Mt Fuji bicycle hill climb, Liam's hurdle run, Erin and the grandparents arrive..

Liam was selected to compete in a hurdle event at school against other schools in Tochigi. He was the first American student from NishiSho to compete in this event. The children came from all over to compete. If you can win at this event you move on to a bigger meet and do it all over again. Liam was really excited and trained after school 4 times a week for 3 weeks to prepare for the event.

He did great. In the first round he was third and so he moved into the second round. Second round he placed fourth and was eliminated. We are very proud of his result and he worked hard to compete in the event. I attached a video of his first performance for you to see him go.

This past weekend was the Mt Fuji International Hill Climb.

This event is actually huge in Japan. This year there were 4668 participants. The course is run on the Subaru Blueline which is a toll road that runs up to the fifth station of Mt Fuji. Start is in a parking lot 1 km before the toll booths of the road but official time starts just before the toll booths. Finish is 24 kilometers and 1255 meters later. The entire course was uphill averaging 5% climb with a max of 7%. The course record is 1 hr set by a pro rider.

My original plan was to drive down the night before, register, and then sleep in the car. A few hours before leaving I got a phone call from my friend Maeshima san asking if I wanted to go down together and stay in his hotel room. It sounded like a better plan and so I drove to Utsunomiya picked him and his girlfriend up in the van and headed to Fuji. The van was a little tight, but everything fit with little effort.

After arriving we checked in walked around checking out the booths and then headed for dinner. After dinner we went to an onsen (hot spring) to relax and then went to bed early. The next morning we were up by 4:30 am and on our way by 5:20. Maeshima for some reason was able to get access to the closest parking area so we drove almost to the start, parked and unloaded the bikes. We even had time to leisurely prep the bikes and head out for a warm up.

The start was a rolling start and official time was not recorded until about 1 km in (so we actually rode 25 km). The time was recorded via a chip that was mounted to the front fork. We rode over a green mat and I could hear a chime when it triggered. The ride up was actually more challenging than I thought. I have trained on some of the hills in Tochigi (close to home) that have a much steeper angle to them. I think what made this difficult was the length, altitude, and the sheer number of people participating. The beginning of the course was a little steeper than the end and so my pace was a little slower than I had planned. As a result I became frustrated that I was not going faster and I also felt that it would be difficult to maintain my pace if the difficulty stayed at that level. At the 3rd or 4th station there were men playing Japanese drums loud and rhythmically to motivate the riders. It actually did help me to re-focus and I was able to pick my pace back up and finish strong. There is a company that goes to the events to take pictures that you can buy. I bought the one below from them.

In the end I was able to finish the course in 1 hr 13 min. Before the race I wanted to get 1 hr and 10 min. In my class there were 1040 people, my time was good enough for 50th place, out of the 4668 people that participated I was 213th. If I could have met my target of 1 hr 10 min I would have been about 16th in class. Anyway I am happy with that result. At the top while waiting to meet up with Maeshima san I ran into another friend Hakamata san. While we were talking we were approached by a reporter from a cable television company and asked if we could be interviewed. I was happy because I was able to answer all the questions, and in Japanese..

At the top Maeshima san and I posed for some pictures. This year Maeshima san could better last years result by 2 min.

The view from the 5th station was great. At the start of the event we could see Mt Fuji very clearly, but by the time we reached the top clouds had rolled in and we were above them. The picture below is looking out over the clouds and you can see other mountains off in the distance.

We hung out at the top for an hour or two checking out the souvenir stands and some of the bikes people had ridden up. I got a chuckle out of the gentleman below. He was intent on getting a good photo of his ice cream with Fuji in the background. He probably stood there for 5 minutes taking pictures so I snagged one of him.

Kate laughed at me for laughing at him as she said I did the same thing he did when I took the below picture. In my defense I have two things to say.. 1. You can tell by the quality of my photo that I did not spend so much time taking it. 2. My photo is of a Mt Fuji pastry with Mt Fuji in the background, it is much more meaningful..

At the bottom we were given bags to put gear in for the ride down. I put a jacket, arm warmers, leg warmers, gloves, and a hat. The items were driven to the top in a bus and we picked them up before heading down. It is a good thing they have this service as it is really cold at the top and as much effort as it takes to ride up, it takes none to go back down the 24 kilometers. Without the extra clothing we would have frozen.

I snagged a short video of the coast down. There are still a number of people making their way up the mountain on our way down, some have resorted to walking, but they are still moving up..

At the bottom we turned in a ticket for a bowl of Udon. It definitely hit the spot after burning all those calories.

The event is huge and draws people from all over with a huge variety of bikes. One bike was saw was made almost entirely of wood. I saw this same bike in a Japanese magazine and it was $20,000..

Erin and Grandma and Grandpa Hughes arrived in Japan this week. They were able to ride the bus from Narita to Utsunomiya with no troubles by themselves. Everyone was tired after arriving and started to fall asleep as we talked a little. More adventures to come with them in the next post.

That is all for this post, have a great week.

Tobu Dobutsu Koen Amusement park, Two New Kit Kat flavor.

Last weekend we went to Tobu Dobutsu Koen. It is an amusement park/zoo not far from Tokyo. We actually bought the tickets to go months ago, but either the weather was bad or we were busy and so we could not go. Finally we got a day that we were free and the weather was cool, but not raining. We made the trip by car along with the Shionome sans.

The park is an interesting mix of rides and zoo animals. Here all the children are posing in front of the giant condors.

This one is a Secretary bird from Africa. They eat snakes, small animals, and insects. The children determined that this one was female because of the long eyelashes, but I have absolutely no idea how to tell them apart.

I had Kate go to the other side of the penguin pen to get a photo of the penguins and her together. She was super excited to pose for the photo as you can see.

There were animals from all over the world. White tigers, dear, American bison.....etc.. The children enjoyed seeing the variety of animals. I took the picture below just after feeding the camel carrots. Liam was funny because the camel kept looking for more food, he didn't trust it because it was checking him out and so for the picture Liam wouldn't take his eye off of the camel.

After going through the zoo portion we hit the ride area. Kate, Chizuko, and the children all got on the Music Express (At Ceder Point Ohio this was always called the Matterhorn). As a child I loved this kind of ride, but now that I am getting older my equilibrium is not as good and it only takes about 1-2 of these rides to do me in. As a result I didn't ride it.

Here is the Shionome sans on the Sky bicycle. Is was a pedal car that rode on a metal rail maybe 30 ft off the ground.

We had seen these things before in other peoples photos, but never actually seen them ourselves. In one area of the park there are a number of animals with coin slots on them. For about $2 American you get the opportunity to ride them around the park for maybe 3 minutes. In the picture it really looks fun and exciting.

This video however shows the real story. Before we put the money in the kids were really excited to try it. There was a lot of pent up excitement as they waited for the money to drop. I finally got both coins in the slot and.........well you can watch the video.

There was also a doggy ride in one of the section. It was clearly for small children, but I talked Liam into getting on it with me. I figured if I rode it with a child I wouldn't look like such an idiot. Finally that didn't help and I ended up looking a little silly. We did actually have fun on it and there were a number of Japanese people that laughed and waved at us.

The park had two coasters, one wooden and one steel. In front of the wooden coaster there were two picture boards. Taka san posed in the one as he did not go on the ride. I also stayed off of this one as I have been having a little back pain. After riding the Son of Beast wooden coaster in Kings Island Cincinnati and taking a pounding I decided it would not be the best therapy to ride a wooden coaster.

Kate posed in front of the other as she did actually ride the ride.

There were actually a pretty good variety of rides at the park, but I am sure no one is interested to see a picture book of all the rides at the park. One ride that is very common in Japan is the ferris wheel. As we have driven or travelled around Japan we have seen tons of them. This amusement park was no exception. The interesting point (and I don't know if it is typical or not) is that the wheel never stops. It moved pretty slow and we loaded into it and got out as it rolled by.

We could see the entire park from the ferris wheel as well as the surrounding city. I took a picture of the other coaster from the ferris wheel. This one I did ride as it was steel and smooth. I am actually not a big coaster fan, but I have now ridden quite a few. I checked out the big hill on this one and thought "I have ridden worse", but the first drop was pretty intense. I think the mechanism that takes you up the first hill gives a little extra push at the top and I could really feel it in my stomach.

We were able to enjoy the entire day and left just before the park closed to make the trip back home to Utsunomiya.

Recently I found a couple of new (at least to us) Kit Kat flavors.

The first is wasabi Kit Kat. The initial flavor is of chocolate which is soon replaced by the wasabi. The wasabi is not overbearing, but subtle. Definitely different.

The second was spicy pepper Kit Kat. This one also has the initial flavor of Chocolate. Actually Kate and I tried them together and at first I said to her "do you taste the pepper?" Just after I finished saying that I was hit by a little spice. The spice is not like an atomic chicken wing, but there is a little tingle of heat. I will probably never crave either one of these flavors, but they are both interesting and different than any other Kit Kat I have eaten.

That is all for this post, have a good week..

Rice field working and duck release.

I am currently running a behind on the blog. So the first portion of this post was from last weekend. Then I jump ahead to today, but I will save yesterday for next week as I will be at Fuji. The week after that I will try to get back on schedule.

Two weeks ago we planted rice at our Takanezawa community rice field. This year I got to drive the tractor for one pass. Liam and I loaded onto the tractor and the supervisor told me which lever to press to make it go forward. Immediately after I pushed the lever we started to move and the supervisor lost his grip and bailed into the field. He was laying in the mud as I was about to run over him. He had not yet told me what to push to make it stop. I knew which lever made it go so I slammed the opposite lever out of instinct and thankfully it stopped. You can see the supervisors side is all muddy in the picture below, that is the reason why..

After the machine planted we all entered the field to plant the areas the tractor couldn't get or missed.

Liam and Colleen were both very good helpers.

And as always they enjoyed getting muddy and catching frogs.

That all happened the same day we picked up the ducks to take care of for two weeks.

Kate is still making the bentos for the children on occasion. Her latest creation included gyoza with a smiley face as well as a variety of other foods to satisfy the children.

Last weekend we went to the Takanezawa eco center for a small festival. There were a number of displays on hand as well as a variety of food vendors. They also had a hot air balloon making station. The children decided it looked fun and gave it a go. When we went into the room to start we saw that our neighbor Yamashita san was one of the volunteers. Below he is helping Liam to tape the sides of the bag that would become our balloon.

When the bag was all taped up and the gondola was added it was time to decorate. We all had fun drawing on the balloon to spice it up a little.

After the taping and decorating was finished we took it outside to the launch station. The back was pulled over a bamboo tube. Initially a hair dryer was used to inflate the balloon. Once it was filled with air they blew a torch through the bamboo to really heat up the air inside.

We all joined in to give the count down and whoooosh the balloon was let go and flew way up into the sky. String was attached to the balloon so it wouldn't float away, but it still got up pretty high in the sky.

Later we went bowling with the Nakamichi sans. While bowling Kate told Yuta that he had a lucky jacket and she wanted to borrow it. He let her, so she shoehorned into it. Definitely a little on the small side. We all had a good time bowling and hanging out together.

When we finished bowling we went back to the Nakamichi sans. While the adults hung out talking the children played The Game of Life in Japanese.

For dinner the Nakamichi sans ordered pizza from Pizza La (a Japanese pizza company) and purchased pastries from a baking shop just up the street. All of the food was delicious. They also served us a really special Japanese tea that was $8 a bag. It is made from only select tea leaves. The difference in flavor between it and regular green tea was actually quite easy to taste. It was very good, but I won't be running out to buy a bunch of bags any time soon.

This weekend marked the two week mark for the ducks and so we took them back to the rice field to let them go. Everyone was a little sad to see them go, even though they constantly made a huge mess that mostly Kate and on occasion the children had to clean up. Both ducklings grew during their stay. The all yellow one got giant. They stayed healthy the entire time we had them and they were very energetic.

When it was time all the children lined up with the ducks and then let them go into the field. The ducks all immediately jumped in the mud and started eating stuff out of the muck.

They all looked to really enjoy the mud and the company of all the other ducks. We initially thought they may have a little shock going out on their own as Kate and the children really spoiled them with attention, but in the end they looked really happy. The big yellow one was easy to pick out of the crowd so Kate snagged one last picture.

While the ducks were still getting used to their new home we were sent into the field to weed. Anything that was not rice we had to pull out. Liam jumped right in and got to work. He said "if you want to have good rice you have to respect the field."

After finishing with the ducks and weeding we drove to a strawberry farm to pick and eat as many strawberries as we could. I got separated from the group at a signal and so it took a little effort as well as help from some of the other cars that got separated, but we finally made it. I think the weather has been a little tough on them this year and so they were not quite as sweet as last year, but tasty none the less. We all got our fill before leaving for home.

Have a good week...