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2006: Japan
To Japan!
I was bored with work and life. Solution - go to Japan, burn a lot of money and become happy again.
Japan noobs see their first temple
Before I could become happy, I had to show the noobs around.
That's us
Me, Mike, at the left, then Ola the sailor man, and Hannes at the right.
Oh, the noobness
What, haven't you seen a billion people crossing the street at the same time before, below screens so big they are an affront to god? If I hadn't intervened, my friends would still be standing at the Shibuya crossing.
MOS Burger > Lotteria
This is evident in Hannes' dissatified look.
Feeling good in Ueno
As my friends' noobness wore off, my hopes of finding carefree happiness increased.
Feeling better in Asakusa
And I did find it, becoming drunk at an izakaya with Satoichi, the nice guy who runs Taito Ryokan.
National Museum
The National Museum in Ueno had some interesting displays.
Mystifying samurai helmet
My archeological expertise told me that this samurai helmet had been used to recycle enemy arrows shot at you.
Meiji-Jingu gate
No first visit to Tokyo is complete without visiting Meiji-Jingu.
Japanese-style wedding
We witnessed the boring bit of a marriage, before the wild party and the wedding night.
Teach us english, or else!
Students waylaid us and made us speak english with them, or else they'd poke our eyes out.
See, that's the eye-poking fist they're making there.
Harajuku
Crazy kids!
Taito Ryokan
Simple but nice lodgings in central Asakusa.
Odaiba
I had never been to Odaiba, across the Rainbow bridge, so we decided to go.
Ferris wheel
Wheee... eel!
Strange order
Unlike most of Tokyo, Odaiba shows signs of being a planned part of the city. It's a nice break from the other dense and crowded places, especially on a quiet day in the middle of the week.
Chibi-kuruma
Toyota shows off their stuff in Odaiba. The nice thing with this car is that to parallell park, you can just grab your seat and jump the car into place while you're still in it.
Yarr
We hate the sea and everything in it.
Taiko
The taiko arcade game was fun until a 10 year old girl showed us how it's really played. She owned us.
Nikko
A daytrip from Tokyo for the temple aficionado.
Duuude...
There's this shrine you totally have to see.
Picturesque!
Pimped
Pimp my shrine!
More pimped
Megapimp
Reason for pimping?
If these are sake barrels as I think they are, I think we might have an explanation for the pimpage.
Cute pimpage
Those are the original three monkeys, I'm told.
Rain
Rain didn't discourage these visitors as much as it did with us.
Biiru
We found our good spirits again with the help of the local brew.
Royal gardens
Back in Tokyo we went to the royal gardens, a nice, quiet spot in the middle of Tokyo.
Kamakura
I also took my friends to Kamakura for more shrines and to see the Pacific ocean.
Mountainside graveyard
We found a nice shrine with a graveyard on a lush hillside. I bought a nice spot there for myself, seeing as I'm not young any longer.
The vending machines rise up against us
What happened to the brilliant idea of one vending machine every 10 meters instead of a big bunch of them every 100 meters?
Daibutsu
The Buddha was as big as ever.
Ah, the sea
Which, along with everything in it, we hate so much we had to stay there for a while to fully appreciate the level of loathing.
Engrish
Suddenly, engrish distracted us! This one was the best and I did choose it myself, so the text was right.
No Fuji
This spot is a favorite for me, because on a clear day without so much haze you can see Fuji in the distance. Not this day, but it was still nice.
Bandai museum
Back in Tokyo we find out there's a Bandai museum. One in our group demands to go there.
Who?
But I can't quite remember which one of us who wanted to go...
I challenge you to clawplagh!
Dr Zoidberg would so whoop his ass.
Mechapanda
Even I, jaded and bitter with old age as I've become, thought this was cute.
Transformers!
More than meets the eye!
What?
Party!
More partying with friends.
Ghibli museum
The Ghibli museum can be visited again and again. And we did!
Mitaka
The nice park in Mitaka, near the Ghibli museum, was full of people enjoying their weekend.
Totoro!
If you shave Totoro down, I think he will have an uncanny resemblance to Ola.
Laputa robot
Not as huggable as Totoro, but still cool.
Party!
Oh no! Our time in Japan is running out! Gotta party!
Fuji
Wait! First, let's climb Fuji!
ZZZzzz....
At 5 in the morning! Yay!
A suspiciously nice morning
At first, all is fine as the mountain lures us in.
So close, yet so far
A stone throw away lies the peak.
So far, yet so distant
OK, two stone throws. With very light stones.
Look, a mountain goat
Nah, it's Ola, but he's obviously at home in all elements, the sea as well as the mountains.
Are we there yet?
Sweet zombie jesus, why aren't we there yet?
Watch the exact moment this young man's hope of seeing the peak above this ledge is crushed.
Finally
At this time I still thought four hours of climbing in thin air was worth it.
Curse you, weather gods!
But then evil clouds obscure our view. Not even an energizing Snickers bar could cheer me up.
Silent prayer for a volcanic euroption
Even shrouded in cold fog the crater was spectacular, although it was a bit hard to appreciate it after hours of climbing up there.
Descent
As you can see, Fuji is a mopuntain of volcanic gravel and rocks, which is hard to walk on.
Battling the elements
At this point we're on the wrong path down the mountain.
Bulldozer road
Three hours sliding and slipping down a makeshift bulldozer road brought us to the other side of the mountain, along with a considerable part of the mountain in our shoes.
Exhaustion
Hannes portrays how we felt when we stumbled on a station. Luckily, some nice locals called us a taxi and offered us access to their vending machines.
Shabu shabu
Back in civilization we soothe our weary souls with shabu-shabu.
Last party
We squeezed in some last partying with our friends.
We'll be back
All things must end, but we left with a promise to return.