Friday, March 02, 2007

Trip to Oshima

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Oshima is an island (literally "big island") off the coast of Tokyo. Me and my good friend Kayo decided to take a brake from the grind of endless work, and hop over for a quick two day trip. It was a lot of fun, although not so much different than Tokyo. On the way there we took an airplane, and the view was amazing. Pulling up and away from Tokyo, Mount Fuji poked up over the horizon and slipped away as the ocean revealed the destination. Oshima is famous for a type of flower called Tsubaki (camellia in English?) and although the peak of the blooming season was over, there were still a lot of Tsubaki flowers everywhere. The air was a little cold, but not too bad. Oshima was extra interesting for me, because I'm a big Gojira (godzilla) fan. Gojira escaped from this island's mountain when it erupted, and thats just so cool. The first day, we went to a small sushi restraunt and I got some really fresh maguro tuna. Kayo's bowl was spicy and had a piece of a bandaid in it, so she had crap luck for lunch I guess. After that we took a bus to the other side of the island and walked to the ocean. It was peaceful, almost no one around. No sounds but the waves, a few birds, and Kayo singing karaoke to herself. Me and Kayo have known each other for a long time, so sometimes we would get a bit grumpy in the cold air, but I guess thats the nature of our communication sometimes. After watching the waves for awhile, we took the bus back to the area where we were staying. The sun was fading, but we decided to rent bikes and ride along the shore on a bike path. The sky was a dark blue with a ribbon of pinkish-orange, and we were shooting along in the crisp air. The road would snake through chunks of old lava and trees, or along a row of old restaurants being renovated, or along the mellow ocean. It was beautiful. The next day, we woke up really early and ate breakfast at the inn and then we took a bus to the base of the mountain. We walked/hiked up the dissolute mountain for a couple of hours. Endless fields of lava-rocks and lava-sand. Kind of impressive for its complete sterile vibe. I felt a bit like I was walking along mars after it had just been terraformed or something. Endless bleakness. It was really geographically interesting, but really hard work in ratio of the reward when we reached the summit, which was simply a semi-smoking hole. I can now say I've peaked down the hole of a volcano. Next we made our way to the port, and took a boat back to Tokyo. The boat was slower than the airplane, but it was fun in its own way too. I took 2GB of photos and videos, I think that shows how bad I needed a vacation.
Below is an embedded video clip collection of my trip:
 
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