Reposted: Mt. Tsukuba from December 2010

A couple of months ago I climbed Mt. Tsukuba (筑波山）with some friends and coworkers. The mountain is pretty well-known in Japan. It has two peaks, Nyotai-san 877 m (2,877 ft) and Nantai-san 871 m (2,858 ft). Apparently, housed within these two peaks are divinities, one male and the other female.

There's a legend about these two peaks. Apparently, thousands of years ago a deity came down to earth and needed a place to spend the night. First he asked Mt. Fuji, offering to bless the mountain if it provided him with lodgings. But with it's perfect shape and majestic height, Mt. Fuji was too proud and arrogant and said it didn't need the deity's blessings.
Humble Mt. Tsukuba, on the other hand, gladly offered the deity a place for the night, as well as food and water. According to Wikipedia, "Today, Mt. Fuji is a cold, lonely, and barren mountain, while Mt. Tsukuba bursts with vegetation, and is filled with colors as the seasons change." So basically, Fuji was jerk and now it's cold and barren... hilaaarious.

Anyway, Mt. Tsukuba is also kind of interesting because it's not part of a mountain range. It's stands alone in the middle of farms and rice fields, so you have a pretty fantastic 360 degree view from the peaks.

And that's really all I have to say about that.

However, at the base of Mt. Tsukuba there is a shrine. As we were descending from the mountain we came across a large crowd of people at the shrine. People, young and old, were standing below a stage holding empty plastic bags or other receptacles. They seemed pretty excited about something, but I couldn't see anything except for a couple of dudes on the stage wearing some sort shiny robes (probably cause shinto shrine people do stuff like that). Then we noticed there was a mountain of cardboard boxes stacked behind them. What on earth could be in those boxes?

That was when we realized that a large number of children, who until now we had been unable to see, were up at the front of crowd chanting, "Choudai, choudai! Choudai, choudai!" (ちょうだい、ちょうだい meaning roughly, "give me give me!") By our large powers of intellect we deduced that whatever these desperate children were screaming for, it must be whatever was in those cardboard boxes. I know, call it a long shot. But for some strange reason, we just had an intuition that it must be in those boxes. Hoping we were right, we stuck around to find out.

After much waiting and anticipation, the men in shiny robes multiplied in number and began tearing open the boxes. What is it? What it is!? The masses began to close in tighter, swarming around the stage with hunger and fierce determination in their eyes. Plastic bags rose above our heads. What was going to happen? What?! Suddenly, it began to rain. Screaming, shoving, kicking, the hordes began scrambling to catch. What was it they were catching? Why... it was... something white, and small. Bam! My companion got was slammed in the face by a small but very hard and round disk of mochi (Japanese rice cake). THIS is what people were waiting for? I couldn't believe it. But then, the sound and the size of the rain changed. Thousands of cup of noodles, and packets of instant ramen rained down upon our heads- the weather gods in their shiny robes hurling them with all their might- a vengeful look of pleasure in their eyes. One man had obviously played himself some professional baseball back in the day- because he was definitely trying to hurt someone. I almost got swallowed up in the sea crowd.