Blog #8: Bouldering

Hello! This is Yu Yamanashi. In this blog, I want to talk about bouldering. Have you ever heard of this sport? It is a special type of climbing mountains, where you clamber up vertical walls with little bumps or holes that become your footage. I started bouldering this April after joining the Alpine club, and am enjoying this thrilling sport very much.

This is an example of a bouldering wall. This is an artificial indoor wall, in a bouldering gym in Shibuya. Anyone can try bouldering in these gyms that are located throughout Tokyo, for prices starting from about 1000yen free time. There, you can borrow special climbing shoes, and experienced climbers will eagerly teach you the basics in bouldering.
There are also outdoor walls, where you climb rocks and mountain faces as tall as a building. This type of bouldering is high level, and requires practice, skill and proper equipment. If you want to try them out, I advise you to get used to bouldering by practicing in gyms several times beforehand.
Here are some bouldering gyms around Tokyo that will be an excellent place to start your bouldering career if you are interested!

• Energy climbing gym (Takatanobaba)
• Gravity Bouldering Gym (Takatanobaba)
• B-Pump Tokyo (Akihabara)
• Vertical Climbing Zone J&S (Ikebukuro)

Here is a question I want to ask you.

  In what kind of situation do you start something new?



The answer could be your own experience, or a general opinion.
I will be waiting for interesting comments!

Blog #7: Simplicity

   Hello! This is Yu Yamanashi. Today, I want to talk about simplicity. I have always been interested in simple ways of life, but when I came across this book, my view of life changed completely.



   This book is called How to Live Simply and it is written by Dominique Loreau, a French woman who has a special view of simple life. (Click on the title to jump to Amazon webpage where you can have a glance at the first few pages of the book!) Before reading this book, I had never felt any guilt in buying things that I wanted until they filled up my room and I lost track of what I had. In a world of mass production and mass consumption, I think we all feel one time or the other, "I wish I had a bigger closet to put my clothes in," or "Why didn't I buy a bigger drawer when I knew I was going to have so much stuff to put in,".  This book tells you that all those way of thinking is nonsense, and simplicity is a richer way of living than having too much possessions. I was shocked to read that people are better off when they own only things that would fit into a suitcase or two. However, when I raised my awareness of keeping my life simple, things actually did start to change. I felt more free and light-hearted.
   What do you think about our life full of things today and making efforts to make it simple? I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions!