First let's just say we are all officially sick to some degree. Yesterday's 100+ degree weather kicked our asses! It is hot and humid, we haven't been drinking as much water as we should, been drinking too much beer and coffee and we are exhausted from non stop traveling and sight seeing! I'm the sickest with tiredness and just plain run down. Nick and Zac are both tired but that is about it. We have survived today on many bottles of sports drink's, water, coffee and coke Zero!
We have downed gallons of water and sports drinks. The first 2/3's of the day was a killer. by dinner we were all back to normal and ready to hit the town hard!
Today started up bright and early at 6:00AM. we were out the door by 7:00, with a cup of coffee in hand. by the time we got out the door we needed Iced Tea! We walked about 1/4 of a mile to another hotel where we waited for our tour bus shuttle to take us to the actual tour bus depot.
We quickly got transfered to our tour bus and we were off to Mt Fuji.
I slept a portion of the 2 hour trip. I needed sleep. However I missed a good portion of the information our tour guide was telling us. But I was able to snap a bunch of photo's. We traveled through rush hour traffic. Over bridges. Through trees and then through tunnels, and more tunnels and more tunnels.... Lot's of tunnels.
Now a few side note items:
1. Every thing is opposite of the states. They drive on the left, they walk on the left, the escalators are backwards. Everything is Backwards.
2. I never had a passion to visit Asia. Never really wanted to. Had no desire. Could have cared less. However now that i have been here I want to come back. I have a new desire for the history of Asia, especially Japan. I love Japan! I wish i had learned Japanese. (another topic below). The country is so nice, so clean, and just well laid out. I can still do away with the fish though.
3. Thank God some people have learned English here. We have really had difficulty communicating. A lot of finger pointing, picture pointing, and some cue's have assisted. However like yesterday a very nice kind lady tried to help us. However we do not speak Japanese and she did not understand nor speak English. All we did was point and talk gibberish back and forth. she finally walked off and we still were lost. Today we had visited a lot of places that were very touristy. Most everything was in Japanese or some Asian language but NOT in English. There even was a direction sign that attempted to give us information. We could NOT read it. You'll see photo's later in the blog.
We arrived Mt Fuji in an overcast fog. The fog never lifted. We never saw it. However we got a post card with the mountain on it. There were ton's of people who hiked up the mountain. There were ton's of people getting ready to hike up the mountain. We toured all over camp 5. Took ton's of photo's. Not much more to say.
Here is a Japanese Dog. It looks just like an American Dog. But this one was very cute!
The tour then went to a hotel for lunch. I hate Spaghetti and Nick and Zac had Chinese. I ate with my seat mate on the bus. His name was Navir from India. He was here on business and took the day to tour. I drank lot's of water again and really just wanted to sleep.
We then left for Lake Ashi. I slept for the hour ride. This was a greatly needed sleep. Lake Ashi is a resort town where many locals go for vacation.
We road the ferry around the lake for 15 minutes then took the tram up the mountain and back down. Again the clouds were low and visibility was quite difficult. Up at the top there was a shrine and a Rock Garden. But finding these items was a bit difficult as we could not read the direction signs. We figured out the sign probably state "Back door" & "Front door". The top of the lift looked like a very old military psycho war hospital thing. kind of scary. We also wandered off in the fog looking for the shrine and rock garden.
Here is the photo of the direction sign we determined says "Back door go left" & "Front door go right". Other than that we were just lost.
We took off for the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) ride into Tokyo. It was fast! very super fast. I kind of got a little motion sickness but just a headache. I was much well by this time. The sports drink's and the sleep really helped.
Once we got back to the hotel room we just crashed for a while. Dinner was a necessity but we were tired. so we power napped and then headed out for dinner. Very expensive steak and not much of it. Back to the room for the night! I need my sleep!
Additional photo's of the day
We ordered Ice Cream. Please Note the menu! It's all in Japanese! We knew not what anything on here said. So we just made up our order and luckily the man had what we wanted. When in question we pointed to the photo's and he answered the best he could. Again the lack of knowledge in Japanese is coming to a fast realization that we have a major communication issue! Thank God for sign language!
