The ministry focus for our remaining time in Japan has changed from working predomaninatly with volunteer groups, to working with different age segments within the population; one of those groups being retirees in North Tokyo.

A venue where we have expanded our existing involvement, is park and recreation programs offered to seniors in the community where we live. There are many retirees that play a game called gate ball and Martin and I have joined one of the local teams. Gate ball teams consist of 10 players that are divided into two groups. Each game last 30 minutes, with the two groups competing against each other. After 30 minutes of play, the team that has scored the most points is the winner. They normally play twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, for three hours.

Hirota-san (back row,left) has been very kind to us and has included us on his team. He suggested we attend a "gate ball school" to help us understand the fundamentals of the game. This picture was taken on our first day of class and includes both attendees and instructors.

Here, Martin is receiving instruction from Hirota-san.


Martin is lining up the ball and hoping he has understood Hirota-san's instruction; a mixture of English and Japanese.

Japan has one of the highest population groups that is over 65 in the world. It is estimated that 23% of Japan's population are seniors; compared to 13% in the United States.

Recently we had a free day; so we went to "experience" Mt. Fuji.

We secured tickets on a highway bus that would carry us the 3 hours to the mountain. Because of time constraints, we knew we could only "experience" a part of the climb. This was a great precursor for next year; the summit!

Seeing Mt. Fuji from the bus window got everyone's excitement level up. It is an accomplishment that every Japanese wants to experince at least once. We didn't really know what to expect but had heard from several who had made the climb this summer.

This is a poster that was in our train station. Sorry for the glare... This shows a better picture of the terrain on Mt. Fuji this time of the year. The climbing season is very short; from July 1 to August 31. Before or after those dates, you run the risk of dealing with snow.
When the summer interns went at the end of their stay in July, they experienced heavy rain and had to stop at level 6.


Martin is checking out the trail we are going to take. There are more than one to get to the summit, but once we started, most people were using the Yoshida Trail which we used.

We are at the point where we were leaving vegetation and getting into the lava rock.

The huts above me are where you can pay to spend the night in order to finish the climb to see the sun rise.

Here we are at level 7 (8,850 ft); out of the maximum of level 10 (12,400 ft) which is the summit. We bought some snacks to refurbish our spent energy for the trek back down; and we were on our way.

The loose lava rock didn't make that an easy experience. I now knew why the people we had passed coming back down were so slow and cautious.

We're glad we "experienced" it; maybe we'll go for the summit next year.