Personal Updates – Page 54 – Christopher Wink

Mount Fuji: Part 2 of 3

Read about my Fuji experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

To review, I left off last time entering a bus station in the hopes of booking a ticket three hours southwest to climb Japan’s highest peak, the 13,000 foot dormant stratovolcano Mount Fuji.

I went to a ticket booth and after getting a dismissive smile when I asked if the teller spoke English (Eigo ga wakarimasu ka?), I threw at her the only two Japanese words I knew that I felt could help: climb Fuji-san. Then, I added a circling finger, trying to convey that I wanted a round trip ticket. This prompted a flurry of keyboard activity. Moments later I traded 5,200 yen (nearly $45 U.S.) for a piece of paper apparently reserving a seat on a bus departing two hours later.

Mount Fuji: Part 1 of 3

Read about my Fuji experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

I was in Shibuya: the busy entertainment district of Shibuya-ku, one of the centrally located wards of Tokyo. I had been telling a friend that climbing Mount Fuji had long been a goal of mine when he mentioned the climbing season for Fuji-san was coming to a close. (Stations, ten of which are littered along the Fuji ascending trail, and rangers are only active from July to late August).

Back in the States, I (probably laughingly) consider myself a bit of an outdoor enthusiast, but was without any form of hiking or camping gear. Yet, I knew, there walking alongside a train station in Asia’s busiest city, that that moment was so very likely my only opportunity in my entire life to try to climb Mount Fuji.

Continue reading Mount Fuji: Part 1 of 3

Africa (My summer abroad in Ghana, West Africa)

Posing alongside children after playing soccer with them in Nkwantanan.

I spent this summer in the West African country of Ghana, living in East Legon, a hamlet outside the capital city of Accra. (Read up on the fairly stable democracy here.)

I lived in a hostel on the campus of the University of Ghana, where I was studying politics and the West African aesthetic.

Continue reading Africa (My summer abroad in Ghana, West Africa)