India Festival

Every time there's a festival in Yoyogi park, it gets crowded, as with all the areas next to it. It's just flooding with hungry people that want to shop. It's no wonder the festivals are filled with almost just that. Shops. This big scale party was full of them. Indian food. It was great.

Me and Hiromi had a bit of a falling out, mostly just mis-communication so we split up and I went my own way home. I decided to hang out in Yoyogi park for a bit, then I met a nice French girl named Julie. She became a one day best friend. We cruised around the park, had a street beer near Harajuku and an Izakaya beer in Shibuya. We made our "good journies" to each other in Shinjuku she left me with a French air, cheek to cheek kiss and a warm happy feeling. I love these kind of people.

Then is was back home to where we left off.

Me and the Hot Pepper

India Festival Entrance

Capoeira music in Yoyogi

Traditional music in Shibuya (Outside a pachinko shop)

Flower Day

Another morning bike ride and some more super bright flowers. I'm sure we have some as brightly colourful as these back in New Zealand. I must have just never noticed. I'll give big ups to anyone who can name them.

Shinjuku Matsuri

I was going to find a suit today. I just stumbled upon this one. I don't rightly know what it was all about. Looked fun, but I was busy.

Accupuncture

For a while I've been getting accupuncture. It really hurts! If they keep doing it after a while, it releases the poisons that have been gathering up and makes your blood flow more freely. This means better health, softer muscles and general well being. It's a painfull process but very effective.

Eifu-san heats the needles.

Heated needles

The idea of this is to warm the problem organs directly. These are a kind of incense that are for heating the needles to warm your insides directly. The needles are around 12cm long.

End of a long day

Crossing the bridge

Duck shinanigans

Local yakisoba for lunch

Mizuki and Masando piked out

My Waterproof Phone

Around the temple there are beautiful lakes and a breed of more alien plants. Below is a picture of what it looks like beneath the surface of the water. I wanted to see if my phone was really water proof. My heart was beating fast. Turns out, it is waterproof. Yay, I can keep using my phone :)

Big pond

Crazy flowers

The fish swim left

The fish swim right

Inside Fuji Temple

And inside, you pray for good things to happen and buy little charms to keep your bad luck in check or to bring some of the good type, like fortune or love or well being etc. The little wooden blocks have wishes written on them all by different people. I think they burn them every so often.

Wish blocks

Temple central hyper praying terminal

Kegs of sake

Fountain water direct from Mt. Fuji

Fuji Shrine

This is the shrine specifically built for Mt. Fuji. There's a lovely temple, a river, a pond, fish, a bridge and super fresh water coming from an underground current directly from Mt. Fuji.

Fuji Shrine

Local Chooks

Bow and Arrow dude

The temple

Fuji Temples

Later on we went to look at some tall trees, lion statues, concrete mail box thingees and temples...

My hippy tree hugging wife

Temple place

Mail box

Happy kitten statue

Mt. Fuji

So we left our pickup somewhere close to Nagoya and travelled by car to Mt. Fuji. We didn't sleep at all. We arrived at Mt. Fuji at about 4 in the morning, all of us without sleep from the past day. Mizuki and Masando even worked the day before. It was freezing bloody cold, it was raining and about 11 hours climb to the top. It wasn't a good idea. We didn't end up climbing the mountain. But we did go for a walk and saw a bit of the fauna.

Gearing up for a breakfast walk

Plant from Venus

The top of Mt. Fuji

But not really

To Mt Fuji

In the morning there was a performance being prepared but we had to leave. We were headed to meet Mizuki and Masando to climb Mt. Fuji. As we left Ako-chan came out and gave us a lunch box for our travel. That just made our day! Thanks again Ako-chan!

The Tsukinoniwa stadium.

Looking like a rock band

Ako's special lunch box

And she cut it in the shape of Mt. Fuji :)

Shunsuke's House

Nagoya isn't so far from Tsukinoniwa so we payed a visit and saw Masaru in hospital. It was good to catch up with him again. Even as close to the other side as he is, he's still happy and energetic as ever.

After we stayed at Shunsuke's house. It's being featured in a magazine as one of the most organic houses in Japan. And it does have a truly organic atmosphere about it.

The entrance

The front yard

Terra at Tsukinoniwa

Ban and Birds Wedding

Congratulations to Ban and Bird. They got married today. What a fancy wedding. It was kind of like a game show but very enjoyable. The food was fantastic. We went all the way to Nagoya to join this one.

Ban, Bird and the host

That's the cake!

A back pack keg, filling everyone with beer

Fancy food

Summer Bugs

This is another trip to somewhere I looked up on Google Earth. It's called Jindai Temple but I never actually found the temple. I did find a few bugs and some nice park areas though.

Spider

A park near Jindai Temple

The path toward Jindai Temple

A brown cicada