Return to the internet

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Ok, so being the mountains the last two days we definitely didn't have the internet. We just made it to Nagoya and we are back in business, so pictures will be up as soon as we put them on the computer. Not sure where the last post left off, but we stayed in Yokohama for a day and have some good pictures from it. We rode the biggest ferris wheel in the world, did a few rollercoasters, and then biked about 25 miles around the city. Yeah, 25 miles. It actually wasn't that bad. At night, there was absolutely nothing to do and we got frustrated walking around looking, so we just went back to the hotel and crashed.

The next day we headed to Hakone. Took us a little while to get there (bullet train -> train -> bus) but once we got there it was definitely worth it. We stayed in a traditional Japanese tatami room in a hotel on the side of a cliff and we could see Mt. Fuji from our window. Absolutely incredible. They said most people stay and never see it.. we saw it at least 3 or 4 times. Don't worry, we have tons of pictures of it. After checking in we went down to Lake Ashi and got on the ropeway and rode to the top, where we ate black hardboiled eggs. They're famous for some reason (I guess because they're black?) but we weren't impressed.. they were just hardboiled eggs. The view was good though, so we stuck around a little while and took some pictures. Later that night we went to a local restaurant in the village and ate some absolutely incredible food and sang some kareoke for the first time of the trip. The Japanese people singing had awesome voices, but we sounded awful, haha. No matter how bad we sounded, everybody always clapped though. The next day we rented really nice bikes and biked about 8-10 miles around Lake Ashi and a few villages around the lake, I got some sweet tea in Japan for the first time (it was awesome), and then Jordan went hiking for a short time while I went back and relaxed at the hotel. I think we bathed at least half a dozen times in the two days we stayed at the place -- the onsen (hot springs bath) was awesome. Last night, we just relaxed in the hotel and watched a movie.

Today, we took a bus about an hour out of the mountains to a train station and caught a bullet train to Nagoya. We went to a hotel I had found online recently and they had a room available, so here we are now. We're currently doing laundry and getting in contact with each of our friends who live in Nagoya. We will be going out tonight with Jordan's friend Scott who is working here. Pretty soon here I will post again and upload pictures.

Walter

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