I finally got to Japan two years ago. My son was coming to the end of a gap year in China and had gone to Japan as a three week stopover on the way back. He went down with a bug or something soon after arriving and asked us if there was any way we could get him back earlier. We checked out all of the possible options (even including him going to Vladivostok and coming back on the trans siberian railway) and concluded the cheapest option was for one of us (me) to fly out and look after him. Fortunately he recovered fairly quickly and we had two weeks till our return flights.Redmurty wrote:
How could I forget my 50th birthday prezzie off the Mrs, a ticket to Japan so I could climb Fuji to watch the sunrise. cheers Spud
We did a trip to Mount Fuji. We got a bus to the fifth station and nearly froze to death (35C in Tokyo, 10C and raining on Fuji!) Everyone there was in state of the art climbing gear and we were in T shirts and flip-flops.

I thought Tokyo would be a biker nirvana but was really disappointed and hardly saw any. I dragged my son round all the dealers in the bike district near Ueno station but they were no better than the local ones round here. At least we found a huge street market that we didn't know about on the way back to the station which made the day worthwhile.


