A Month Gone

Well, it's been a long time since the blog has had an update, and even longer since I've pulled any pictures off of the camera. We have had an eventful month: we did some apartment hunting and a new apartment, and then our friend Loki visited from the states. We took the opportunity to play tour guide and visited the Kawaguchiko "5 lakes" area at the foot of Mt Fuji, went to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, and just generally bummed around Tokyo.

Here's Robert hanging out at the park:


This is the Mt Fuji "express". It's the express because it does not stop at every station along the route -- it is not a fast train. That's all right though, since it just meant that we were better able to enjoy the scenery:


Speaking of scenery, here's a picture of Robert learning to navigate a pair of binoculars at 5th station:


And the shrine at 5th station:


There are 10 "stations" from the first station at the base of the mountain, up to the 10th station at the top. Each station is a tradtional rest stop when climbing the mountain. There is a road that terminates at the 5th station, approximately 1/2 way up the mountain. We took a bus up to 5th station, but we passed a number of cyclists on our way, so now I have a new goal: cycle up to 5th station. It looks like a fairly grueling climb, so I think I'll need to do a bit of training beforehand, and I won't be using my shopping bike, though that would certainly be more of a workout!

Our new apartment is a 3 bedroom with a couple of balconies, one of which is large enough to accommodate a BBQ and kiddie pool. The third bedroom is intended as a play room for Robert, and as a guest room... hint hint... the apartment also has a garage -- come to think of it, it's really more of a townhome than an apartment -- so I will be bringing my bicycles over from the US when we return in August. We will also be shipping many of our personal effects over from our place in San Francisco.

But enough about the move for now, though we are really excited about it; here are a couple of final pics. This is the Shinjuku district at night:


And our son, practicing his super-hero pose. I wonder who could have taught him such a silly expression?


This is the face that we make when Joe Zookeeper's wife (we call her Dear) discovers that there is a gorilla in her bed. I don't know what's up with the fork.