Typhoon day

Similar to having a a day off school since its a 'snow day' in Canada, I had a 'typhoon day' today and so I stayed home from work. This is typhoon season in Japan, but today's typhoon is the first to hit the mainland hard for two years. Our area was hit hardest during the night (with winds up to 198 km/h), which kept me awake for parts of it.
It had died down a lot by the time the sun rose, but it was still pretty windy. I heard that the was some damage to trees and roofs of houses in some areas as well as two people dying, but overall, the storm wasn't as bad as they were predicting.

So I was able to enjoy a quiet day at home today and tried to do some work for school (but never work that well from home). The storm definitely made the air much cooler and clearer. This evening, I was able to see Mt. Fuji from my living room window (rising up behind a school and forests). I can usually only see it in the winter so I was surprised to see it so soon:
Sorry, no pictures from the actually storm, but I will show you a photo Ayako took last week. It's a nice shot from our house just before the sun came up:
She's been getting better at taking photos than I am these days.

View of Mt. Fuji

These days, the temperature has been dropping and the wind has been picking up, which means that winter is on its way, but also that Mt. Fuji is visible from our city now. I was happy that I could see Mt. Fuji from outside my apartment downtown, but I'm even more happy and surprised that I can see it from our house beside the lake. There is a perfect dip between two hills from our window that shows us a small view of Mt. Fuji with snow on its peak already.

Mt. Fuji & Yamanaka Lake trip

This past weekend, I went with some workers from my school and some Japanese friends to a lodge on a lake (Yamanaka Lake) near Mt. Fuji.

It was an older lodge and had lots of traditional things there.

There was a group of 10 of us and we had 3 rooms that we stayed in.

Here are some pictures of the lake that we stayed beside and the view of Mt. Fuji in the evening:




The staff at the lodge made us a great feast over a fire in pit in a large dining room.




We even had raw horse sushi:




The next day, we went for swan paddle boat rides around the lake:

We then went for a long drive around Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, it was very foggy and misty that day, so we couldn't see Mr. Fuji, but it made for good photos at a shrine we visited:









The last photos are by the ocean on the drive back to Hamamatsu:

Mount Fuji

Every so often, I can see Mount Fuji from my apartment building. Today though, it was really clean, although still small since it's 150 km away: