Optum Internship Blog #10

Post #10
Date(s): 8/8/19 - 8/9/19
Activities: Final Goodbyes, Reflections and Presentation Feedback
Technical Information: Unplugging Laptops, Resetting Work spaces
Reflection: Overall my internship experience was one I will cherish for the rest of my life, as it was one of the first instances where I realized the path that I was to take upon, once I enter adult life and how I would manage my life.

Optum showed that a company could keep you on task, make you do the best possible work of your life while at the same time having fun, relaxing with your friends and in general just having a good time, with an incentive to work hard. The managers, supervisors and everyone there, immensely helped when giving us advice on how to chart our path forward in our quest to win the judges over with our application.

The friends I meet at Optum, will always stay with me and hold a special place. Once college starts I plan to work at Optum once again, through their college internship program, so I can once again experience what it was like the first time, and relive the great moments that I shared with the company.

I am immensely thankful for Ms Robinson, Ms Tanya and everyone that it possible that I could work for such a wonderful company, that really changed my life in many ways and certainly helped push me to my current career pathway of Biomedical Engineering.

Optum Internship Blog #9

Post #9
Date(s): 8/5/19 - 8/7/19
Activities: Reflection, Group Networking
Technical Information: None
Reflection: Some of the major frustrations that were felt throughout the process was the fact, that due to not being able to meet with our supervisors all the time( due to their busy schedule ), there were lots of times where we could work on a project, thinking this was what our plan was, before it getting rejected a couple of days by the supervisors for certain factors that we didn't think of before. It happened so many times, that it became quiet depressing at times, since there would be days where we wouldn't know what to do.

Moreover, our supervisor had taken a break for a week, and this was during the week after our first presentation, where we really needed to reorganize, correct our flaws as pointed by the judges and continuing from there. This week was one where we felt purposelessness, and a massive setback as we didn't progress much without any oversight to guide us, since we were still relatively inexperienced.

It was only once, our supervisor/manager Janet came back, did she guide us and help us find a perfect pathway that we could work on. Once she was able to go through our presentation with us once again, we were able to sort through our flaws, and then decide roles for who would work on what particular task in order to meet the deadline we had, which was coming very soon. Janet took out of her work, almost every single day and helped us with our presentation and application, giving us a sense of comfort and confidence even though we had none at the time. Her work helped inspire us, and work harder when it came to making sure our application was as good as it could possibly be.

Optum Internship Blog #8

Post #8
Date(s): 8/1/19 - 8/2/19
Activities: Final Presentation
Technical Information: PowerPoint
Reflection: Working for Optum essentially changed most of my perception of what skills I brought to the the table, and gave me a close insight to both what I want in my career as well as the skills that I would need to improve upon in my future and succeed in whatever job pathway I chose.

I learned that despite my weaknesses as a test-taker, I shine in more interactive environments where the goal of any task is creative and more tangible. Working with a professional team, made me realize I was born for this kind of group work, and that there was no better way to solve tasks then when working together, and incorporating all the skills each one on your team has. I learn't that I was confident, and had the skills to talk to almost any crowd whether it be teachers, students or even professionals.

Moreover, I realized that this kind of what I wanted for my future, somewhere to work that feels comfortable, where you don't feel like leaving and you get a sense of enjoyment/passion for what you are doing. It was made imperative that the only way to truly get work done, was if you enjoyed the work you were doing, not for how much they pay, but for what you are learning from that experience to take on with you on your future endeavors.

Optum Internship Blog #7

Post #7
Date(s): 7/29/19 - 7/31/19
Activities: Networking Sessions
Technical Information: Optum Presentation Format
Reflection: For the most part of my high school life, I was always split between the career path I wanted to take for my life, my parents wanted me to take a direction more towards either IT or Healthcare, with options of becoming either software engineer or a doctor. Neither of those careers, particularly interested me since I didn’t really have an interest in these pathways primarily because it felt like the standard, and most of my peers were following this path. I wanted something more unique, they may not be as high paying but is fulfilling and has immense growth potential, that's how I found the career path of Biomedical Engineering which is something I latched onto and my experience working for Optum only further solidified my belief, that this would be the way. 

The Internship at Optum, helped further my belief that the Biomedical Engineering pathway was the perfect combination of the Engineering/IT Field alongside the Healthcare field, to the extent that it would personally interest me, and I also wouldn’t be essentially following the herd mentality of most of my peers. 

In fact, I asked my manager, Janet Saldana, who is a Biomedical Engineer major, about her experience and advise for me, when I told her that this was the path I would pursue. Moreover, the fact that Optum was mostly filled with a variety of engineers, but a heavy number being Biomedical, inspired me since my experience at Optum made me want to work at a company similar to this, and I knew that pursuing this path would take me to a more satisfying and fulfilling place in my life.  

Optum Internship Blog #6

Post #6
Date(s): 7/25/19 - 7/26/19
Activities: Live User Testing, Target Mark Demographics
Technical Information: PowerPoint and Word
Reflection: Initially my duties alongside the duties of my partners, was just to research and find out everything we could about the healthcare system alongside combining them with some of our preexisting ideas and personal experiences regarding the american healthcare system. For the first week, we were almost entirely just on our computer gathering all the data we could, alongside discussing/brainstorming our ideas on rooms/boards all over the office, trying to come up with an idea for us to latch onto. 

As the weeks came along, we evolved to do more specific tasks, I worked extensively during the 3rd and 4th week on our application, helping program our software alongside Kathleen, who was someone with far more programming experience than me, and she was someone who had done programming competitions and knew many of the important details beforehand, I was able to assist her alongside organizing our group to make sure we met our deadlines and eventually putting my hands in our graphics as well as designing our final presentation that we vetted over a dozen times to suit the templates that the company required us to follow, as well as creating something unique out of what we had. 

Later on, as the project went along, all of our teammates were given more responsibility, but for the most part most of the tasks were evenly divided between everyone, since our manager didn’t want to overload any one of us knowing our nervousness and lack of experience. So almost every part of our project, had even hands. The only thing that each of us felt individual responsibility for was the presentation, where each of us knew that this was it, when it came to how far we came along and what we accomplished. 

Optum Internship Blog #5

Post #5
Date(s): 8/22/19 - 8/24/19
Activities: User Testing, Hospital Callings
Technical Information: C++ Programming
Reflection: My primary contribution to my internship was the collective group experience that I had alongside my other teammates, where I wasn’t given such one task to accomplish, but rather alongside my teammates we were malleable enough to work with whatever was needed to work with to help further are project and accomplish our goals.

There were times where I would work alongside one teammate with the graphics to help come up with designs for our application software that we designed to help usher in a higher rate of accuracy in regards to the communication between the medical administrators from the primary care physicians to the specialized departments. I also helped program the application, alongside Kathleen, making our application super interactive and user friendly with as easy to use a system as possible, to take away the complexities that we believe plagued the system beforehand. 

My most proudest moment in my internship, has to be the final presentation we did, I was so nervous, even though I had done presentations before, mainly because unlike school I would be presenting in front of real professionals and it was my chance to help create a positive first impression and especially not mess up my group who had trusted me. I was tasked with doing the last ¼ of the slides in our presentation, alongside helping conclude/summarize our entire project. I was especially nervous, since even if all my group did their presentation well, if I messed up in my presentation, then the entire deck of cards holding up our pitch would fall, since that is the only thing the judges would remember. Thankfully I was able to nail my presentation, without any hesitations or fears. 

Optum Internship Blog #4

Post #4
Date(s): 7/18/19 - 7/19/19
Activities: First Presentation, System Flaws
Technical Information: Quip, Powerpoint, User Testing
Reflection: When I first heard the news that I would be interning at Optum, given my experience having job shadowed at Cisco beforehand where I was exposed to a sort of confined office space with a lot of cubicles, I was nervous and somewhat dreading how my next 5 weeks would be. But thankfully, Optum exceeded almost all the expectations I had.

Optum with their open office spaces, lax rules, leisure activities, alongside being able to meet and interact with so many new people who were all thorough professionals who guided me and my team in helping us achieve our goals that we had planned. 

This was one of the things that I was really grateful, as this was something I didn’t have of control off, since most of the factors involved here were external as I could only control how I act but how other people would respond. The managers, the employees alongside the other interns all made my internship experience, one of a lifetime, as I made lifelong connections beyond belief, and gained experience I would never have gained withouth this opportunity. 

Optum Internship Blog #3

Post #3
Date(s): 7/15/19 - 7/17/19
Activities: Application Building, Organization and Researching
Technical Information: Programming, Art Direction and PowerPoint
Reflection: My classroom experiences have played an extremely important part in preparing me for my internship, as many of the soft skills and some hard technical skills that I learn't during my years as an Academy of Information Technology Student through all my classes, especially all my Technical classes.

Having done so many presentations and interviews through the AOIT program, I was able to ingrain in myself many of the soft skills needed to help me in my journey through my internship, skills such as being confident, maintaining perfect eye-to-eye contact, not stuttering, approaching people, and etc.

Learning programming languages such as C++ and SAS also helped when learning to program new applications, especially during the later stages of our internship period when we needed as much help as possible in building our application to look professional even though we had less time than the college interns and didn't any of the experience.

The only I thing I wish I would have learned prior to the internship was some more specific programming languages such as Python which could have really helped speed up our process when ideating what our healthcare problem would, and designing our solution. 

Optum Internship Blog #2

Post #2
Date(s): 7/11/19 - 7/12/19
Activities: Workplace Research, Ideating Healthcare Problems, Teamwork
Technical Information: Getting Office IDs, Research Tools, Security Protocol
Reflection: The workplace had an extremely comfortable atmosphere to it, with a large emphasis on open space, comfort, colors and boards. Most of the walls were either green or orange, primarily being orange due to it essentially being the color that represents Optum as a company. They were not any cubicles, as all offices were open, and mean't to give their employees comfort. They had many gaming and snake rooms available to help their employees get some leisure break time once they had finished any tasks or needed lunch.

Most decisions seemed to be ones that were made cooperatively with teams rather than competitively, as most office workers seemed to have great camaraderie with each other, as many had been working on same teams for years on projects.

Optum in general had a very relaxed atmosphere, with dress codes not really mattering much as most employees could wear almost anything they wanted as long as it would not be distracting or overtly out of place. But one thing Optum was not lax at all about, was the work ethic they were expecting from you, they gave you all the tools and opportunities you needed to make a great employee, and they had a rules and philosophies that emphasized the work culture in Optum, one where you always had to be one step above your game and be ready to face down any challenges, and to always surpass your limits of what you could possibly learn to help your company succeed. 

Optum Internship Blog #1

Post #1 
Date(s): 7/8/19 - 7/10/19
Activities: First Company Visit, Team Interaction and Organization
Technical Information: Workspace Office Configuration, Email System Familiarization And Legal Admittance
Reflection: Optum is a Health Services Company, that serves as a subsidiary/division to UnitedHealthGroup which is the largest Health Insurance company in the United States as well as the world. Optum is primarily involved into care services and as a pharmacy benefit manager, that serves as third party mediator between many doctors and their patients when it comes to the services they can be offered. But it is also focused primarily on many of its technology inspired aspirations, with widespread operations in dealing with all the aspects of the healthcare system as we know it including pharmacy care, healthcare delivery as well the data analytics tracing the insurers all the way down to the hospitals and their patients. Their customers being both the patients using their insurance, as well as the hospitals, clinics, doctors and almost anyone who has got a foot in the door of the vast healthcare field that plays such a large part in our lives and most peoples lives today.

On our first day, after having a tour around the vast workplace that was setup in their office, we placed into random groups of 4, and tasked with ideating a specific United States healthcare system problem, and designing a solution that we see would best fit/solve this idea, through the creation of any sort of application whether it be software or hardware specific. Once we would be done with our application, we we would have to pitch our application as a service/product in a shark tank style presentation to a group of professional and industry related judges who would act as potential investors to our product/service. Our first presentation would be 3 weeks into the presentation in front of some more familiar judges where they would critique and advise on our applications and better prepare us for the endgame which was the presentation in the last week, which would be watched by industry related professional judges flown in from the headquarters alongside 100s of employees and other college interns who were there at the same time.

The group I was placed in, entirely featured students who came from another high school and as a result I didn't have the existing friendly relation that they had already established beforehand. But I was fortunate enough where I was welcomed with open arms into the group, and I was surprisingly able to make friends and get along with everyone really quick, and find out how I would fit in this group for the next 5 weeks that we had. My teammates were Udai, Kenna and Kathleen, and I was also able to meet my 3 managers Janet, Jenna and Victoria who were all newer employees and also extremely nice in the way they treated us.

Persuasion - Go to Japan!

Japan is a country filled with many beautiful sights and places to visit but why should you, a person enjoying the comfort of your home, decide to go visit there? Japan is a country with such an amazing culture and background and being able to visit this country is just an amazing experience to go through and will be a permanent mark in your life if you decided to go visit this country. Last year a record of 19.7 million overseas visits were recorded last year which is a massive number and just goes to show that Japan is truly remarkable and that it isn't uncommon for people wanting to go travel there to gaze upon the sights this country holds. Have you ever just went outside and just marveled at a beautiful garden you saw or even just a single flower you saw in your yard? Well, imagine seeing a country where everywhere you turned was a beautiful garden with beautiful trees like the Sakura Tree (Cherry Blossom Tree) with petals that floated in the wind just giving off a sense of belonging and that that's where you are supposed to be. Maybe you don't care much for flowers or trees and the beauty but Japan is also highly advanced in technology also. Japan has been making a lot of prototypes for robots and artificial intelligence which is something amazing to just experience and see. The technology in Japan is one of the most iconic things about Japan so if you are into computers and technology that is years ahead and only seen in the comic books then you should go to Japan to make what you believed to be unreal actually real.  Japan isn't just a country or just an island, it is a stunning world beauty that can only be experienced first hand and not by some pictures on the internet so if you are planning to go somewhere where the culture is booming and filled with many vivid colors and technology you could only imagine to be real that will make your eyes swell up with tears of just pure beauty and leave you in a state of just pure awe then Japan is the place to be.

August 15th - Fly back to USA - Travel

On the morning of August 15th everyone woke up and decided to pack up immediately (except for Zuhare because he was too busy looking at how to be a Genji main because he's bad). As we finished packing up we decided to just chill for the rest of the day because our days in Japan were coming to an end so we decided to just chill this day and enjoy the scenery of Japan near our hotel room. Chase proceeds to go to the bathroom (which takes him about 30min) and we decide to go and grab some breakfast. As we come back with some breakfast Chase is finally out of the bathroom and as we finish eating breakfast we put on our fire Js and head out. It was a hot day at around 90 degrees Fahrenheit but it was still a beautiful day nonetheless. Everyone wore shorts and short sleeve shirts (except for zuhare who wore some baggy skinny jeans) and we just walked around admiring all the sights around our hotel that we stayed at, The trees were a vibrant green and just reminded us of how amazing this whole experience in Japan has been with all the beautiful flowers and gardens around with all of the diverse culture we have experienced with the businessmen all around the streets and the women in the kimonos walking along with them showing just how the culture is in the new age as well as keeping the traditional Japanese culture with it. We decided to go into a Japanese souvenir shop to get a piece of the culture to take home with us. Chase decided to get a Mt. Fuji snow glove, Shamyl decided to get a Japanese lantern, Kush decided to get a Japanese sweatshirt with the Japanese flag on it, Zuhare decided to get a Genji bobble head, and I decided to get a cool pen. We headed back to our hotel room to finish packing and to add our souvenirs to our suitcases and bags while Chase left to go get our rental car back. As we waited for Chase to get back we decided to share our favorite moments in Japan. Shamyls favorite part was the Awa Odori Dance festival because he really enjoyed all the dancing and music involved, Zuhares favorite part was visiting Edo Castle because he really enjoyed the beauty o fit and all the segments in it, Kush's favorite part was the Rakuten Tennis Tournament because he really enjoys tennis and his favorite player was Kei Nishikori who participated in the event, Chases favorite part was the Tokyo Tower because it was just a beautiful sight to see at night, and my favorite part was visiting the Ueno Zoo because of the Giant Panda and the wide variety of animals to see inside. After we recapped our favorite events in Japan it was finally time to leave this amazing country so we got our bags and loaded them in the SUV and drove to the airport. In the airport we got a final glimpse of this amazing culture we have been surrounded by for two weeks and have indulged ourselves in. We finally boarded the plane and all agreed that Japan was the most amazing and beautiful country we have visited. Goodbye Japan, till next time.

Weather: 82 degrees

August 14th - Awa Odori Dance Festival - Culture

It was 10:00 at night we had just arrived in Tokushima and took a cab from the Awa Odori Airport to our hotel, we were all exhausted. Kush and Zuhare were sleeping, Chase was quite drowsy, and Mohir, as usual, was busy watching YouTube. We were all quite excited about our next day in Japan, the day almost all of us, especially me were waiting diligently for, attending the world renown Japanese Awa Odori Festival. We slept as soon as we stepped foot into our hotel room which as any other hotel in Japan was utmost comforting and relaxing, almost everyone other than Mohir slept at the same time, we all wanted to wake up early so that we could get up early have a good breakfast and leave for the festival which normally isn't that crowded in the mornings as the main events are always held during the evening from 6 all the way to midnight. We all woke up at 6 o clock in the morning, Zuhare like always didn't have a shower as he likes to have them at night, while Chase took nearly 30 mins in the bathroom, even Mohir who slept way later than us took only 10 mins to take a shower. Kush also had a shower at night so he didn't feel like taking it in the morning. As soon as we got out of the hotel, we all asked Kush to find a good restaurant that all of us could eat in. He found an Indian Restaurant in Minamishowacho which was like a downtown suburb or county of Tokushima. The food was great, and it felt really good to eat another countries food in Japan.


While throughout the day many small dance events took place, we were preparing more for the big event that would take place at 6:00 and were starting to learn more about what we were going to be getting tonight. We learned through some research that the festival basically in English translates to a fools dance, as according to the legend and facts, in 1587 when the Feudal lord Hachisuka Lamesa in celebration of his newly built Tokushima palace, offered sake a Japanese rice wine to all his people, and his citizens got so drunk at night that started dancing in an unregular and unsteady gait. So we figured out that this dance isn't some practiced dance that took months in preparation, but an every day drunk dance that the Japanese people and over 1.6 million tourists have celebrated yearly. Once the clock hit 6 in Tokushima, the entire city became a massive dance battleground as the city got divided into 6 different stages that were showing both the free dances and the paid dances. For the most part we weren't very worried about our seats, as we had booked our seats for the paid dances nearly a month ago, but we were in a hurry to get good seats for the free performances that took place at 6, because as a lot of Japanese citizens told us that if we didn't arrive at least 1 hr or 2 before the performance started then you wouldn't have any good seats or even any seats left, especially if you're here with 5 of your friends. So we did arrive at 5 and even then we had to look at least 2 rounds before we could find 5 seats for all of us.


The time during dance was honestly both one of the frustrated and exciting parts of the day, as you couldn't even hear or see the folk song and dance clearly, because of the fact that we had to stand up through the nearly ecstatic and exuberant crowd that wouldn't stop cheering and clapping for at least 2 to 3 hrs, but at the same time the dresses and the unique yet common method of dancing that the locals had managed so well made even the free dances completely worth the watch. Once the dance ended, we were really tired and wanted to do something else that didn't involve dance, so we started to go on the lookout for the food and game stalls present in the festival. We could spend enough time playing in the game stalls because our next show would not start until about half an hour later, so we had time to play some of the card and arcade games present during the half time break we had. Once our break time was about to get over, we started to rush towards our paid performance which was about to start in a moment.


The Paid dance that takes place at 10:30 at night was the one we were all looking forward to, all that tension, discipline, and trouble we went through all that day was completely worth it for this performance and the others that took place that night, it was almost jaw dropping as you could literally see Japan's rich culture and history right before your eyes through these simple yet memorable performances of all sorts of demographics in the population, the old, young, middle-aged and the woman. The preparation and dedication that the dance members had to go through was clearly evident by how much me, chase, zuhare and mohir enjoyed it, You would have to see it in order to believe how these absolutely stunning performances have made Awa Odori become one of the most visited festivals in the entire world.

Weather 87

August 13th - Island Shrine of Itsukushima - Culture

When we woke up from the hotel in Hiroshima we had already visited the memorial so we then needed to know if we should go back to Tokyo or go to another place in Hiroshima. Shamyl started to look for places on his phone when he woke up and found a place called Itsukushima Island. The website said that this was a very significant place for the Shinto religion which is a religion in Japan that believes in the worship of ancestors and that life is all around us in everything. It is a Shinto shrine on the island of Isukushima which is why the name is why it is. It's best known for its "floating" torii gate which is in the water and coming out from it. During ancient times many people thought that it  was impossible to build things up from the sea so that's why it is deemed floating. The island is located in the city of Hatsukaichi in the Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. That was all that the site said and so Shamyl went and woke us all up. Mohir was to tired to get up so Shamyl woke him up with a water bottle by pouring it on him. It didn't take us long to get ready and it didn't take long till we were in the car. We googled the directions and we were on our way. Once we arrived at Hatsukaichi we took a boat tp the shrine and got on Itsukushima Island it was a very congested with trees and so we had to ask the man who took us to the island to help us. He accepted and we were on our way, Once we arrived the man said that he had to go because his boat was still on the island and that someone else could have helped us. The new man that we found told us more about it like how the shrine was designed and built on pier like structures over the bay so that it would appear to be floating on the water separate from the sacred island which could be approached by the devout. This fascinated all of us except for Mohir who was playing Clash Royal on his phone the whole time. When we followed the man to the sacred chief shrine for the Shinto religion it kept getting more and more crowded. Mohir ended up bumping into someone which made him ask why it got so populated all of a sudden to which the man answered that the shrine is one of Japan's most popular tourist attractions and is classified as one of the 3 views of Japan. We then finally got to the edge of the building and probably for 10 minutes looked around,even Mohir. Chase asked if we could get a boat ride so we could get even closer but the man said that since we were just tourists and didn't even practice the Shinto religion that we couldn't since it was a sacred sight. Later we were getting tired and decided to go home, when we were on the boat on the way back we saw a fish after Kush turned on the flashlight on his phone. We eventually got back to the car and had to drive all the way to Awa to get there in time for the Awa Odori festival. We all took turns driving like always and that was the end of our day.

August 12th - Hiroshima Peace Memorial - History

It was an over 8 hr drive from Mt Fuji all the way to Hiroshima, we were all utterly exhausted and tired. We hadn't had sleep for over a day, as all 5 of us kept switching gears in order to reach our destination faster. Zuhare and Chase were arguing about how choosing to drive in Japan was of utter waste, and that the decision made couldn't have been worse. Me, Mohir and Kush said that through driving we could explore so many more aspects of Japan that we couldn't explore through Bullet trains or even Planes. Overall even though the car trip was long and tiring, we were witnessing Japan at an eye to eye level that we couldn't have seen from any other means of transportation.

After leaving from Mt Fuji at about 3 am, we drove directly with only 2 short breaks to Hiroshima which was about 443 miles to the west of Japan. The two breaks we took were in the city of Kyoto and Osaka which were two big cities that we absolutely needed to see in order to fully experience  Japan as a whole rather than just some parts. Once we had arrived in Hiroshima it had already become about 11:30 and we desperately needed to find a hotel just to rest in and we found the Hotel Sunroute Hiroshima to rest in for a couple of hours and booked it for the night. After spending some hours sleeping, we started our preparations for leaving for what we had come all the way to Hiroshima for in the first place; the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial was one our most awaited sites during our entire trip, because ever since we were young in school we had been taught about the Atomic Bomb that landed on Hiroshima, and the destruction and mayhem that it had caused for not only the surrounding areas beyond Hiroshima but the entire Japan. The Memorial is the only structure in Hiroshima that was left standing after the onslaught of the Nuclear Bomb. Ever since the attack, on 1949 with the enactment of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law, the new Japanese government decided that the entire district surrounding the memorial would be devoted to peace, and would later on become known as the Peace Memorial Park.

The Park or the Memorial, in general, was quite haunting to look at for all of us in our group, whenever I looked anywhere in that city all I could think of was the destruction and atrocities of World War II both in and out of Japan. There were actually times where I felt like we were in some sort of horror movie environment, with the kind of dark and grayish visuals that was present throughout the memorial. The memorial as said by the UN was retained in order to help cut down nuclear weapons in the world, by reminding us about the horrors that this deadly human weapon could cause any day to day citizen in life.

The entire memorial was overall an absolute marvel to look at, behind all that darkness and destruction that the memorial represented we could peek at the small tiny message hidden beneath all the layers of the memorial, that of world peace and an end to nuclear proliferation. Zuhare was the one who noticed the subtext of why the memorial was retained for so long, before Chase and the others caught on to the message that was so blatantly obvious but we could not see it. Hopefully, no one country has to ever witness the horrors of a nuclear bomb ever again, and just like what the memorial represents can finally achieve world peace. 

August 11th - Mt. Fuji/Mountain Day - Natural Environment/Celebration

Cloudy picture from Mt. Fuji

Natural Environment: As we woke up for an early start at 6 am we already ran into trouble. We only had 1 shower at the hotel and all of us wanted to shower before we left. Only Mohir and Zuhare got to shower because of the amount of time we spend arguing about who got to shower. We should have just played rock paper scissors... We had to be at the base of Mt. Fuji to start the tour by 7:00 so we didn't have much time. We raced into a taxi and told the driver to book it. As we arrived we saw the crowd starting to march off without us so we hurried out the taxi throwing the money we owed at him. We caught up to our travel guide a few short seconds later and asked him what we missed. He introduced himself as Mr. Tanaka and that the tour would take us all day and end around 5 pm. The tour was $154.90 so it better be worth it. As we started our climb I peered over a rock and saw these little lift carts going really far off into the distance... Odd. As we went we walked for about 2 hours with the tour guide explaining the history of the mountain as well as the nearby city of Tokyo as if we hadn't heard it a thousand times already. Everyone took pictures on the way except for poor Shamyl who forgot his phone and camera at the hotel. He remembered putting it on his nightstand and i guess he never got it as we were booking out the door. He kept asking me (Chase) to take a picture of this and that.... it was really annoying after a while but i felt bad for him so i did as he asked. We got told early on that we weren't going to be able to go to the very top because the air was so thin up there and they didn't have enough air masks for everyone. So that was a bummer but at least we got to say that we were on Mt. Fuji. At around 12:30 everyone agreed that they were hungry and the guide knew this from his past expeditions so they purposefully but a classic restaurant right when we got hungry. Guess what it was... McDonald's... great... out of all places or restaurants they put a freaking McDonald's there... like really! Come on! So we sadly ate our McDoubles... each of us got 2 because we were starving. They gave us an hour to eat and so we set off on our journey once again at around 1:30. To be honest i was really disappointed with the rest of the way. The travel guide didn't say much and the scenery was fine but it was cloudy up above so there weren't a lot of good pictures to take. O i almost forgot, you know how i mentioned the lift carts in the distance up above? Yea... well we got to ride one of those! That was my favorite part about the trip because nothing else could really compare. We ended early around 4 oclock because this fantastic tour couldn't get any worse... We called a taxi and on the way back no one really said anything... Except for the fact that that tour sucked. If i ever go again i will make sure to book with a better tour company than JapanICan. Once we got back to the hotel Shamyl even said "I'm glad i didn't take my phone. I wouldn't have used it much. Still though, send me a photo or 2 for memories." We were all exhausted by the time we got back so we just grabbed an early dinner at some Japanese restaurant. I don't remember the name because the food there was ehhh. After our dreadful day we all pretty much shut up and watched TV. We watched some Japanese TV game show but i clocked out in the middle of it and i didn't know what time i fell asleep. I want to say somewhere around 9 but I'm not sure. That was the worst day of our trip, thankfully. We had just gotten started!

Celebration: That day we decided to go to Mt. Fuji because it was Mountain Day. It is a celebration that occurs every August 11th and it started its first celebration in 2016. It is a day for people to celebrate and appreciate mountains and how and why they are there.

It was 86 degrees that day so trekking up Mt. Fuji was fantastic weather, it was a bit foggy as we got higher however. It felt nice that the temperature was getting cooler as we got higher. It probably dropped 5 degrees or something as we got higher so it was really nice. The only downside was that it was humid but that's the only thing that bugged me.

August 10th - Nara City - History

Today we went to Nara City. It is about 5 hour long trip however the beauty of Nara city's ancient ruins like the ones in Todaiji Temple are astounding.  We luckily got a rental car from the airport that was a SUV and so we were not crowded. We took turns driving after we left out hotel at around 6am to reach Nara city by around 11am and since there were 5 of us decided to trade every hour. Unluckily we got to Nara city at 12am instead due to the many bathroom breaks we had to do because of Shamyl and the many food breaks we had to do because of Chase. It was hot that day as well, probably around 88 degrees Fahrenheit, nevertheless once we reached Nara city we went to Todaiji temple straight away which houses the world's largest bronze gilded Buddha. The temple used to be near the Ancient capital of Japan. Although none of us were Buddhists we still admired the craftsmanship that was needed to create the Buddha. We found out that the Buddha was 15 meters which is 49 feet high. Also we didn't know this when we were coming to Nara city but the world's largest bronze gilded Buddha is also housed inside of the world's largest wooden building, it is 48 meters in height which is 157 feet. This made Todaiji Temple even more remarkable. The pillars showed that this place is very old but still standing as even the paint was staring to wear off of the building. We all wondered how the Japanese made such a big building with wood and such a long time ago. Besides the Buddha however there were also many more beautiful statues of what seemed to us were demons or characters of Japanese tales. These statues to were made out of wood and were still very tall. The time then started to get late and it was eventually 6pm which might not seem long but the thing was since we were to busy touring the Temple we lost tack of time and since it took 5 hours to five back to Tokyo we needed to leave. Then to everyone's shock Chase said he was hungry and wouldn't leave till we had some food. So we started to look at nearby restaurant and we found a place that served authentic Japanese sushi and we all went. The place was really cheap and we also got a good meal so for anyone that visits to see the largest bronze gilded Buddha in the world or the worlds largest wooden building I would recommend that you eat at Maguro Koya because the experience was truly magnificent. Kush and Mohir went to sleep during the car ride and so Zuhare,Chase, and Shamyl had to drive on our way back to Tokyo. Once we got home it was around midnight and so we went straight to bed without eating any dinner because of the fact that we were really late and also that we were late and tired from driving, or atleast some of us were unlike Kush and Mohir.

August 9th - Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Tournament - Sport

The Rakuten open tennis tournament is the biggest tennis tournament held in Asia, and has been going on since 1972 and is held in the Ariake Colosseum. When we got there first we were so confused since we woke up and jumped in the car to get to the tournament on time we at first were so confused by all the courts (and later saw on the sign there were 48) we finally located our seats we all took turns taking pictures on our phones except Chase who was complaining the whole time about how his phones camera was so bad. It was 87 degrees that day... we were going to be outside all day and were going to be sweating like crazy because of the intense sun beating down on us. Mohir was complaining also about how he didn't have time to go to the bathroom and didn't want to miss out on the matches also so he didn't go to the bathroom for the rest of the matches we mainly cheered on Kei Nishikori even when he went against Andy Murray. Who was born in Scotland but lives in England, the game went with Kei getting a few point ahead of Andy but then Andy coming back and winning, but we kept supporting Kei because we are loyal. Andy was the closest we had to America since to be honest were pretty bad and we all had no high expectations for them. The heat was so hot that they had to put the retractable roof up which made things ten times better and made us feel way better. When the game was finally over we hoped in out rental car and had to navigate the tons of traffic to finally go back to the nice and cool hotel to get out of 89 degree weather we ate a sushi dinner and then all passed out with Mohir finally going to the bathroom and Zuhare going to bed first.