Best Plan of the Year so far

Wohoo, Happy New Year everyone!!

Except for New Years Eve, this week was pretty uneventful. I was free from university and work and basically just focused on writing all the essays for my courses and studying for the exams. Well, I tried. As is tradition every year around this time, I wanted to do so much for university and did basically nothing. Gotta love them traditions.

Nighttime Hiking

I planned my New Years Eve together with some dorm mates. The plan was pretty straightforward:

• Get stuffed with Korean food
• Hike up Mt. Takao and enjoy a fantastic view

Pretty genius plan if you ask me.

Heart Attack Included

So, we started with Korean food, specifically chicken wings and cheese fondue. Dipping food into cheese and eating it then is one thing, but dipping chicken wings is on a new level of greatness. It was super delicious and we actually stuffed ourselves so full, we shortly contemplated whether or not the hike was a good idea. Spoiler, we threw good sense out the window and did it anyway. I also had some weird Korean cocktail. I mean, I guess it was a cocktail, but I’m not 100% sure. It was supposed to have a lemon taste, but it smelled and tasted predominantly of yeast. Yes, that is as disgusting as you’re imagining it right now. Well, you can’t just make good decisions all night long. This was my second time eating Korean food and I have to say, Koreans definitely know how to handle some meat… Hehehe

We also had some side dishes besides the chicken wings and cheese combo. I can’t remember any of their names, so let me describe them with my superb word smithery. The first one was onions. Thin and long pieces of onion with some lemon juice and some spices on it. The spices were red and that’s about everything I remember about them. I think there were some lettuce stripes in it too, but it was mainly onions. I love onions. Mhmmm… The second was straight up sushi, but as is tradition, it had a Korean name and they say they invented it and the Japanese copied them. I couldn’t care less about who invented it. They were maki rolls with a lot of fillings in them. What exactly you ask? I don’t know I say, but is that really so important? The most important thing was that they tasted good. And I can’t be bothered to remember. Whoops. There was also some fried stuff vegetable stuff there, but I legit don’t know what was in there. It tasted good, but looked like someone vomited into a fryer and they served us whatever crawled out of the burning hot oil bath. The last thing was something super spicy, again with a lot of vegetables in it: spring onions, mushrooms, etc. There was also something long and very chewy in there. You could barely hold it with the chopsticks and we must have looked like idiots while eating it. They tasted like nothing with sauce on it. At least I didn’t have to fiddle around with them too much after I ate the first one. That dish was also in a super spicy tomato sauce. A little too spicy for my taste, as I am not a masochist. At least not for now, you never know what things the future brings you. That were all the side dishes.

The Journey

After eating ourselves into a coma, we got into the train drove off towards Mt. Takao. It took us an hour from Korea Town to the mountain. Off course the first thing we did when we arrived at the foot of the mountain was to replenish our supplies and buy some water for the hike. Sike, we bought booze to drink at the summit.

Anyway, we started our journey to the top. Unfortunately, all the hiking trails except the first one were closed. This also included all the fun ones. You know, the ones without lights, where it is dangerous and people can get lost or fall of the side of the way into the abyss. So we took the boring path and walked. And walked… and walked. It felt like an eternity to get up the mountain, probably also because everything looked the same and there wasn’t much nature to appreciate, like there normally would be. However, there was the view of Tokyo which gradually became more and more visible. That was pretty cool. After about 90 minutes we reached the summit. Or so we thought. There was a super long queue there going up the stairs and we thought they were queuing up to get to the summit at midnight. So we queued up and waited. And waited more…

At some point we looked at our phones and realized it was nearly midnight. We waited until there were 10 seconds left and we quietly counted down to 0. The gong of the temple sounded at exactly midnight. It was pretty cool. Other than that no one celebrated it. Rather they all went on as if nothing happened. The year just changed and they weren’t even celebrating. It was kind of sad. We stood there and cheered for a second, then saw that nobody else was doing anything, so we slowly lowered our hands and got quiet. Sad…

Anyway, after wasting our life there for some time we realized that queue was actually not for the summit, but rather for the big temple that was before the summit. We skipped all the people who wanted to go to the temple and went ahead towards the summit. After some more hiking up the mountain, we finally reached the summit. People were sitting there on picnic blankets and eating their food and drinking and a lot of them were also freezing to death. There were a lot of people and, to be honest, it kind of looked like a homeless camp at first. We looked around a little, enjoyed the view of Tokyo, took the obligatory selfies for the Gram and then searched for a spot to drink a little. There were barely any people on the backside of the summit, so we sat down there and drank and talked for some time.

The way back to our dorm was a little bit of a nightmare. It was freezing and we were tired. And despite hurrying up while hiking down the mountain, we only reached our dorm after 5 am. Completely done with everything and freezing to the core, I laid down in my bed and went to sleep. For a whooping three hours before waking up again. Why you ask? Well I had to wish my homies back in Germany a Happy New Year and that was exactly the time for them. Also another dorm mate made some chocolate pancakes for New Years Breakfast, which I definitely didn’t want to miss.

Looking back at everything, it was something different from all the other New Years I had thus far and it was a great experience. I loved it and I would definitely do it again.

 

Thank you for reading and see you next week :)
Ash