weekend with steven

Delayed weekend update. I spent the weekend with Steven (the same one from back in January). While it probably would be better for him to share his story, I’ll just give a quick summary since it’s pretty interesting. Steven actually got a job from a Japanese company back in January, while he was wrapping up his almost 1-year-long trip around the world. He wasn’t necessarily looking for a job (at least, I don’t think so), but he had met the president of a factory at the airport flying from Korea to Japan. The guy must’ve liked Steven so much that he decided to hire him. Steven then tried to apply for a work visa while crashing at our first apartment in Musashi-Koyama, but ended up hitting a big roadblock - Japan only gives work visas to people with college (specifically, Bachelors+) degrees or 10+ years of relevant work experience. He was about to finish his Associate’s degree before he started working at my company back in SF full-time (that’s how we met, actually), and to-date only has about 5 years of work experience.

So his plan was to go back to the US, finish up his Associate’s degree, and then attempt to apply for a work visa again. I was admittedly quite skeptical because the visa requirements do explicitly state that you must have a Bachelor’s degree, so to my big surprise, about a month ago he told us that his application was approved and he received his Certificate of Eligibility (the document needed to get residency in Japan). The company is located in Numazu, Shizuoka, which is a tiny countryside town 2 hours away from Tokyo. We often joked that he’d catch up to me in Japanese skill level, because if you don’t speak Japanese in the countryside, you’re basically screwed. Even I’ve considered moving to the countryside for a year just to improve my Japanese, since I’d say I’m at about 90/10 English/Japanese usage these days, maybe even 95/5. It might be time to start writing blog posts in Japanese.

So, Steven moved to Numazu 2 weeks ago, and it’s been really, really hard for him. He’s the only foreigner at the factory and he was woefully underprepared language-wise. He’s been studying Japanese like his life depends on it, well, because his life does kind of depend on it. He says it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done before, and knowing him, that is really saying something. I insisted he come visit me in Tokyo as many weekends as he can, but I’ve been a pretty bad friend and have been out the past two weekends (Shanghai and then triathlon camp), so this was the first time seeing him since he moved back out here. We had an absolute blast - I could tell the isolation was really getting to him, and honestly, I was super glad to see him too. Even in Tokyo where I have no dearth of social interactions, I’ve still been longing for the deep, familiar, consistent friendships and connections I had back in San Francisco.

I actually had already booked up my weekend, but I figured that was a good thing since that meant lots of fun activities for Steven. Friday night was Halloween, and while I’d love to provide an interesting Halloween-in-Tokyo update, I was so freaking exhausted from FMP (and it was so rainy) that I completely crashed. On Saturday, we biked to Odaiba (formerly my least favorite place in Tokyo but has quickly risen up in the ranks as a great place to go biking - taking the train there from the other side of the city sucks though). We played pickleball with Hide, someone I met at a college reunion event who is Japanese, but kind of identifies as Japanese-American (or technically American-Japanese?). Afterwards, Steven and I tried to beat Hide in a bike vs train race and we won, but at what cost…(foreshadowing alert). Then, we worked on a robotics side project, which both Hide and Steven were excited about. There’s an origin story for said robotics project which I may talk about later.

On Sunday, Steven, Mimi (a new friend from school), and I went to Mt. Oyama for a hike. Oyama (大山) literally means big mountain. Originally, Mimi and I had planned to go to Mt. Mitake, another mountain that I really loved from a previous outing. Mt. Mitake had US National Park vibes, whereas most other mountains have been more like, take a bus to go to the trailhead where there will be a trail map sign that looks like it was drawn by a kindergartener. I ended up choosing Oyama because it was closer to Steven, and if we were going to go 2 hours out of Tokyo for a hike anyways, I at least wanted it to be in his general direction. I was nervous Oyama wouldn’t be as good since it didn’t appear on the usual popular hiking lists, but I was pleasantly surprised. I roughly followed this guide which does a way better job of explaining the hike than I will. But I couldn’t really tell from the guide how strenuous the hike would be. The 3 of us barely made it from the bus stop to the cable car station, and I was originally considering hiking up the mountain instead of taking the cable car (as suggested by the guide), but we were already running behind schedule, and my legs were so unbelievably sore from all the biking and running I had been doing the past few days. Luckily, Mimi was the first one to pipe up and suggest taking the cable car, which we begrudingly agreed to at first, but later we were so grateful for that decision. Even after the cable car, the rest of the hike to the top of the mountain was surprisingly steep.

It was foggy most of the way up, which is what the guide had warned about, and it said if we were lucky we might be able to see Mt. Fuji. Every single person ever is obsessed with Mt. Fuji, from Japanese people to visitors. It’s so stupid because it’s just a mountain that people see all the time and have seen bajillions of photos of, but I think part of the obsession is it’s very much like gambling. It’s almost always foggy up near the tops of mountains, so seeing Mt. Fuji is actually a rare treat that one should not simply expect as a reward for successfully scaling a mountain. When we summited, the fog was thicker than ever, and it was actually getting quite cold. There was a soba shop up top, so we sat down for some rest and warm food. Another thing that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet - the small restaurant shacks at the tops of mountains in Japan are insane. I’m pretty sure people have to hike up the mountains with food supplies on their backs to stock up these restaurants, and yet prices are literally cheaper than in Tokyo. It was 600 yen for a giant bowl of warm soba and vegetables.

After our meal, we saw an even more crudely-drawn sign (more like a napkin sketch) suggesting that there was a Fuji lookout spot behind the bathrooms. It was still extremely foggy, so we decided there was no point, but took our time going to the bathroom anyways. By the time we got out, the sky started clearing up, but in the direction opposite of Fuji. We did a quick lap to see if there was anything interesting, and the view was honestly beautiful. You could see the city (which I believe was just Kanagawa or Yokohama, definitely too close to be Tokyo) out in the distance. But, sadly, no Fuji. Just as we were about to head back down, I took another look at the napkin sketch and realized we didn’t actually go to the Fuji lookout. By this point, the fog was clearing up in the back. So we found a hidden path behind the toilets and lo and behold, a small group of people crowded around a spot with Fuji’s iconic perfectly symmetrical conical top and snowy peak just barely peeking out from behind a cloud. The group of people were exchange students, so we all started chatting, and they became obsessed with Steven’s story on how this was effectively the first group of English-speakers he’s met since coming to Japan. After a few minutes, Fuji started emerging more and more, making for a stunning view and photo (sorry I’ve been too lazy to upload photos, I probably should’ve just sucked it up and made a proper Wordpress blog instead of thinking I could DIY it). The gambling dopamine was absolutely hitting, to think that a) so many people were missing this secret path, and b) we almost left without catching this view. And we made a bunch of friends along the way, so that was a pleasant bonus.