bartenders' who served us drinks and prepared our food. We were sitting at the bar so we could see all the vegetables, fish and meat they were frying for us and the other customers. There were businessmen who came there after their work, a family who spend a nice evening there, a couple (or soon to be couple) and some groups of friends or colleages all having a good time and creating a lively atmosphere.
After this first day we spend our time going to a baseballmatch in the Tokyo Dome (the Giants against the Tigers, 2-7 if I'm correct and we had joined the Giants supporters), the sumo wrestling tournament that's taking place now, the Yasukuni-shrine and it's museum, some museums for modern (post 1868, the year of the Meiji revolution) and contemporary (post WWII) art and I moved from the hostel to my dormitory on the 16th. One great experience that I just can't leave out is our 17 hours walk (from last friday afternoon until saturday morning) to the top of Mount Fuji and down to Kawaguchiko. We went there with an american and a french girl who are also living in this dormitory, taking the bus from Shinjuku to Fuji fifth station (that's as far as you can go by bus). From there it's about 5 hours to the top, so we arrived there just in time to see the sunset around 18.00 o'clock. It was cloudy, but on top of the mountain we were standing above the clouds and we could still see beautiful pink, purple, orange, yellow and red colours. There was no bus going back to Shinjuku from fifth station in the morning, so we just climbed down to Kawaguchiko, which took about 12 hours so that we could take the bus from there at 7 o'clock. Maybe the bus company has a deal with the many small hotels on the mountain where you can spend the night for about 40 euro's. It's really amazing how they profit from all the people climbing the mountain: even on the top there are small restaurants and even a post-office so that you can send a postcard from mount Fuji. However, when we arrived there those were closed because the climbing season had already ended and apparently nobody climbs the mountain to see the sunset. Most people climb at night to see the sunrise, but the bus-schedule did't allow us to do that without staying at one of those hotels or just wait for hours at fifth station. At night when we climbed down, the sky cleared and next to the beautiful star-speckled sky above we could see the lights of the cities in the valley underneath.
When we finally got back to Tokyo I and the two girls had to go to the university to register for the courses we want to follow and after that we got some sleep to get ready for the party that was organised by two international student associations. Next time I'll tell more about the courses I choose, the people I've met and the dormitory where I'm staying.