Camp

Well, this past weekend, I went on a "camping" trip with my university here in Japan. Apparently their idea of camping is staying at the YMCA near Mt. Fuji. At any rate, it was kind of a rough weekend for me. We were supposed to meet up at school at 8:30 AM to take the bus to the YMCA, but I had woken up late and then my umbrella that I've had forever broke so my host parents gave me another one that was really inconvenient. And of course a typhoon was coming in so it was raining really hard and the wind was blowing.

I had tried to use my raincoat instead, since I was going to be carrying luggage, but for some reason it had a knot in the pull string on the bag that it was in, so I couldn't get it out. Then, once I had gotten on the city bus that was running late, I realized I had grabbed the wrong bus card and would have to pay with cash. And of course, I didn't have the correct change and the bus was packed. So, when I finally got to school (just on time) I was supposed to check in, but I went to the wrong booth and so I had a minor melt down before I finally got where I needed to be.

And once we got to the camp it was raining even harder and we were all shuffled into a small room where they made staff introductions. Afterwards they kept shuffling us back and forth between these buildings and of course we can't wear our shoes inside because they're all wet, so we kept having to take our tennis shoes off and put them back on again.

And after all of our activities I decided to take a shower. Well, the thing is that this YMCA only had community bathing rooms. So you walk into the the room and there's a curtain between the entrance and the cubbies, sink, and restroom. And then there's a door that leads to the bathing area which is basically a HUGE room with Japanese style showers along one wall, and a huge pool-like bath in the other corner of the room. And of course their were no curtains or anything separating the showers or bath. Luckily I got in there before too many people started coming in.

Then we slept in some pretty nice cabins, with heaters, which was nice since it was REALLY REALLY cold outside. Then the next morning dawned bright and clear. I looked out of the back window of our cabin and I saw...Mt. Fuji! After breakfast we started to do the activities we signed up for. I had signed up for boating in the morning and the onsen (hot spring bath) in the afternoon. Well, the boating was disappointing. We were only in the boat for about 5 minutes. And then I wasn't able to go to the onsen due to some complications and so I didn't do anything in the afternoon.

But other than that I made a lot of new international friends and I got to see Mt. Fuji! Here are some pictures.

Hope you guys are enjoying this!