Before we get into the weekend adventure, first, I’m going to go a little bit into the work that we did this week because I realized my posts sound like we aren’t doing anything. This week, we went through every part in the Arduino kit, learned how to adequately give the proper voltage and current to components, and began brainstorming and prototyping. We decided on a cart that follows you around automatically. At first we came up with this design for luggage, but then we generalized the design to be used for anything from helping out in the garage to helping people with their groceries while shopping. We went to Akihabara to a dedicated robot store to buy omnidirectional wheels. We will begin construction next Monday.

OK NOW FOR THE FUN STUFF

THE IZU ISLANDS: HACHIJOJIMA

So initially for this weekend I was planning on heading to Korea. However, I honestly had no ambition to go to Korea. I was really enjoying Japan, and there wasn’t anything that I was really excited to go see. But, I did really want to go to a beach. In Tokyo, there is one (1) beach and its literally man made with imported sand (bruh). Also, every time I’ve went the coast was littered with dead jellyfish. Not cool. So I started researching and discovered that there’s a cluster of islands next to Tokyo that I can just take a ferry to go see. Easy peasy. 9 islands to choose from, which one do I pick? I was looking through the pictures of each island, and as soon as I opened Google images for Hachijojima I knew it was the one. It showed a group of people hiking around the ring of a volcano on a misty day. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!? So I bought an overnight ferry ticket to leave on Friday and get there Saturday morning at 9 am.

This was my ferry. For some reason it has the flag of Norway on it?? I still don’t know why

These were the living quarters. 10 people to a room, with a teeny tiny divider between all of us. Thankfully only three people were in my room, so it wasn’t cramped at all.

Sleeping on the floor was insanely uncomfortable, if you could believe that. Barely got any sleep. Do you see the tiny pillows they gave us? It’s that black rectangle. How is this humane…

Anyways I woke up to this absolutely gorgeous view

But unfortunately a couple hours later we hit my island and instead of the sunny day I was hoping for it was pouring. And I mean POURING.

But I didn’t let the weather get the best of me. As soon as I jumped off the ship, I didn’t get an umbrella (like I definitely should have), I just began to hike over the mountains to get to an onsen which happened to be on the other side. Google maps said it was like 2 hours (oh how wrong this estimate would be).

On this hike I definitely discovered more about myself. For the first hour or so, I was just playing music in my head and trying anything possible to just kill the time. But by the 2nd hour when I was completely drenched, my whole bag soaked, and only a steep hill to climb I locked in and started thinking deeply. This discovery has inspired me to go on a pilgrimage on the Shikoku islands after iSEED is over. It’s 800 miles, 88 Buddhist temples where you walk around one of the smaller islands of Japan called Shikoku.

Ok I know what you’re thinking when you look at this picture. “Didn’t you say you saw the picture of the people climbing the volcano and it made you want to go to the island?? Why am I seeing a picture of you on a different mountain with the volcano in the background??” Ok I realized that I could hike the volcano, but then there was literally nothing on the other side. So I chose the other mountains instead. I just really wanted to go on a hike.

The views and nature were stunning. I’ve never been surrounded by so many different plants and literally everywhere. It was soooo green. and waterfalls were around every corner. AND tourists have no idea this place exists. Keep this place on the DL.. I’m trusting you whoever is reading this.

On the way down, I think my insanity and hunger finally got to me. Keep in mind it’s like 2 pm now, I’ve been walking for literally 4 hours straight up a mountain and I haven’t seen any sign of humanity or used my phone so I am tweaking because I feel like I’m the last person alive. Every sign I see is dated with like 1856 too. I was just yapping out loud and making sounds because I couldn’t stand how quiet it was. So I keep walking and like a flash of electricity ten thousand years of evolution and hunter-gatherer instincts hit me to notice a berry bush that looks edible:

Usually when you see berries, they clearly look poisonous. Like those little red spheres in bunches. Obviously don’t eat them. But these looked like raspberries (this one I smushed). And when I smelled them they smelled sweet. Instantly my stomach activates and before I wasn’t hungry, now I can feel the hunger pangs. So I research online to see how edible these are and turns out it’s actually a famous berry on the Izu Islands called the Japanese wineberry or Rubus phoenicolasius which, guess what, is an Asian version of a raspberry!! I did my due diligence to make sure I wasn’t going to die, then just popped it in my mouth. It was actually very sweet and ever so slightly bitter. Like how fruit was properly supposed to taste like before we genetically bred them to be sweeter and sweeter. Very tasty. Glad I did it.

Ok now its like 3 pm, I finally get to the other side of the mountain and I immediately head for a cafe. There’s a total of probably 10 shops on this whole island, but thankfully theres a cafe (and highly rated too, like 4.7 which is insanely high for Japan). I order a cafe latte and I hear a microwave turn on so already I’m not too excited for the quality. I take a couple sips and and it tastes fine but I sipped it halfway through and just got straight slime in my mouth. I have no idea what that could be, I don’t want to know. I’m still alive and that’s all that matters. From here I go into a grocery store nearby to get some snacks and then head to the beach!!

Unsurprisingly, I was the only person there. I climbed the rocks to go see the bright blue water firsthand. Very cold unlike the waters in Okinawa!

After this I sat down on a bench to eat my food then walked to the nearest hot spring because I could finally feel the temperature hitting me and I could feel that if I didn’t get warm soon, I was going to get sick.

I found this one in the middle of nature for free! Beautiful waterfall below the hot spring. Sat here for about an hour warming my bones up. A Jehovah’s Witness guy came to soak too and he spoke really good English. He told me about all the cool places on the island.

From here it was 6 pm about. I had a dilemma. My ferry leaves tomorrow at 9 am. I could either A. walk all the way back to the ferry terminal and sleep in there for free or B. stay at some random hotel nearby and probably spend an exorbitant amount of money. I asked my feet and they said “Buddy, we just hiked a mountain. That was the largest hike you’ve done in your entire life. We’re cooked. Find a hotel.”

So I looked around and found two. These were literally just people’s houses by the way. I walked to the first and they didn’t have any room. From here I started freakin a little because the thought of these places not having any room didn’t occur to me. So I’m hoping that this next place has room. I walk in the door and it’s like a traditional old Japanese house where you have the deck surround the house and the sliding doors and things. I walk in and I have no idea if this is even the right place. I could’ve just walked into someones house. I don’t see anyone or hear anything. So I’m just walking around and eventually I see an old grandmother sitting in the kitchen. Thankfully this was the right place. She says 7150 yen for a room (really, really cheap), I hand her 7000 and she stops me even though I tried to give her the rest. She poured me a glass of wine (which for legal reasons I refused) and makes me two MASSIVE onigiri, a can of salmon, and some vegetables. Man did that fill me up. We chatted into the night and one of the other guests, a professor from Meiji university, was also there. He was so surprised a foreigner was on this island and was asking me how I found out about Hachijojima. The grandma, Eiko-ba, taught me some of the Hachijo dialect which I will share with y’all:

“Yo ke furo DOAA ja”

This means “this bath is great!”. So next time you go to an onsen or hot spring, try saying this. Make sure you stress the DOAA part, she made sure to correct me multiple times until I said it loud and proud. So cool that I got to learn a dying language!! When would I ever get this chance??

After my tummy is full, I take a shower in their newly renovated bathrooms which you can smell the fresh wood of. It was delightful. Then I head straight to bed. These beds were OHHHH so comfy. I literally laid down and instantly fell asleep. I slept 10 hours perfectly. Best sleep I have ever had.

When I wake up, I go say goodbye to Eiko-ba who is still in the kitchen. She hands me a handwritten note in English (She doesn’t speak a lick of English) telling me how to get back to the ferry terminal without walking. There was a public bus I could take that would get me there 90 minutes before the ferry takes off. I say thanks and head over to the bus stop.

I was the only person on the bus except for kids trying to go to school. It was amazing to me how they were just used to the views. The bus went into a tunnel into the mountain and when we came out of the other side it was the most breathtaking view I have ever seen. I didn’t take a picture it was that amazing. When we got to their school, I was surprised how massive it was. there was probably a total of maybe 50 students? But the school was HUGE like 8 football fields big.

Once the bus drops me off at the ferry terminal, I didn’t want to just sit around waiting. So I look up a coffee shop to head to. I remembered to pick up some sand from the beach that my mom wanted since the sand was black here from the volcano. As I’m heading to the cafe, I stop by the place where prisoners tried to escape the island as this was once a penal colony. As I’m walking here, I stumbled across a suspiciously large building that looks like a mansion or maybe a governmental building and I walk past these huge stone gates with a fountain in the middle except it’s all been reclaimed by nature. So instead of the cafe, I go to explore this building. This was a HUGE highlight!! This building was a resort that was abandoned but nothing was taken or destroyed, just left to rot.

You could only imagine what this place looked like back in the day. Stone sculpture fountains, a huge pool with the ocean in the background. Man I bet this place was popping. There was a hairdresser on the inside too. The place was called “Hachijo Oriental Resort”. Some research online says its the largest abandoned resort in Japan and I just accidentally stumbled upon it. When I first walked up, I accidentally scared a lady inside and she ran out but I made sure to reassure her by saying “Kakkoi desu yo ne” which means “isn’t it cool!?” and she starts laughing.

From here I strolled on over back to the ferry terminal and said my goodbyes to Hachijojima

After I got on the ferry, I immediately conked out and slept pretty well. I guess the sleep deprivation + stress would do it. I ate some food on board and some vending machine snacks. Not too boring surprisingly since the ship had free wifi. After I got back, it was 7 pm. I looked for a nice dinner spot to celebrate my trip, so I went to an all you can eat wagyu yakiniku!! (you cook it yourself)

Divine.

When I got up to leave, these people asked me to get in the picture with them so I did LOL:

They were from Singapore and the lady in the back was a student of the lady in front. She was learning Japanese. The guy on the right is the husband of the lady in front. I’m next to a worker of the restaurant. They were having a reunion as the student just came back from Singapore to see her teacher! how sweet!

From here I took the last train back to Shinjuku, went searching for a place to workout because my gym locked me out, found a childrens park with two pull up bars (literally perfect), did a quick workout, went back to the hotel, showered, and went to sleep.

THAT WAS IT FOR WEEK 4 OF THE JAPAN TRIP!!! I hope you enjoyed reading this. This was my last weekend adventure :(((. I’m staying a month afterwards, and now that I have so much freedom I’m very indecisive on where I want to go. I was thinking Hokkaido and then working my way down. Maybe buying the JR pass to zip all around. Maybe going on the pilgrimage in Shikoku or a shorter one through the mountains. Maybe I’ll become a monk. Who knows?!?!

See you next week for my final post!!!!