Mt. Ponpon

Yesterday we went on another hike with Koji. The last hike I went on, I hurt my ankle. There has been one hike in between, but I was sick. This hike I was determined to go on, regardless of how I was feeling. Fortunately, I think I'm almost over the cold, and was feeling more or less fine.

The hike started well. Only a short way into the hike, we reached a small shrine, and paused for a break. There I ran into a couple of middle-aged Japanese ladies who started absolutely gushing over how beautiful and white my skin was. They said masshiro several times, which means pure white, and started pulling up my sleeves and down my high-necked t-shirt to get a better view of my beautiful white skin. This sounds creepy, but it didn't feel creepy at the time, I was more trying to stop myself laughing. Then they said good-bye, and pressed lots of snacks into my hands (giving small packaged foodstuffs is very common in Japan). Yay! I get food for being white.

The shrine at which I got food

Apparently this year's autumn colours are below average, as it was warm for longer than usual. There were very few reds in the leaves on the mountains, but there were plenty of gorgeous yellows.

Engrish, enjoy!

Local wildlife

Accompanying us on our hike were several Japanese people with excellent English, and also an exchange student from France, who had both good Japanese and English. We were able to enjoy relatively easy conversation in both languages, though mostly English. In the latter part of the hike, Charlotte (the girl from France), two of the Japanese and I, spent quite a bit of time playing a word game, shiritori. It can be played in English too, though the Japanese variant is slightly different. One person says a word, and the next person has to say a word starting with with the last syllable of the previous word. To my surprise, my vocabulary was quite up to the task, at least with the rather relaxed rules we were using that didn't restrict the allowed words down at all. I don't know how long we were playing, though I'd guess it was close to an hour, and I had no more trouble than any of the others coming up with words, including the Japanese people, though I didn't know the meaning of all the words said by the others.

At the top of Mt. Ponpon

By the time we reached the bottom again, I was again exhausted, but it was very much worth it.

Clean-up kangaroos are being imported into Japan