Sweet pic of Seth, Yuji, Blood, Huston, and me.

Karen taught us all this hand sign, and made us keep taking pictures with it. I think it's some kind of ninja thing. Umm...

Went to another dorky convention at the Makuhari Messe. This time it was the World Hobby Fair. Pretty sweet, but not as good as some of the others. This one was def geared more towards kids, especially with all the Mushi Kingu stuff.

Luckily, there was still some awesome stuff there, like the new Katamari Damashii game.

Me and Ari taking a picture with Hibiki. Also notice Ari's stylish headgear, which they were giving out at the Nintendo booth.

The next week, Nick and Brian showed up in Japan for vacation. Also, the day after they got there, I ditched them and went to Mt. Fuji with IES. Here's a group of us in the IES/Sumitomo parking lot before we left by bus. Yes, I have half an onigiri in my mouth, and it was delicious.

On the way there, we stopped by Lord Takeda's Castle. This is a temple thing or something.

We went to a winery where they let you also sample HORSE MEAT! It seriously just tasted like corned beef. I would eat it on a sandwich with mayonaise maybe. I'm sure Japanese people would also. Not because of the meat, but because Japanese people love mayonaise.

This is the best picture I took of Mt. Fuji, from right outside our ryokan/hotel at Lake Kawaguchi. The mountain was pretty beautiful, but it was awful cloudy so this is the best I could get. The next morning you couldn't even see it through all the fog.

The night we stayed at the ryokan, there was a huge fireworks show above the lake. It was pretty sweet, and I watched the first half from the public bath. Nothing like watching explosives while you bathe yourself in a shower area as big as a swimming pool.

As expected, up Mt. Fuji there are just a lot of tourists and stuff, so the areas around the parking lots are just a horrible tourist trap selling stupid crap.

Here's me at the marker that shows I climbed up half of Mt. Fuji. And by climbing, I mean I rode a bus. And if that wasn't lazy enough, I slept on the bus. I am awesome.

Shin-san couldn't get off on this stop on the way home, since he had to take care of some stupid summer kid who was puking for like 10 hours. But he passed on the wisdom of this noodle shop right behind the public bathroom with really cheap and awesome noodles. Yes, behind the bathroom. Not sketch at all...

Finally got to hang with Nick and Brian when I got back. Here, we're in Akihabara taking a picture with Darth Vader. And while in Japan, I actually saw about a half hour of one of the old Star Wars movies, a personal record, since I've never seen a full one.