Like this:

I’m at Japan Airline’s Nikko Hotel at Narita Airport! And I watched Startrek on the flight over from Shanghai; ah, I love that movie. So since there aren’t any more flights to the US today, I’m staying overnight in Narita. The weather is great here, only 70 degrees, a big difference from Shanghai’s 88 degrees. I just came back from a supermarket which is way cheaper than the one  I used to go to in Wakoshi. I got a last helping of cold noodles, some sushi, Lawson’s apple juice, and 10 bags of my sister’s favorite ramen snack -_-

So anyway, I now have reliable internet that doesn’t have this website blocked so I can finally upload pictures from Hakone and Nagano. My sister, mom, and I went with Seisei’s family who own a van, so Seisei’s dad drove us around everywhere.

Hakone is at the base of Mount Fuji. When I climbed Mt. Fuji before, I started from the fifth station, but this time I got a chance to go to the very bottom. As one can imagine, the bottom of the volcano had a lot of hot springs and random steam coming out of the mountain. Also, the whole place smells like rotten eggs due to the high sulfur content.

from a cable car… see the yellow stuff? that’s sulfur!

ouch, hot! 80 degree Celsius hot spring…

… where they boil eggs and sell them to tourists. The eggs come out completely black but apparently taste the same. According to the sign in the tourist shop though, if you eat this egg (that contains crazily healthy minerals… er… like sulfur), your life will lengthen by 7 years.

We stayed in a mini hotel that’s called a pension which only has 8 rooms or so. But the rooms have a living room, a tatami room, and two beds so both of our families could easily sleep comfortably. The pension had its own onsen (hot spring bath), a ping pong table, and breakfast and dinner included. Here’s a picture of all of us at breakfast:

Next: Nagano which was basically us walking down a long trail that had a bunch of waterfalls along the way.

and there’s more, but waterfalls get kinda of the same after awhile.

I’m going to enjoy the absence of the Great Firewall of China now.

Next, I’ll put up pictures of Beijing: Bird’s Nest, Watercube, and Wang Leehom’s concert!