Tokyo Calling

Well, I'm back in Tokyo. Started the day off in Nagoya, saying my good bye's to Joel, Marina, and Taka, then took off for Tokyo. By now I've wholeheartedly switched over to buses as the transportation du jour (Nagoya -> Tokyo: train - 2hrs, $90; bus: 6hrs, $51), so I duly made my way over to the bus station, waited in line to get my ticket and had my seat on the double decker bus to Tokyo with a full 3 minutes to spare! About that... Japan's a well organized, efficient country. Things get done quickly, most of the time. For some completely unfathomable reason, buying tickets for trains and buses is an exception! The ticket clerks are ridiculously and painstakingly slow and thorough. The oh-so-necessary tradition of laying out each of the tickets and going over them in great detail after somebody has finished purchasing them tends to drive me absolutely insane. Needless to say, when I got to the ticket booth 15 minutes before my bus was due to depart and found three people in front of me in line, I had a few concerns. But it all worked out... with three minutes to spare!

The weather, which covered me in miserably cold rain all day yesterday in Nagoya had finally come back around to sunny clear skies, so as we headed North I got a clear view of Mt. Fuji out the bus window:

There's a little more snow on the peak now than there was when I climbed it a month ago. Still climbale, I think.

The mountain is notoriously shy, however, so an hour later, it was shrouded in clouds

I keep being reminded that Japan is actually fairly far South, so there are palm trees, even as I'm shivering a bit in the wind:


So, now that I'm back in Tokyo, I had been planning to take a trip all the way up North to the island of Hokaido for a little snowboarding getaway, but after evaluating my bank account, the projected cold temperatures up there, and the fact that I'd have to rent equipment, I decided it was time to wrap things up and head back to sunny California, so I'm presently having a discourse with American Airlines about getting me back across the Pacific using frequent flyer points... so, eventually, this will get resolved I hope, and I'll be back in San Diego before next weekend.