Hanami

Hanami is literally "flower watching". During the early spring as the sakura (cherry blossom), comes out everyone wants to get out and either just walk under the the blossom or have a picnic in the park.
Thomas and I went to Chidorigafuchi which is one of the most famous spots in Japan for seeing the blossom; right next to the Imperial Palace. We got out at Kudanshita Station where we were stunned at the thousands of people that had the same plan as us, howver the cherry blossom on both sides of the water was beautiful.

Row boats in the moat 

Thomas thought the trees looked beautiful (but he'd never say so)

This was the queue for the row boats (we didn't bother)

 We then went to Yoyogi Park for a late afternoon picnic.

Skipping

Plenty of people enjoying the spring

There were some strange sightings in the trees and a security guard asked them to get down

Didn't work

Kids had fun in the trees, then ice-cream

We had bacon and egg pie (thanks Jules), beer and wine, until it the sun went down and it got too chilly.

Ann & Lisa

Picnic on the grass

Hooray for hanami!!!

Bike Anarchy

By and large, people in Japan follow the rules. Wait for the red light to cross the road, form orderly queues where needed, sort rubbish into paper, bottles, cans and burnables. However, when it comes to parking the bike, all order breaks down. If you see a "No Bicycle Parking" sign, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll find a 'mama-chari' (shopping bike) parked on, near or beside it.

Sea to Summit - Mt Fuji

On 23rd July 2011 my friends Masaaki Furukawa, Shannon Walker and Tetsuya Uemura joined a couple of dozen other people to walk the OxFam 'Sea to Summit'. This was to be a walk from 'zero metres' at the Pacific Ocean to the summit of Mt Fuji at 3,776 metres.

Our journey started with train trip to Numazu where we stayed the night in a capsule hotel. All was good except for the gentleman who came in about 11pm and proceeded to snore like a bear for the rest of the night.

Masa getting ready for bed

The next morning we met at Higashi-Tagonoura Station at 5:50am before walking down to Tagonoura Beach.

Team getting ready

Contemplating the challenge ahead

We filled little bottles with sea water to carry to the summit and set off at 6:30am. It was already pretty warm as we headed off towards Fuji-san. The 5th Station (the normal starting point) was 47km away.

Throughout the morning the mountain got closer and closer and became more imposing.

The walk through the forest at the lower levels was lovely. Quite cool and very peaceful.

As we left the forest we hit the rocky, scoria surface of the mountain and it started getting steeper.

Tetsu makes it over the crest, Masa not far behind.

We got to the 6th Station hut at about 6:30pm and stopped for some dinner and a rest.

At about 9pm we set off again into the night to walk our way to the summit.

Masa sets off into the dark

At 4am after walking all through the night, we got to the summit just as the sun began to brighten the sky. The full sunrise came around 4:25.

The sunrise was exceptionally beautiful and quite spiritual  There was a huge crowd of people on the mountain and the murmurs of "Sugoi!!" could be heard everywhere.

Throughout the morning, people continued to stream up on to the mountain. It's a busy place up there ...

As a team we celebrated our feat and poured out the seawater we'd carried so that it could flow back to the sea where it had come from.

Tipping out the seawater carried to the summit

Even though it's the middle of summer, it was very cold on the summit.

At 6:30 we joined the crowds and began heading down the mountain. This was the demoralising part of the trip as it took over three hours to get down and we'd been on our feet for pretty much 24 hours straight. Really just wanted to get off the mountain and get to the bottom. We walked down until we got to the Kawaguchiko 5th station where we caught a bus back to Shinjuku.

I fully subscribe to the proverb "He who climbs Mount Fuji once is a wise man, he who climbs it twice is a fool". This is not because I didn't enjoy it, anything but. It was a challenging, rewarding and deeply beautiful adventure. I've got many friends who have climbed Fuji and had horrid weather or a bad experience. I fear that if I did it again, it would not live up to the experience I had when I did it the first time, so I'll take the memories and photos that I have and treasure them.