That’s right. Now is the 2nd most popular time to go outside and look at trees in Japan, right after hanami which is the cherry blossom time in the spring. The Japanese Maples are turning red and are really pretty and I feel tempted to take pictures of them, which all the other old japanese men. Anyways, to celebrate Koyou, me and a few of my friends from the program went out to the very last stop on my train line. Pretty much the farthest you can leave tokyo and still say you are in tokyo. Getting to Okutama took about 1.5 hours for me, but I was closest, it took other people around 3 hours! After we arrived we took a 35 minute bus ride, then hiked for another 30 minutes through mountains and arrived at our destination, Nippara Caves. They were pretty sweet, but all the stalagites/stalagmites had been broken off and stolen in the 19th century, so they weren’t that impressive. But hiking through the mountains was really fun, especially with the colors of Koyo all around. It was crazy to think of that area being apart of Tokyo because it was much more like a tiny old Japanese town. There was basically a few houses around the train stop but after just Mountains and wilderness. All the houses were really old style and some even had traditional thatched roofs! Although, I am pretty sure those were abandoned. We found a vending machine in the middle of nowhere that was easially 50 years old and unoperational, but it was cool to see the old style soda cans. I learned a statistic that said in tokyo there is 1 vending machine for every 2 people, and in all of Japan the ratio is closer to 1 to 5.

Then for day 2 of Koyo celebration I went to the park in my town, koganei koen. I had a picnic and found another amazing area. It is a playground for adults. You do excercises there. I saw like 3 old men doing the exercises and it was really cool. I think they should have those in America too! Anyways, I realized I only have 33 more days in Japan! I am definitely looking forward to seeing everyone, but I think I will be sad to leave Japan too. I feel like I will be so bored in Cedar Rapids, and it will be so weird to not have to walk everywhere, and not have to plan things at least an hour in advance because that’s how long it takes you to get to downtown. However, I am a little homesick, and I want to be back in Iowa with all my buddies.