A friend in town!

Dinner on Chris's birthday

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On Sunday, I was lucky enough to have a friend, Chris, over from the UK for a few days. Although I was caught at work for the first couple of days, I finally managed to get some time off and headed off to do some more touristy activities round Tokyo.

On Wednesday we visited the MeSci – which is the Tokyo Science Museum. The exhibits were interesting, especially the robotic section where we checked out the “robotic toys” and went on a virtual reality robot machine. It also happened to be Chris’s birthday so we headed out for dinner with Wes & his girlfriend (another friend from London who happened to be in Tokyo).

Thursday was spent climbing Mount Takao which is about an hour outside of Tokyo. It’s an odd place as you are suddenly hit by the base of a mountain after what seems like miles and miles of Tokyo urban sprawl. Karen made the executive decision to NOT take the cable car (German efficiency again) and therefore I literally thought I was going to die from exhaustion up the first 1.5km of the trail which seemed to go up an angle of about 45 degrees. But the walk was worth it and when we finally made it to the half way station, the view was pretty awesome, albeit the weather was a bit cloudy. We continued onwards to another shrine and explored further finally making it to the top of the mountain, Having worked up a big appetite we headed back to Tokyo and to the Hilton Hotel where we ate Thanksgiving dinner. This was a full on all you can eat buffet feast with tons of meat (for the boys) washed down with lots of red and white wine. For the record mum & dad…I would add that the beef and veal were exceptional and the turkey dry and tasteless (no surprises there eh?).