Anatomy of a vacation

Rather than write entries for every day of the vacation, itinerary style, we thought it would be more interesting (and easier to write) if an entry only covered a single destination. But to give you a sense of the overall trip, here’s the short version of the itinerary (the actual one, not the planned one – as usual, a lot of items got dropped as the realities of hot, humid weather and sore muscles set in).

Saturday – Pack up 2 months of junk, see the best of Ibaraki in a whopping 5 hours
Sunday – Train trip to Tokyo, immediate shopping trip to get the long-awaited chisel set
Monday – Drive to Fuji, start climbing after a not particularly successful attempt at a nap in the car
Tuesday – Continue climbing, stare blearily at a beautiful sunrise, scramble down for a very long time, sleep for even longer
Wednesday – Sightsee around Fuji and Hakone, return to Tokyo’s traffic, heat, humidity, and smog
Thursday – Tour of (very) select museums and the visual and audio cacophony that is Akihabara (electric town)
Friday – Fish market (although not for sunrise), Rikugien garden, and a bird’s eye view of Tokyo from the top of the government buildings
Saturday – Return home at very long last