DAY 11: HARAJUKU

just another adventure day. this time we explored the harajuku district of tokyo. again, nori was busy studying for finals, so we were out on our own. supposed there is a bboy shop that taisuke works at somewhere around here. too bad we couldn't find it. we found a "condomania" shop though hahaha. day started out with food and ended with food. what more could i ask for. 

DAY 10: MT FUJI (PART 2)

i didn't take a lot of photos of the hike itself. it was way too dark, and i was too focused on just moving forward and not freezing lol. but here are some photos of the top and our hurried hike back down. me and lucio literally ran down the whole thing in under 2 hours. we just wanted to get off the damn mountain and go home ...

you can see though why people take the trouble to make the arduous hike up. beautiful view. no place quite like it. 

DAY 9: MT FUJI (PART 1)

mount. freaking. fuji.
this was definitely, in my opinion, the most memorable part of the trip.
just looking at the photos brings back a lot of feelings and memories haha.

i've begun to realize that pictures say more for me than most words. they're also more fun to look at than my awkwardly constructed sentences haha. but anyway, i'll give it a bit of context. basically, we left early in the morning for our long journey to the peak of mount fuji. we had to take the subway, train, and bus to get the the 5th station, which is basically the starting point of the hike. we were basically doing the sunrise hike, so that meant hiking ALL NIGHT to see the sunrise in the morning. we arrived at around 5ish, messed around at the "base" camp and started our hike a little after 7pm. was really fun, and we started out on a very light and positive note. we had our bags packed, food, water, pocari sweat, extra clothes, and our cameras out and ready. little did we know that the journey would become more of a fight for survival then anything else ... danng. we didn't make it to the top till around 4am ... over 9 straight hours of hiking through the night in freezing weather ... i dunno how we did it. honestly, i feel like i should write way more, but it was more of an experience than anything else. i'm glad we did it, but i'm not sure i can say that i'd like to do it again. maybe i'll write more later ... i'll just let the pictures do the talking for now.

DAY 8: LUCIO ARRIVES!

our first morning in japan. we got up a bit later than usual (we were kind of tired from our long day of traveling) and went out in search of breakfast. just in case you haven't yet noticed, we do a lot of "searching" haha. nori had to leave early in the morning to study for his finals, so we were on our own. we found a decent place to eat that had fake versions of the sets they served so we just pointed out what we wanted ... i got a curry and ramen combo:

and like the title says ... today was the day lucio arrived! he was running a bit late, but we decided to meet him in front of kfc outside of ichigaya station.

after we got this sexy man, we went back to nori's place to plan out the next couple days. we were supposed to go straight to mt fuji that night for our big hike, but we decided to postpone it for the day after ... let lucio rest. nori also wanted billy to teach a workshop for his university breaking club. so yeah, we did that instead. i finally got to session! practice spot here at sophia university is really nice. it's a little sticky but its soft and pretty big ... supposedly it's one of the hottest session spots in all of tokyo. a lot of famous bboys and bgirls from all around japan go there to practice. issei and found nation actually were there only a few days ago. was a lot of fun. finally starting to get my airflares down ;D amy, ron, and david took the opportunity to take a short nap lol. 

afterwards we went walking around with nori as our guide. got some food first. was an interesting bbq place that served all kinds of cow parts i guess you can say. was pretty pricy though, so we were still hungry after ... night went well though. nice to have everyone together at last! :)

SECOND TO LAST

have only today, tomorrow, and part of wednesday left. can't believe this trip is coming to a close lol. me and lucio are with nori at his university's computer lab ... went to the tsukiji fish market this morning. we were supposed to go early - like at around 4 or 5am to see them auction off the fish ... but we couldn't wake up lol. went to sleep too late i think :p so we left later at around 7 or 8ish just to walk around and see whatever there was left to see ... and find something to eat. started raining pretty much as soon as we left the house. fish market was aiite. saw a lot of fish ... got to eat some fish haha. i got a tuna, egg, and okra rice bowl that i thought was pretty yummy. kind of hungry now though again. idk what else we got planned. we're just kind of chillin' and doing whatever till we meet up back at nori's place at 5pm ...