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I was bored with work and life. Solution - go to Japan, burn a lot of money and become happy again.
Before I could become happy, I had to show the noobs around.
Me, Mike, at the left, then Ola the sailor man, and Hannes at the right.
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.
This is evident in Hannes' dissatified look.
As my friends' noobness wore off, my hopes of finding carefree happiness increased.
And I did find it, becoming drunk at an izakaya with Satoichi, the nice guy who runs Taito Ryokan.
The National Museum in Ueno had some interesting displays.
My archeological expertise told me that this samurai helmet had been used to recycle enemy arrows shot at you.
No first visit to Tokyo is complete without visiting Meiji-Jingu.
We witnessed the boring bit of a marriage, before the wild party and the wedding night.
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.
Crazy kids!
Simple but nice lodgings in central Asakusa.
I had never been to Odaiba, across the Rainbow bridge, so we decided to go.
Wheee... eel!
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.
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.
We hate the sea and everything in it.
The taiko arcade game was fun until a 10 year old girl showed us how it's really played. She owned us.
A daytrip from Tokyo for the temple aficionado.
There's this shrine you totally have to see.
Pimp my shrine!
If these are sake barrels as I think they are, I think we might have an explanation for the pimpage.
Those are the original three monkeys, I'm told.
Rain didn't discourage these visitors as much as it did with us.
We found our good spirits again with the help of the local brew.
Back in Tokyo we went to the royal gardens, a nice, quiet spot in the middle of Tokyo.
I also took my friends to Kamakura for more shrines and to see the Pacific ocean.
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.
What happened to the brilliant idea of one vending machine every 10 meters instead of a big bunch of them every 100 meters?
The Buddha was as big as ever.
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.
Suddenly, engrish distracted us! This one was the best and I did choose it myself, so the text was right.
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.
Back in Tokyo we find out there's a Bandai museum. One in our group demands to go there.
But I can't quite remember which one of us who wanted to go...
Dr Zoidberg would so whoop his ass.
Even I, jaded and bitter with old age as I've become, thought this was cute.
More than meets the eye!
What?
More partying with friends.
The Ghibli museum can be visited again and again. And we did!
The nice park in Mitaka, near the Ghibli museum, was full of people enjoying their weekend.
If you shave Totoro down, I think he will have an uncanny resemblance to Ola.
Not as huggable as Totoro, but still cool.
Oh no! Our time in Japan is running out! Gotta party!
Wait! First, let's climb Fuji!
At 5 in the morning! Yay!
At first, all is fine as the mountain lures us in.
A stone throw away lies the peak.
OK, two stone throws. With very light stones.
Nah, it's Ola, but he's obviously at home in all elements, the sea as well as the mountains.
Watch the exact moment this young man's hope of seeing the peak above this ledge is crushed.
At this time I still thought four hours of climbing in thin air was worth it.
But then evil clouds obscure our view. Not even an energizing Snickers bar could cheer me up.
Even shrouded in cold fog the crater was spectacular, although it was a bit hard to appreciate it after hours of climbing up there.
As you can see, Fuji is a mopuntain of volcanic gravel and rocks, which is hard to walk on.
At this point we're on the wrong path down the mountain.
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.
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.
Back in civilization we soothe our weary souls with shabu-shabu.
We squeezed in some last partying with our friends.
All things must end, but we left with a promise to return.
