Journal…Of Sorts…

Last weekend, Sharron and I took a mini-trip out to Mt Fuji. We had gotten some maps from the tourism center on base, so decided to skip the train this time and do some actual driving. The roads here aren’t very similar to American roads as there aren’t very many freeways. Mostly, there are regular highways complete with stoplights. And traffic. Don’t forget the traffic. We headed towards Camp Fuji early (for me) Saturday morning and got in after about 3-4 hours of driving. Camp Fuji is a small Marine base near the base of Mt Fuji. We didn’t know if they’d have any rooms to stay in, but we figured we’d try to get one there anyway. If anything, it was close to Mt Fuji and a good place to head towards. They did have some rooms available and they were much cheaper than their Japanese counterparts ($30 vs over $100) so we decided to stay the night there. It was still only mid-afternoon, so we headed out to do some exploring. The road to Camp Fuji was headed up the mountain, so we just got back on that road and took it up as far as it would go. The road ended about as high up as most hikers start the hikes, so that was pretty cool. We took a few pictures (had to stop because we were freezing), bought some souveniers from the gift shop and then got back into the car to do some more driving. It was really a pretty neat little area around the mountain and I wouldn’t mind going back some day. I know for sure that I’d like to hike Mt Fuji in the future as well. Maybe I can talk Urn and Sharron into doing it with me. :-)

Sunday morning we got up and headed towards the northern part of the mountain area known as the 5-lakes district. It’s supposed to be the best area to view the mountain from and be filled with lots of good scenery. We saw lots of nice mountain passes and even got to stop at a little “old-fashioned” town before getting to the lakes, but that was about all we could see that day. The weather had turned sour and we had lots of clouds obscuring our mountainous views. It was pretty cold and Sharron joked that it might snow on us. We decided to head towards the lava caves that were on our map to see what they were all about. On the way there, we drove by a cool looking shrine, so we decided to stop and check it out. It had the neatest walk from the road. It was just a long straight path with tall trees and pagodas on both sides, but it looks really cool. I took a few pictures and will post them when I get a chance. Whilst we were taking in the beauty of the shrine, I noticed some white stuff. Sharron’s snow joke had turned real. Before long, the snow was falling hard and fast. We headed back to the car and decided to continue on to the caves despite the snow. There were two caves we could have visited. They were both lava flow caves, but one was an “ice” cave. We went to the ice cave as our brochure had some cool pictures of what we might see. The cave had a very low clearance which made it hard to get in to, but it was really cool and fun at the same time. We didn’t see much in the way of ice though, I guess we should come back in the spring. :-) When we got out of the cave we saw much more ice, in the form of snow. It was really starting to stick so we jumped back in the car and decided to call it quits for the day. Lots of fun for a little weekend trip.

Tuesday night Sharron and I went to the base theater to see Serenity. Finally! Only 2 months after it came out in the states. I was worried for a long time that it wouldn’t be shown here at all. In the end, they only had one showing, but at least they had it. The theater wasn’t packed, but there was a good number of people there. Not bad for a little niche movie. I have to say that I was having a good time with it all the was up till about the 75% mark. (Highlight text to read) This was the part when Wash (the pilot) dies. He was my favorite character. Ever since the very first episode when he was playing with the dinosaurs (I think that’s the first scene even). I was in complete shock and I just couldn’t even get in to that last 25% of the movie. I remember people laughing and a bunch of interesting things happening on screen, but I just couldn’t get back in to it. A bunch of people on the net have posted similar reactions as this. We all feel betrayed by Whedon. Sharron said that it made the situation a lot more real and made her fear for the rest of the crews survival. Others have said that it makes more sense for someone to die, it just wouldn’t be plausible for everyone to survive a crazy situation like that. The only thing I can applaud Whedon for in this sense was that he made me care about a fictional character so much that I actually have feelings for them. Damn you Joss Whedon.