Sionara Japan!

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And so ends our Japan chapter... Having finished with Tokyo yesterday, we spent today by heading out to Mount Fuji on the West side of the island. An hour-and-a-half bus ride got us to the base of Fuji, where we hung out for a little while. Our tour guide, Harry, then took us up to the 3rd-highest point that buses can go, as the 2 higher points were too snow-covered to reach. After about a half hour on Fuji, we headed out to lunch at this Japanese restaurant that was also part of the tour. We met a really nice Australian couple at this point, with whom we'd proceed to hang out for the duration of our day.

From Fuji, we went to another town on the other side of the mountain. Once there, we took a ferry down the river to a cable car ride set against another mountain. These things weren't nearly as run-down as we'd anticipated, but the wind was definitely a factor in how fast they could pull us up to the top!

Following the cable cars, we took another bus to the train terminal where we hopped aboard the bullet train that runs from Osaka to Tokyo. Apparently, these things can go up to 300 km/h, but they only travel at 270 in day-to-day runs. Watching from the side of the tracks, these things fly by at a ridiculous speed but, while sitting on the trains, they really don't seem to move at such a blistering rate. Still, they're probably the fastest trains on which we'll ever travel and enabled us to make the long journey back to Tokyo Station in about a half hour.

It's 8:22 PM here now and Amy's passed out. I've just finished packing my stuff and am trying to organize a way to get us to the airport tomorrow morning for our flight to Bangkok. Unfortunately, the hotel bus only leaves here at 7 AM and, with the flight we want to catch scheduled to depart at 9:45 AM, we're not really leaving ourselves much hope of catching it (it's about an hour to the airport - maybe a little more).

Well, wish us luck and we'll write once we arrive in Thailand.

Bye for now!
Rudi & Amy

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