I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees. I ran and I ran, I was looking for me. - Madonna, Mergirl

Aokigahara Forest. You know, just searching Rock Wisdom for a title for this blog gave me several options. It seems "Forest" almost makes its way into lyrics because of a dream like state or a place where people go to find faith, themselves or strength.

-Went looking for faith on the forest floor, and it showed up everywhere. In the sun, and the water, and the falling leaves, the falling leaves of time. - Neil Young, You're My Girl

-The Earth is our mother just turning around, with her trees in the forest and roots underground. Our father above us whose sigh is the wind, paint us a rainbow without any end. - John Denver, The Flower That Shattered The Stone

-Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky, a dream come true, I'll live there til I die. - Don McLean, Castles In The Air

-A new day will dawn for those who stand strong, and the forests will echo with laughter. - Led Zeppelin, Stairway To Heaven

Aokigahara Forest, or the Sea of Trees is a forest at the base of Mt. Fuji. From what I have read, a long time ago, many Japanese families would take their elderly parents into the woods here when they could not afford to take care of them. They would leave them, and the elders would get lost and not be able to find their way out. Supposedly, the area is haunted with the angry spirits of those left to die.


Then, came a book that was written about the Sea of Trees in which a couple went to the forest and killed themselves.

This began a long history of suicides in the forest that changed the name from simply Aokigahara Forest to Aokigahara Suicide Forest. The numbers have been increasing over the years and recently the government has stopped announcing the numbers in hopes that people would stop going there to try and kill themselves.

It is an interesting history and you can read more specifics here if you would like.

Doing a random search for the forest will give you photos, documentaries and other information pages about the history and exploration of the area. Cameron, being always interested in the human condition and the strange and the weird, found out about this place and had to go.

I was quite interested as well, so off we went together for the Sea of Trees. I had worked the night before and he and I drove to the Mt. Fuji area when I got off in the morning. I did sleep part of the way and there was a lot of traffic due to it being a weekend. It took about 4 hours to get there.

The forest is large, so finding exactly one area to go in and explore is rather difficult. Cameron had done some research and picked one parking lot. When we arrived, we noticed a bathroom, gift shop, tour buses and lots of families walking around in the area. This surely couldn't be the same forest we had read about....

Then, we found a separate entrance into the forest. It was in the back corner of the parking lot, where no one else was parked. There was also a camera on a pole by the entrance and a sign in Japanese. Supposedly, they have cameras posted to watch for people by themselves that look like they may be there to commit suicide. We, of course, decided to park down there and enter.

Nearly 15 feet into the woods and you feel like you are in the middle of the Twilight forest. It was gorgeous. Something like I have never seen coming from Texas. It was green, alive and beautiful. There were so many things about it that made me think it was so alive and this didn't fit my idea of a "creepy" forest, as everyone describes it as.

 

Cameron pulled out his camera and started working. We walked along the trail, a bit hesitant to know exactly which way on the trail to go and what we would find. I'm not sure why we thought we would see dozens of people hanging in the trees. If anyone did go there to kill themselves, they did not do it on the main trail, but off, deep, into the woods.

As we walked along we passed by an area roped off, going off the main trail and signs in Japanese elluding to "keep out" and a picture of a camera posted. We debated over and over if we should dare to explore off the trail, but in the end, we didn't. I didn't want to be confronted by Japanese police or guards. I'm not sure why I was so scared to. I'm sure at some point we will go back and I will adventure off with Cameron.

We followed around, not seeing too much, but also not seeing any other people. This was strange since we had seen all of the tour buses and people out at the parking lot. Then, we came to an area where another trail met up and lots of signs. Three Japanese people came from the opposite direction at us. We "konnichiwa'd" and then they asked basically if we had come from the direction we came from. We nodded and they looked shocked! Oh noooo, they said, basically. They wouldn't go that way.

Apparently, the Japanese are taught not to go to the Sea of Trees there and that it is a bad area, so the only people that go there mainly go deep into the woods to kill themselves.

We looked at some of the signs and Cameron found a few trees where people had carved in dates on them....that's when it seemed to change in the forest. We kept on, going the direction the other Japanese people had come from and we saw a few more couples and families. The woods began to get more dense and more looming as opposed to "alive" for me.

We got to the end there and I realized all the tour buses and people were there to see one of the Ice Caves at the beginning of the woods. They would all tour that, but not many would actually go off onto the trails into the forest.

The trail had gotten more rocky towards the end, as this forest has been built on old lava. I saw trees in weird shapes and things that did make you wonder...was someone here that wanted to hurt themselves? Did they put these ties on the tree so that they could find their way out if they changed their mind?

Cameron went back without me last week and had an entirely different experience. Being there alone really must mess with your head and he began to feel very strange and thought he might be seeing things. I'm sure he could explain it better.

It's sad to me that it has such a bad connection with the trails. It's beautiful there. So full of life. I'm sure that's why people escape there to end their suffering. It's calming, alluring. They can be alone with their thoughts and it's like the outside world doesn't exist.

Suicide is a horribly sad thing. What's more tragic is this month for me has had so many connections with suicide. It's heavy on my heart at the moment. I've heard of a couple people in the past weeks who have passed due to suicide. The Navy even sent out an email to all of us discussing how this year, the military is seeing marked increases in the number of suicides.

People left after their loved ones have gone on in that way are left wondering "why" for the rest of their lives. You never know what is secretly going on with a loved one. You may not be able to see the internal termoil they are experiencing. Please take a moment every day to show a loved one or friend you are there for them and if they ever need you, to call on them. That may be all they need to open up and find help for pain they are experiencing.

I'm sorry to be so down today, but it has been weighing on my heart and I feel that I feel better as I share.

If you are interested, there is an great video following a Japanese man who volunteers to explore the Aokigahara Forest and try and find people that are wanting to hurt themselves. He discusses the history of the forest and things he has seen over the years. It is worth your time.

(It seems the digital photos didn't send well between our computers and my blog and they might seem a bit unfocused. The film ones look better, which I'm sure makes Cameron happy. The film and most of the digital photos are all from Cameron Kline)

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. - Soul Asylum, Black Gold

Video of Shibuya intersection
That video was taken off youtube. Walking through it was one of the most interesting things I've experienced here. This intersection was shown in a few different movies....

Of course. Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift.

And. I couldn't find a good video from the movie, but this was a video of them filming the intersection scene in Lost in Translation.

The day I crossed that intersection I had one of those feelings. One of those feelings, like, "Wow. I'm really living in Japan for 3 more years....and that's kinda cool."

For every minute I have to work, I need a minute of play. - Autograph, Turn Up The Radio

It's time for an update.

Professional goals:
-Still planning on DUINS after this tour. I think I'll be set up quite nicely. After a few months of "what am I doing?? What program should I apply for??", I came back to realize...Med/Surg CNS. The same program I've wanted to do all along. It's the specialty that isn't highly specialized. I've always enjoyed med/surg. I feel like you get a good range of patients, you're helping them become independent to go home and it's the jack of all trades specialty.
I want to teach some day and this, to me, is the best option. I also can get certificates in holistic nursing, wound care, education, etc. I would love to do wound care and incorporate holistic/alternative medicine in with it.
There is a hospital in Ft Worth using aromatherapy for patients and I think it's awesome!
-Now that I'm on nights I'm able to study a ton. I am studying for some exams this fall. Really nervous about those, but I gotta just study and do it.
-Plan on starting some graduate courses next spring after I take the exams this fall.

Navy goals:
-It has been hard at this command. I feel like I've gotten off to a rocky start, but things are getting better.
-I'm trying to have a positive attitude.
-I've been teaching a few classes here and there at work.
-I should be eligible for LCDR right after my tour here, so I gotta buckle down and get some good fitreps in!

Physical goals:
-I've been with a personal yoga trainer and I have 2 sessions left. It has been great to learn to stretch and balance like that.
-On night shift I'm able to get some working out done in the middle of the night in our physical therapy room.
-We do walk a bit when we take trips to Yokohama or Tokyo. I have to admit I drive the car to work mostly, but it is because it takes half the time and I usually carry a lot with me to work.

Personal goals:
-I still haven't gotten a massage! I need to do that!
-Yoga helps some, but I don't tend to do it on my own, so I need to work on that.
- I have made some great friends already here and I'm so sad that some of them are leaving this fall. :(
-The stress has been an issue. I'm working on it....I still haven't gotten in a groove here and I'm not sure how I fit into Japan. More to come on that later.

Marriage goals:
-On nights it's easier to let Cameron do his thing. I have to allow him to go work on his photography and not bother him. Now that I have some good friends, I just need to go spend time with them when I'm not with him. It will keep me distracted.
-Our communication has grown big time here. The first 2 weeks were probably the hardest of our marriage. I don't know why, but we were just off sync. We grew through it and are in such a good place together here.

Other personal goals:
-I haven't been scrapbooking really. I need to go buy a table that I can put the sewing machine on. I just don't seem to have time for this stuff somehow. I love my own hobby room though. i have my own space to do whatever I want.
-I have made it through all my hiragana/katakana flash cards and know those entire characters. now, to work on some of the kanji. That will be hard. I won't learn all of them, but I want to study the major ones that are used a lot.
-I haven't been working with my rosetta stone as much, but now that I'm on nights, I hope to try that out more. It helps when I use it though, so I just need to keep at it.


We've also made some Japanese friends here, which is interesting. As I'm writing this, I see I still have a long way to go, but I have learned some things. I'm beginning to grow. It's a hard adjustment, but I know here in another 6 months or so, I should have made more advancements.

New goals:
-Make an oustanding on my PRT this fall
-Get out on my own more and explore

I'm gonna hire a wino to decorate our home, so you'll feel more at ease here and you won't need to roam. - David Frizzel, I'm Gonna Hire A Wino

I moved into our house before Cameron arrived. It was February 23rd. I am JUST now feeling that the home is set up enough for me to take pictures and share them! I was unpacked pretty soon, but just feeling like everything was put together took a long time.

Entryway- Take off your shoes! it's in the lease! :)

We have plenty of space for them in our shoe cabinets!

Add caption

Living and Dining room



Looking into our tatami room. The previous renters put a pad and carpet down to protect the tatami so we left it. Right now, we're mostly using it for bicycle storage. haha. We'll probably be buying two more bikes soon. Cameron's orange one needs a ton of work to it and my bike doesn't have any gears so it won't work on all the hills here. :( 

Tatami rooms can be used as a dining room and then closed up and futon opened and is used as a guest room. If you come visit, you can stay in here! We close up all the walls and you have a room!

This is what our tatami floors look like without the carpet. they are VERY fragile and expensive to replace, so we will probably leave the carpet. I, actually LOVE the tatami, but Cameron is afraid of messing it up. We'll see...

This kitchen is not like many Japanese kitchens. We actually have counter space and TONS of cabinets! That's why I loved this house! No oven if you notice. Only a fish grill. Maybe we can grill some veggies in it. We have the convection oven.

More counter space! I LOVE it. I'm going to miss our house. We haven't had that much space to cook with at all before our move here.



Downstairs bathroom. i need to make a video of this thing! it's awesome! The sink is outside of the bathroom, but I actually like it where it is.

Both Cameron and I have fallen UP the stairs....and hurt ourselves. I don't know how we did it!

My office/hobby room/yoga and excersise room!

My balcony. Very relaxing. :)

Master bedroom. The bedrooms in our home are very big for a Japanese house.

Cameron's office. J/K! He wouldn't let me put up the photo of his office. It's quite messy. We just have different tidy genes. It's his room. I have my own room to escape in. If he can work in the messy room, whatever. I have to let it go. He does have his own office though, so we each have a "work room". :D

Main bathroom and shower room upstairs. The mirrors even have a button to keep them from fogging up!

Yes. Shower room. It's AWESOME! You have a whole room you shower in and then you soak in the tub if you want. You can't use soap in the tub because it has recirculating heaters, but their idea of bathing is you clean off first and then soak. I love it. I'm REALLY going to miss having all that room to spread out and stretch.

then, these. We found these at Hard Off (kinda like a thrift store here) and they are awesome!

Cameron says they are perfect for me. I guess I'll have fun with it.

That's all. Finally got photos up of our house. You can see pictures of the outside on previous posts. It's so much fun to be in a house vs an apartment. I haven't lived in a house since I left for college in 2002. I don't think we could go back to apartments after all the stuff we've gathered. haha.

My hardened eyes see only shades of gray. - Biohazard, Shades of Gray

What do you think of when you find a gray hair on your head? The normal response is one of fear, disgust and thoughts of aging. The first few ones you find, you may grab the tweezers and yank them out as fast as you can.

I believe I found my first ones on my head during my sophomore year of college. There were times, I would have my friend Courtney sit there with tweezers and pull them all out as they began to multiply on my head. Then, there was the day she did this and then stopped. Put down the tweezers and told me there were just too many.

What?? POOOOOORRR QUUUEEE????

Sigh. It was a done deal. I had "gray hair". I called my mom soon after that and she told me about how she had gone gray at a young age as well. The next time I drove home from college she looked at my head and then said, "oh, it wasn't THAT bad...".

What?? Por queeee?

I hadn't even gotten into nursing school. I wasn't even 21. I couldn't drink, but I had gray hair?

I began to color my hair. Then, sometime did highlights. They made it harder to see the gray when it grew in, but it was just too expensive for a college student. Plus, my hair grows so fast, I had to get it done every month!

I eventually got in the habit of going every month to the hair salon. The most recent place in Jacksonville, my hair stylist, Sarah, told me that I was about 50-60% gray.

What? Oh, whatever. I'm past the shocked point now.

She was awesome and got me all the supplies and hair color (from Italy) to take with me to Japan, since I didn't know where I was going to go when I first got here. She even had a lesson and showed Cameron how to do it. :) I've done it here in Japan on my own 3 times now. Having a big shower room with a mirror definitely helps. It has a mirror and I can do the color and spray it off the floor if I make a mess.

No one believes me when I tell them how gray my hair is until I let it grow some and then show them. I wish people would just believe me when I tell them. haha.

Some make gray hair out there look goooood.

Or white. Why do guys look so good with gray?

Maybe I should just color ALL of it gray at a young age?

Or cut it super short and let it do its thing?

Hard to see with the light, but there's about 1 inch of grey at the root.

There it is...

Or, just let myself go and end up looking like the way I think I will look in my head...

I won't go into how I have discovered gray random hairs in other areas, but let's just say there is no use. It's here. Until they discover a way to alter the hair at the root, I'll just keep on coloring. 

I have a theory since my heart rate generally stays around 90-112 or so, that maybe I'm just aging twice as fast as people with a heart rate of 60. At this rate, I'll go through menopause by the age of 35. 

I'm going to be 28 on Sunday. My name is Candice and I have gray hair. It's just something I have to come to terms with and accept. Things could be worse. I could be losing my hair.

Time is a train, makes the future the past. Leaves you in the station, your face pressed up against the glass. - U2, Zoo Station

Since I got here in January my life has been pretty busy. The pace here with everything going on at work is a lot faster than Jacksonville, to say the least. SO, it seemed every day I had off for a while happened to fall on a monsoon rain day and I was getting very frustrated at no chances of exploring.

I FINALLY had a gorgeous day out and I was free from work! SO, Cameron and I went on a trek to Japan to find Domo Kun toys and decorations for my birthday party. Domo is a character for one of the tv stations here, NHK. They had a store in the Tokyo train station, so we thought we'd go.

We first were going to try a different toy store that reportedly had Domo items as well.

Our walk to the train station is about 20 minutes if you are walking casually. I have made it in 15, but then the Japanese looked at me like they might have to call an ambulance, so usually I walk slower. :D

I wanted to document our trip to the train with photos, so you can see what our walk is like. Every now and then I take the train to work and leave about 5:30am. The sun comes up here a little before 5, so it's actually a nice walk in the morning. 

From the end of our street. We live in Ikedacho. That's our neighborhood. it's a pretty new development area and the homes are actually really nice. A lot of schools around, so the homes are typically families.

We walk a block from our street and head down these stairs

Then, turn to walk down this path. I think it's also a small road, but I haven't seen any cars going up or down it much, but there are some that park there at times, so I guess they do.

We could hear the little kids singing while they were out playing on the playground. They are so cute. most of the time, little kids are scared of me for some reason...

This hill may look innocent, but walking up it is awful. It's actually really steep. Some of these little, old Japanese women can book it up so fast and not look winded at all!

A few kiddos trying to escape! haha. They were so cute. More gathered as we walked by and I wanted to take more pics, but we had to make the train so I had to keep on.

Look at the solar panels on this house.

Some homes here have statue dogs, which I'm not sure if they have it as decoration or to scare away people or what, but this one caught my eye the first time I walked to the train and I say hello every time I pass now. He looks like a "Petey" or something.

At the bottom of that hill/path, we cross a street and walk through another neighborhood.

Those containers are where they collect trash every morning. The trash is rather complicated and they separate EVERYTHING and wash everything prior to throwing it away so it might be recycled. It's pretty impressive. I should make a blog entry about that some day.

Now, down another little path.

Vending machines everywhere! it's awesome! They're never out, either. They also have hot drinks too.

Now, down this other road. No sidewalk here, so you pray you don't get run over. haha

It curves and adds a sidewalk!

Then, we cross over the train tracks.

Turn right at our Suzuki dealership

I eyeball that wrx every time I walk by here.....

Then, parking for mopeds and bikes start

Walk down another back road

Recognize him??? hahaha

That little old lady was creeping along so slow. I can't imagine how long it takes her to walk to the train.

Add money to our Passmo cards

Our train station. Kitakurihama. So small compared to the big cities. you'll see...

Cameron was charging his solar powered Iphone backup battery while we rode on the train.

This guy caught my eye for some reason...

Cameron liked this one.

This was a motorcycle class we saw from the train. It looked intense. They had some crazy cones set up on the other side of the track.

So many buildings so close to each other. It's like this everywhere!

Exiting the train station in the Tokyo area

I have no idea what these things were, but they were so cute. I think these two were sumo wrestling!

The toy station we went to first! 6 floors! it was crazy!

In Ueno park. Kinda reminds me of Central Park. It was really pretty and huge. We sat down to munch on some bars quick and people kept running up right in front of me for some reason and at this point I just realized Cameron sat us down in front of the park map! haha. He thought it would be funny. All these Japanese kept coming up and standing right in front of me or next to me. Awwwwkward!

Karp? Koi? Some crazy nuked fish.

I really wanted to go in this karaoke bar. I think this must be where Jesus would sing Karaoke. I wonder what he'd sing.....Cameron thinks "Come Together" or "Imagine". Interesting thoughts....What do you think? Maybe "Why Can't We Be Friends?"

After Ueno Park, we walked a mile or two to Asakusa (a shopping district) and I saw this adorable old mini. I love these things and they are everywhere.

After about a 2 hour escapade to find this one store in the HUGE underground mall at the Tokyo train station, we found it! We asked several people and many times we got, "ohh, mmmmm....ettttoo.....HNK?" Many people sounded like they didn't know what store we were looking for. We finally got an information lady who had a map and showed us right where it was!

Running in the train station!

I got a Domo I can have everyone sign at my birthday party.

Waiting in line for our train. The Japanese are all about lines, so they line up perfectly where each door should arrive at. So neat and polite.

 So, that was our perfect day! Our feet were TIRED, but it was so much fun. I love that we can just hop on a train and be in Tokyo in an hour. Things are getting better and better here and I fall more in love with this country the more I get to experience it. :D

We were a little more snug coming home from Tokyo. You get packed in like sardines at times. At least I can snuggle up next to my boo.