Back In Tokyo

Hey guys!

A big thanks to all of you who have been taking the time to read about my adventures and share your comments.

I missed posting yesterday just because I was dead tired. We started the day off with a trip to Fushimi-Inari, a mountain covered in shrines dedicated to a successful harvest. The slopes of the mountain are lined with hundreds of orange Torii gates, and it makes for quite the scene. Those of you who have seen the film 'Memoirs of a Geisha' have actually seen Fushimi-Inari in a scene in which a little girl runs through the orange Torii. A fantastic walk, but a reasonably tiring one. :)

We left Kyoto today and made our way to Tokyo. It was a relatively short trip, just 3 hours on the speedy Shinkansen and we were there. No changing trains. It was a nice change. :)

I had a bit of a disappointment on my arrival though. It turns out that the buses that I was counting on for my trip to Mt. Fuji are not as frequent as I had been led to believe. They don't start running until 8am, and the last one leaves Fuji-san at 4:00 in the afternoon. That makes a day-trip climb completely impossible. I was willing to spend a night on the mountain, but the guys didn't want to spend more than one of our (extremely precious) days on the mountain. I went alone to the bus stop to get tickets, and came back to the hotel feeling pretty down about the whole situation. However, on finding that Gray and Jay both seemed pretty up-beat about not having to climb a mountain, I made the decision to do it alone. We're changing hotels Saturday morning (couldn't find ANY hotel that would book us for 3 nights) but I won' t be there, and the guys will carry my luggage. I'll be leaving tomorrow night for Fuji, I'll climb in the evening, spend the night on the summit, and awake to the sunrise. I'll then climb down and re-join the guys Saturday afternoon (oh btw, it's about 10:30pm local time.)

Well, that's it for now. I'd post pics, but I'm a bit tired. We just had a fantastic (and HUGE) meal at a local Yakitori bar. For those not familiar Yakitori is skewered meats and vegetables cooked over charcoal. It's usually considered a snack to accompany beer, but we've done it as a meal a few times just because it's delicious and the atmosphere in Yakitori places tends to be great. I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for pics. I might not be online tomorrow as I'll be preping for my climb. I'll try to get Fuji pics up afterwards though.

Sayonara for now!