Friday May 15

Today we left for Lake Yamanaka the largest of the lakes around Mount Fuji. We were staying in a building that Meiji University owns and operates on the lake. On our way to the lake we stopped at a rest stop and I got Taco Yaki. I had had it at the baseball game a week earlier but this was very fresh and cooking when I entered the rest stop. The picture shows the woman frying the dough in the griddle. This food is basically fried dough with some kind of spice and a chunk of octopus in the middle of the ball. On the bus ride we saw our first glimpse of Mount Fuji. It was incredible and looked very out of place. It is over 12,000 feet tall and has snow covering its upper half. At the lake we were able to see the mountain and took really good pictures (above).
The Yamanaka house we stayed at was built like a 1970's concrete building but we slept on tatami (bamboo) mats with a futon mat on the ground (pictured) and had to wear slippers in the building. The only problem was that the slippers only came in one size and they were way too small for most of the guys on the trip. About 20 Japanese students accompanied us to the house. I roomed with one guy from Northeastern and two Japanese students. We had an ice breaker session where the Japanese students had to tell us about one thing we should do while in Japan. This was to help them get more comfortable speaking with us. They can speak English very well but some are not confident in their abilities and do not like to contribute to discussions. The food at the house was amazing and they served us probably five different dishes at each meal because we were their special guest.
At night we finished our work for our two presentations that we had to give the next day and we had a party with the Japanese students. It was a good way to get them to be more talkative and outgoing. I met many cool students who were all very different even though they have a collectivist mentality. They wanted to learn about us and what we did for fun and I enjoyed meeting everyone. It was very different sleeping on the floor with mats and a pillow full of beans.