The Tokyo Metropolitan Govt Building is home to the city's highest free observation deck - only a few mins from my apartment, and I just hopped into the elevator to the 45th floor. Amazing views but it made me realise how impossibly big the city is, and how long it would take to see it all:

A very friendly Japanese couple actually approached me and offered to take a picture of me with my camera, so here I am lurking in the shadows:

A noteworthy site for anyone who cares is this building which is the Park Hyatt Hotel from Lost in Translation (which was one of the things that sparked my interest in Tokyo):

Here's the building I was in, which wouldn't fit into the photo. It's totally earthquake proof, which I looked into...I've been feeling tremors every couple of days, yesterday it happened during a lesson - meant nothing to my student but I find it a little distracting...

I've also been doing my fair share of strange unique-to-Japan things, like visiting a maid café in Akihabara (an electronics/games hub):

--the novelty of the whole experience (with themed ice creams and screechy song singing on a tiny stage) outweighed any potential creepiness...

You often see Tokyo Drift-style gatherings of modified cars doing stuff on the side of the road in busy areas:

I also visited the Toyota showcase, which had a couple of gems (but too many MPVs):

Finally, another couple of Ads/public notices which have had me loling are the patronising, overly-descriptive and emotional warnings about being tidy with cigarette butts (in the rare places where you can smoke in public):

'Throw Away - Fingers. Clean Up - Whole Body.' A serious issue.

Notice the shocked bird on the left as he realises that no, they're NOT flower petals!!

Mount Fuji

Our climb up Fuji-san started around 1045pm Tuesday night, arriving at the summit for sunrise at 5am. Perfect timing in the end - there were so many people climbing for sunrise that we were queuing up the last stretch, but the sun rose just as we arrived up top.

The ascent is lined with stations every few hundred meters where people can get their hiking sticks stamped, rest and buy a limited selection of stuff:

The summit (at 3,776m) has a few small buildings on it, including a post office where you can send special post cards. The crater is huge, takes about an hour to walk around it - the volcano last erupted in 1706. This being Japan, they even have some vending machines up there:

Mountain summit refreshment...

The Crater

The Crater

I thought the hiking sticks were great - here's mine after the climb (I think there's a way I can send it home, which I'll try doing):

One of the strangest things was the extreme temperature change - it was sub-zero at the summit with icicles covering rocks, then an hour later on the descent it was back to around 25 C. The cloud cover took a while to get back under - unfortunately this stopped us getting a good view of Tokyo:

All in all, great success, and back down to the halfway point for 10am:

I'm going to try putting up pics some of the hilarious ads I see every day - there's so many and I sometimes look strange standing places taking pictures of ads but they are a great laugh...

First, ROLA does look pretty coolish (!):

I've been braving the sweaty heat to visit some more sights the last couple of weeks. The chaps below are dressed in something really traditional (I'm guessing) -  couldn't see their faces and they had long feathers sticking out of their backs. I later found out it was the 100th anniversary of Emperor Meiji's death (and I happened to be at his shrine at the time):

Those tall wooden 'gates' are at the entrance to every shrine in Japan

Meiji Shrine

Meiji Shrine

The Asakusa Shrine (Senso-ji) is one of the most famous, tons of tourists around:

I also checked out the Skytree while I was in the area. It's the world's tallest tower according to Wikipedia, and it dominates Sumida ward. I didn't go up this time though, queues were too long and didn't have time - apparently there's a glass floor up the top to walk on...

Nearby is also the Asahi beer HQ (called 'beer hall') that's supposed to look like a pint of beer, with a building beside it with a sculpture of 'beer foam' on top that the locals call the poo building for obvious reasons:

A decent effort at a pint-building!

Headed out to club in Shibuya called 'Womb' the other night, verry pricey but great craic some Japanese techno artist playing:

Also popped out to some festival near my house - Japanese costumed people shouting and dancing. I never understand what this stuff is all about, but enjoy it nevertheless:

I'm climbing Mount Fuji tonight, so will hopefully have some impressive pics for the next post!!