Travel to Japan, Tokyo, Shibuya.

I'm back in Tokyo. This is my third time here; so, I thought I'd blog about it. I seem to have a knack for having horrible, but retrospectively amusing, experiences when I land in Tokyo. In 2011, I was suffering from the cheese pizza I'd had on the plane. I also had to go to Shinjuku to get the key to my apartment -- during rush hour. Shinjuku Station is confusing in any event, but during rush hour, it's madness. Eventually, I found my way to the station where I lived, but spent another four hours trying to find the apartment, in the rain, with a huge suitcase.

That was two years ago. This time was actually worse. My flight out of Dallas was delayed, causing me to miss the connection in Atlanta. There was another flight to Narita that day, which I ran to try to catch. But it was too late...or so I thought. Just as I was resigned to stay in Atlanta for the night, the plane began deplaning due to a water leak. I was thus able to board the plane, albeit a few hours late, for Narita on the same day. This meant, however, that I wouldn't get to Narita until about 8:30pm, which made it impossible to check into my apartment. After I left Narita was when the real fun began.

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Travel to Japan, Tokyo, Asakusa.

We fly from Delhi to Kuala Lumpur (5 Hours) with Malaysian Airways as part of the first leg of our mammoth journey to Japan. The food is good as is the service – however, the airhostess seems to have taken a liking to C as we are plied with red wine and whisky & peanuts (which the others did not get), so much so that when we arrived in KL, C was a bit worse for wear and can’t recall getting off the plane or (!!) the transit 3 hours when we had Burger King – her staple hangover cure – while M enjoyed some Malaysian Street Food as well.

The next leg (Malaysian Airlines again) sees us depart at 11 pm for a night time 5 hour flight to Narita airport Tokyo. Snacks are on offer. The entertainment channels are better and while C is out with the fairies M watches a bit of Life of Pi (he really can’t see what the fuss is about having failed to finish the book and the film doesn’t do it for him either!) and then he checks out a bit of Argo – the Oscar winner – which looks more promising
Fresh fish food stall - Yanakabut we run out of time so he doesn’t see the ending.

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Travel to Japan, Tokyo, Hachioji.

I woke up early today on my "Sunday" so that I could go hiking - something I had been wanting to do for awhile. Sometimes, you just need to get out of the city! I WANT to climb Mt. Fuji this August, but I'm really not sure that a) my gimp knee can handle it, and b) I'm in good enough shape. So today was sort of a beginning test to see what my body could handle.

I went to Mt. Takao back in November, to see the autumn colors, but hadn't hiked it since. This time, I went alone (!!!) which was awesome, because I like doing things alone and knowing that I can have independent adventures. Mt. Takao itself is a super popular day hike because of it's close proximity to Tokyo, but according to my hiking in Japan book, most people only do Takao by itself and don't continue on - and Takao is part of a long trail called the Mt. Jimba trail, which spans 5 mountains! I did some research and decided I wanted to do Takao and the next mountain on the trail, Shiroyama.

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