When you live at light speed as I do, you need the right fuel or else you flame out. Yesterday, a source of that fuel was established.
The location was Takao, the mountain to the west of Tokyo. After a pleasant train trip from the city, we started by riding the (fantastic!) chair lift to the half-way point:
The weather was great (about 80F), the views were wonderful and since we were all tired from the previous day we took the walk to the top slowly.
There are many shrines on the mountain, as well as restaurants selling food to the walkers. For us, the more refreshing the better!
The climb was longer and harder than KLS and I remembered, and we were at the apex of ruination before we reached the top. Bernard in particular was unused to the exertion, but he soldiered on like a true man!
That’s a Tanuki apparently, and the photo is taken from a sign illustrating its poop indexed by plants it ate! As with all the other animals allegedly on Takao (monkeys, flying squirrels), we saw none!
The walk done was much easier. At this time, I gave Bernard a rest by carrying his 4763 lb camera myself, taking many exhibition quality photos along the way. I expect he’ll be blogging a few on his blog (see link at right)!
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We’d ridden the worlds steepest cable car once before, up the mountain, so yesterday we took it down. Amusingly, the car was packed with school kids, who all screamed excitedly when it fell out of the station at the start.
After a rest (during which I, with all this extra energy from vast quantities of Mt Dew, explored local grocery stores and marveled at overpriced fruit…), we hopped over to Ueno for dinner, toy shopping and (of course!), UFO catching!
That spaghetti was delicious!