A holiday in the middle of the week is not always good. Too little time to do anything a lot of fun. This wednesday the only viable alternative was to go to a place nearby like Takao. A small hill, 50 min from Shinjuku. I knew there wasn't a whole lot to do there so I left around 11AM.370Y from shinjuku on the Keio line and I was there.The people at the station looked like a human wall. I guess everyone else had my idea too.

There were a couple of wimpy rides to the top, but I was walking.The way was jam packed with people, and all of them taking their sweet time to haul ass. It was the older people who were climbing fast, while the youngsters where whining away.Was topside at 1, had some sake and marshmallows in soy sauce. It was getting pretty cold by then .

There were a number of statues on the way too, small ones.
Most of them were on poles and I couldnt get a good look, though they did seem different from the usual statues.Here is one at the top, I had to literally beat people off with a stick to get him alone.There was a zoo too, but filled with "exotic" animals like elephants and squirrels. It was nice to see the cute kids being so respectable and not shreiking their heads off.The way up was too long to be a walk, too easy to be a hike.I even saw the flying squirrel or whatever in the trees though it looked more like a rat caught in the trees, but an old man was insistent that it was the flying whatsit.


The view on the way was nice, the leaves were beautiful. But on the whole Mitake was more enjoyable. I could see Tokyo too even the tower. The weather was absolutely perfect.
On the top there was some song and dance stuff going on which was quite good.But the sheer number of people were starting to get to me. On the way down I met a french family, and it was interesting that we had a limited conversation in japanese, coz they didnt speak english!I was down by 4 in Takao-san-guchi[Takao mountain entrance], and had some more sake, took a walk around takao too, but nothing else remained to be done.

On the way back a couple of Jehovahs witnesses tried to convert my heathen self, but I skillfully made my way home.










This trip was covered entirely by the coins in my change bowl.Damn thing keeps filling up with unspendable coins. I have to take another trip soon, to get rid of them!