Oh the drama

There seems to be a lot of it, for such a small place. You see, on top of organizational difficulties (and partly as a result of it), our cafe manager, Jamie, quit after arguing with Jake this afternoon. Wonderful. Looks like the Solar Cafe will be closed early this summer. Unless Jake can come up with a replacement (or unlucky friend) to cover for a month or so, which may happen, but until then it's guesthouse and farm for now.

So, other than that, today turned out to be a pretty routine day off for me. I did a bit of work first, finishing painting the signs for the crops, then I headed down the road to the Ice Cave after lunch which was a tad disappointing. The cave was maybe ten meters deep or so, and at the bottom held a few piles of what looked to be cut and stacked ice blocks, and behind a cage wall were some natural ice stalagmites lit in bad blueish artificial lighting. Hm. It was nice and cold though, and when I got out it had begun to drizzle, which was perhaps the best part of the whole mini excursion. Still quite humid though.

After that, I went on an unexpected but pleasant adventure. Up Koyodai mountain! Turns out that there's a nature trail just past the Ice Cave bathrooms that connects to the mountain trail. The scary part was that it also takes you through part of Aokigahara (suicide forest). The path that I took before I found the trail (luckily) that went up wasn't too bad. What was a little off putting was that the Aokigahara path had a white string on the path that you could follow back to safety if you got lost. :o

So I made it to the top of Koyodai, which was nothing after Fuji! An hour or so later I come across this abandoned looking cafe house on the top, and when I go to look inside there's some guy just sitting there in the cafe with his phone!! Not a ghost though, because I saw his truck in the parking lot. Anyway, I only went a little further on, and confirmed my suspicions that the horse ride people come up here with hoof prints in the mud. Around there, I met this fellow.

He was flying in figure eights, gliding at times and just fluttering around. I tried to follow him with my camera (resulting in several very blurry shots) until he came to rest on this branch. I started far away, worried that my camera shutter noise would scare him off before I could get a decent detail pic, but I was able to get up to a foot or two away after a few minutes. I got my shots, thanked the little darlin' and wandered off to retrace my trail back down.
I discovered one of the horse stables in the area offering trail rides at exorbitant prices to tourists, and found that I was quite close to the cafe just as it had begun to rain in earnest. A bit later in the evening, Na-chan took Jamie to the train station and there were hugs all around. Then, Jake being all sad and stressed out now that he doesn't have a cook, decided to take us out for necessary shopping and sushi! (probably also to help himself feel better) So it was a family night, and I must say, I feel far better about being in Japan when on my own than with a bunch of other foreigners. Nevertheless, it was a great, and well needed, night out.

Until the next time my fingers rise from the grave of weeding,
~Kira