Introduction

Greetings!

My name is Caitlin Reusch and I just transferred to CU Denver. I am in between my junior and senior years of college. My major is geography, so there is no need to convert me to the major. I have been an Art major, a Biology major, and a Microbiology major. I love to travel; I have been to Europe several times and Japan twice. I have lived a summer in England, danced in the Scottish rain, crossed into Italy from Germany through the Alps, and been lost in La Samaritan department store in Paris. For someone of twenty years old, I have been lucky in my travel opportunities. I hope it remains so, and that I continue to have adventures until I am so old I can no longer walk.

I have chosen Mt. Fuji and its surrounding area because I have a great love for foreign places, especially Japan. It is a region I do not know much about and I am eager to learn more. I am particularly interested in the Aokigahara Forest, which is well known as a suicide destination in Japan. It has been popularized by Japanese media, and subsequently romanticized by the Japanese population. Couples go there to die together in the eerily silent forest. It is both a creepy and fascinating location.

 I hope to discover more about the Mt. Fuji area and Aokigahara in particular, such as why it is such a popular place to go. I will explore the landscape of the area. In doing so, I hope to find out why it is so popular. What draws people to this peaceful, but deadly, place? What landforms or functions of geography make this place so peaceful and silent? These are a few of the question I hope to answer for myself.