Welcome to Kuma in Japan

Hey you, whoever you are!

This blog is the result of a series of wonderful experiences I had during the 10 months I spent in Japan and at Kyoto University on exchange. Please enjoy the stories and pictures, and feel free to contact me at bjorn(dot)utgard (at) gmail(dot)com

Hugs,

Bjørn

Back in Norway

After more than 40 hours of travelling I finally made it home to Norway and my parents place in the middle of June. The route was Kyoto -(nightbus) - Tokyo - (plane) - Paris - (plane) - Oslo - (nighttrain) - Inderøy. Apart from being an exhausting travel, it was also a nice time to think about the many nice experiences that Japan has given me. The temples, the mountains, the contrasts, the people...

Now that this experience has come to an end, I would like to thank you all for checking in on my blog and showing interest in it. If it has in any way inspired you, to visit Japan or to simply go out and take part in the adventures of life, I am satisfied!

This summer I'm having a summer internship at a Norwegian software company, Powel, where I am busy investigating how to make accurate and fully integrated wind power forecasts for electricity companies. It is actually really interesting, be sure to check out the company if you wanna have a cool job in a good company!:) In August, I will start the last year of studies. It will mainly consist of working on my thesis, which I will do in cooperation with DNV Research. The topic will be qualification of new technology for CO2 capture and storage, and from January Iwill be based at their head quarters in Oslo. I'm really excited about it, as the topic seems interesting and it is also a really interesting company. Then, from next summer, I'll finally be ready for an adventurous career... Who knows what will happen??

I'll keep this blog open, so the stories and information will still be available.

Please let me know if you are coming to Norway (contacts in profile), and hope to see you sometime!

Bjørn

Hot-water river

Japan is a hot spot placed on the junction of two tectonic plates. The numerous volcanoes and frequent earth quakes are obvious pieces of evidence of this. The place on this picture, Kawa-ju, is of the more subtle kind of evidence. It may look like a normal river, but when you get your body into it, you notice that something doesn't match your usual image of a river. Kawa is japanese for river, and ju is hot water; the water is actually hot! Just sit down on the river bank, just on the water's edge, dig yourself a little pond and pretty soon you'll have your own little hot pot! The water that siffles up through the river bed is really hot, so you better make sure some colder water from the river is passing through the pond to regulate the temperature.

Of the many amazing experiences Japan has given me, this is definitely on the top-5! Highly recommended! 

Help! I'm leaving soon!

Yes, it is true! I'm leaving Japan in less than a week! Phew, these 10 months went quickly.. Luckily, I have gotten to experience a lot of nice things here, a few of which you can see on this blog. I am too busy packing and getting matters settled before leaving to even get started with reflecting upon the experiences the time in the land of the sun. However, I'll take the opportunity of doing this as I go on posting more pictures and experiences from Japan after I go back to Norway in the end of next week. In other words, keep checkin in!

Oh, if you are qurious about the picture, I just shot it this afternoon. In the foreground is a sign alarming car drivers and other traficants that children may be crossing the street, as there is a kindergarden, the gate of which you can see in the background. This is a typical of vivid and humorous signs found many places in Japan; colourful and usually in a 'comic book style'. Funny!:) 

Fushimi Inari Taisha

The torii (gate) has a special role in Shintoism, usually marking the entrance to the holy grounds of shinto shrines. Quoting Wikipedia: "As hinted by the kanji (鳥 tori: bird; 居 i: place), a torii is designed for birds to rest. This is because in Shintoism, birds are considered messengers of the gods."

The Fushimi Inari Taisha (or shrine) in the south-eastern outskirts of Kyoto, is world famous for its thousands of torii. From you enter at one end, you can stroll something like 6-10 km before you have gone through them all. It's a cool experience, and the view from the hill the path climbs, you get a good view of southern Kyoto. Yet another great sight in the cultural captial of Japan. 

The crew on the summit

 

The crater

Mt. Fuji is actually a vulcano! The center of the mountain is thus not the tallest point, it is actually on the rim of the crater, in the middle of this photo. There is a weather station built on the tallest point, kinda strange to have a building there, but then, this IS Japan... (they seem to like building things pretty much anywhere someone has an idea to build something..) 

Viewing westwards from the tallest point in Japan

The shadow of the mountain at around 5 in the morning, seen from the tallest point ot Mt. Fuji. 

YUHUU!

 

Sunrise at 3700+ meters

The first glimpse of the sun came just as we made it to the edge of the summit of Mt. Fuji. The sun rising above the sea of clouds, punctuaded by hills scattered about, made up a view so magnificent it made us for a moment forget about the exhausted feel of our bodies from the 5,5 hours hike. Before the hike I had read somewhere that the oxygen content in the air at this elevation is about 62% of the content at sea level; now I know what this makes you feel like.. Tired from the night-long hike, it was a real struggle breathing up there. And a terrible headache soon came along as well, felt like the heart was inside my head beating out towards the skull a couple of times per second.

But as you can imagine, it is a special feeling of standing atop the tallest mountain in Japan, getting the first glimpse of sunlight of the new day earlier than anywhere else in the world. =) 

Just before sunrise, just below the summit

 

3200 meters, 570 to go

 

Into the clear black night, just before the hike

 

The team just before taking off at 22:45

 

Fuji-san

Hey folks, sorry for the long silence! Here is an introductory picture for the biggest of the latest weeks' adventure: Climbing Mt. Fuji, Japan's tallest mountain rising 3776 meters from the nearby Pacific ocean. Along with my four mates visiting from Norway, we set out for what was to prove a challenging climb..

Saturday morning we set out in a rented car from Kyoto, keeping sure to stay on the right side of the road, which actually is the left side. In other words, the left side is the right side, while the right side is the wrong side.. Sounds confusing, but once you're on the road, pretty much the only problem is not to turn on the wind shield wipers when you're really trying to turn on the blinkers! (The set-up is opposite of what we are used to in the right-hand driving part of the world.)

The picture above features our Toyota Voxy 8-seater parked in the parking lot at 2000 meters, with the giant rising behind. (to be continued...) 

Nature's cycle

Along the hike in Kyushu, we came across this decaying log. In my eyes, it is both a cool motive for a picture and an image of nature's effective cycling of energy and matter. The energy from the sun, once harvested through the photosynthesis of the parent tree's clorophyl leaves, combined with the nutrients drawn from the soil, and water brought inland by rainy clouds, is not lost although the branch died. Rather, it is cycled back to earth, in a virtuous, continuos cycle, making the energy and nutrients available for new generations of plant and animal life..

A question that has been maturing in me for a while is How can we make our civilized society work as efficiently as nature and its ecosystems? What do we have to do to make our economy work according to ecological principles? How can we design industrial systems that mimic the dynamics of ecological systems?

I recently read the book "Eco-economy," written by the Director of the Earth Policy Institute, Lester R. Brown. The evidence of world-wide environmental problems provided in this book is quite shocking. Of course, I have heard about most of the problems mentioned, like ground-water depletion, contamination of drinking water, extinction of species, climate change and so on, but to see them all put together like this book does is quite shocking. The feeling of urgency is strong, and rather than becoming apathetic by the sheer vastness of the wall of problems, I feel the spirit to do something about it stronger than ever.

Brown is not alone in outlining the need for a brand new economic system, one in which we don't use the earth's resources in an unsustainable way. The academic field of Environmental Economy has been established over the last couple of decades, offering more and more refined tools for the neede restructuring. I'm taking in some of this knowledge through a course on Environmental Economics here at Kyoto University this semester. Industrial ecology is another rather new academic field that has been established over the latter decades, to make our industrial systems work according to ecological principles, as mentioned above.

The most important message is this: We all have a role to play in this transformation; without our good intention and our intelligent behaviour it won't be possible! 

Bushland

By the end of the first day, we made it to the top of the peak in the middle of this picture, which at 1789 m is the second highest peak in Kyushu. 

An occational colorful spot

As the previous pictures have shown, the landscape is largely beige/brown this time of year. These flowers pleasantly broke the pattern here and there. 

Hiker 1

 

Lord of the Rings?

The landscape reminded us of scenes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

Soily Ice Crystals

 

Black, icy soil

As mentioned before, the soil in the area was really black, probably as black as soil can be. What was also intersting was that there were lots of ice-crystals in the soil, proof of rather low temperatures in the soil. The air temperature was just above zero in the night time, and around 10 degrees in the day, so it appears that the soil is able to maintain the temperature quite well. Of course, I am no geologist or soil scientist, but it could be that this particular kind of soil has a relatively high heat capacity (a measure of the energy a mass unit of a material takes to change its temperature by one degree.) Any ideas? 

Hiking buddies

On this picture, Carlo and I had just reached the top of the first 90-minutes-or-so climb. The landscape folded out before us, in a grassy-bushy plateu. 

Along the path

This picture shows the two geological phenomena I mentioned below; black earth and erosion scars in the hillside. Here we are almost getting to the top of the first climb... Keep checkin in to see how it looks like up there!;) 

Erosive challenges

As this picture shows, the "erosion rift" is deep enough to add some entertaining challenge for the "adventurous." 

Erosion scars

It is perhaps no surprise that this looks like a dried-out river; there must be some heavy rains falling on these mountains to create the seasonal rivers needed to make erosive scars like this one. Lesson learnt: trees are handy! 

Soil layering

The soil we walked on was black or dark brown, with some open patches like this revealing information about the formation of the earth for the trained geologist. I not particularly trained in this field, but it seems to me that the color of the earth is evidence of the volcanic activity in the area (pics of this activity to follow).