Mt. Tsukuba

Feb. 20

I had an easy flight over; plane less than half full, exit row to myself. Plane arrive early but my niece Anne was late - she got lost on the way to the airport, and on the way home I found out why. The road system is very confusing, main highways often indistinguishable from back roads, signs often unclear (we took a tour through a shopping center due to a right turn arrow that was over a block ahead of the actual turn. Apparently Japan spent most of its infrastructure money on mass transit, which would be fine except there is no train from Tsukuba to the airport. We stopped for a bit of sushi on the way home, got there about 9:30; little Alisa was gratifyingly excited to see me, but I was running on empty, so I said hi, goodnight to Toshio and Alisa and went to bed. Slept soundly until 1, then fitfully until I got up at 5:30; time zone change not much of a problem.

Yesterday we took a hike up Mt. Tsukuba. The weather was trying to turn sunny but the fog kept getting in the way. It snowed several inches Thursday morning, all was melted off down here by the time I got here, but halfway up the hill we started encountering slush over packed snow - very treacherous conditions. The trail itself is steep, mostly stairs made of stones, small logs, and concrete imitation logs. It wasn't bad going uphill, but we were very unenthusiastic about coming down it. Fortunately, there is a cable car tram up the mountain, so we didn't have to. It was a pretty day, aside from the fog in the valley that interfered with the view; very pretty little shrine at the top - I'll upload a handful of photos to the photo album. Along the ridge trail we came to a little rock shaped like a frog or toad; apparently if you chuck a stone at its mouth and the stone stays put it's good luck. It was a nice hike, I think finished up the time adjustment task for me pretty well.