18 years later - Japan: Part 2

Preface
The best type of continuation to anything is the continuation that actually happens, and so we have it, a second blog post for the blog that I started.

If you haven't read the first part and like your stories in a jumbled order, then by all means keep on reading, but I would highly recommend that you read the first part too. 

Cloud sea on Mount Fuji

This day (The third day) of being in Japan we planned to travel to Mt Fuji. You don't need any sort of guide to tell you that you must visit Mt Fuji during a trip to Japan, the mountain is admired for it's close-enough-to perfect conical shape which would make anyone exclaim "Sugoi desu ne (すごい です ね: It's amazing).

It is advised that if you want to visit Fuji-san, as it is referred to by locals, you ought to leave early in the morning from pretty much wherever you are staying (If you're in Sapporo, good luck).

This is the view from the Kodama Shinkansen line - despite being the slowest bullet train it was still very fast

We didn't do that. Leaving Tokyo at 10am meant that it was unlikely that we would have been able to climb Mt Fuji properly, instead we opted to hike around the mountain to a much lower (Little Fuji) peak. The idea was that we would've been able to take photos of the mountain at least, but this wasn't possible due to the never ending sea of clouds that came in our way.

Behind that line of clouds should have been the view that we all know and love

We tried everything, we waited patiently, we prayed to the cloud gods, meditated on the tourist-guide's image of Fuji and even tried to blow the clouds away. Nothing worked. So we didn't get the iconic view that everyone talks about, what we did get was unparalleled family time. 

And then when we were making our way back down something spectacular happened! The low clouds disappeared and gave us a beautiful and uncommon view of the mountain, colourful and vibrant. 

(My sister took this photo, so all credit to her) 

18 years later

A few of you might be wondering why this first series is called "18 years later" - I used to live in Japan 18 years ago. This next section is dedicated to how I feel about going back to the place where I lived (though I have very little memory of it). Don't worry, it's not all that sentimental. (smiley face).  

When coming back to the corner of Tokyo that we lived in, wishful thinking was dictating that returning would make some memories suddenly reappear. Maybe I could remember some Japanese as well. That's not how it works at all! I really appreciated the opportunity to learn more about my earliest years, There were, however, a few things that did stay with me from when I was a four year old, one of them was the way the street pictured above looks, I also remember what our apartment building looked like. I think it goes to show that some information you gather as a child stays with you for your entire life, so try and remember where you came from, and what makes you into you.

My nursery school, "yoikono hoikuen" 

The apartment door on the very bottom middle... that one!

This experience really got me thinking about what could have been, not in a regretful way but in a contemplative one. Life would have been very different had we not moved to the UK. I would've gone to school in Japan, all of my friends would have been different to the ones I have now, heck I would barely even know any English. I wonder if anything would remain the same about me. 

That's it for this post, I may try and finish off this series with a part 3 sooner than next Tuesday, I want the trip to remain in my memory while I write it. It was a while ago now.

Part 3: Kyoto and final thoughts

- Angad