Road Trip!!!

Having been avid readers of our blog for the last 10 months or so, you know that Cicely and I have been fortunate enough to travel all over this hemisphere during that time. While we obviously fly to places outside of Japan, while traveling within Japan, we usually take the train, Shinkansen (bullet train), or tour bus. We decided to take another trip back to Nikko (see October blog entry for first Nikko trip), only this time, we'd brave the Japanese roads and drive the whole way there. This blog entry will focus on the trip itself, and not our stay in Nikko - it was cut short for weather reasons, so we'll have to go again sometime and update the blog again.

We live in one of the most densly populated areas of Japan, so to get out on the open road was a great feeling - tolls not withstanding. But our first obstacle was to get out of the metropolitan Yokohama/Tokyo area - here's the traffic we spent an hour or so sitting in. This particular spot is where three separate sections of highway/bridge merge into one lane. Notice we're the only car in a sea of large trucks. Fun. If you click/enlarge the pic on the right, you can see just how far ahead the traffic goes - pretty much forever. The city skyline in the background is the outskirts of Tokyo. Notice that all the highways are bridges/overpasses - there is no room in the city for more roads. Everything is above or below (ie trains) the city. It's hard to grasp the concept of the size/density of Japan's capital city, but it would easily swallow all of Hampton Roads - from the NC border to Williamsburg, from VB over to Franklin County and beyond; New York has nothing on Tokyo either - both in size and population.

Here's another joy of driving in japan - can anyone tell me how to read this sign? Imagine trying to figure this one out at freeway speeds as you drive under it. Awesome. Cicely has stopped trying to decipher them, and just trusts my natural born navigation abilities - I am a man, after all - navigating is one of the few talents God gave me!

We finally made it out of the city and onto the Tohoku Expressway - it's a 100 km jaunt through the Japanese countryside. Here's a pic of some farmland, and a little village community we passed. This scenery reminded Cicely and I of driving through Virginia.

This was as we got into the mountains closer to Nikko; it really resembled I-64 heading towards Blacksburg (aka God's Country).

Here we came to the end of the Tohoku expressway - time for another toll. Our toll is the top left one on the list (about $30 for a 60 mile leg of the journey). I don't want to know which unlucky bastard has to pay the bottom right one.

After 3 hours and 230 kilometers, we made it to Nikko.




The snow was beautiful, but up here in the mountains, it was about 20 degrees colder - and absolutely freezing at night.

Our stay in Nikko was not documented very well with pictures, because frankly, my normally patient and understanding wife was running low on both. My little sports car didn't handle too well on the icy mountain roads, and we fish-tailed on a number of occasions. The lodge we stayed in was not insulated, so we were a little cold at night. The next morning, my car didn't react too well to the below freezing temps from the previous night, and didn't have enough cold-cranking amps to start on her own. Thankfully, the lodge owner gave us a jump with his Chevy Suburban - thank God for General Motors and the one dude in all of Japan who owns one ;o) Had that not worked out, it would've been cheaper for me to buy a new car then to have mine towed from Nikko back home - seriously. Although I still had half a tank of gas for the trip home, I thought I'd play it safe and fillerup before we headed back home - in case we got stuck in a lot of traffic again. I always buy gas on base, so this was the first time I would ever buy out in town - and the last. I ended up paying 5,127 yen for 31.85 litres of gas. In other words, $5.81 per gallon. Yikes. I can only imagine what the lodge owner paid for gas in his Suburban.

On our way back home, I woke Cicely from a nap (that she needed because she didn't sleep so well while nearly hypothermic the nite before) to take a picture of this Aston Martin as I saw it coming in my rear view mirror - I know, I really don't deserve my wife.

I found myself going a little fast trying to get a better picture of the car, so I figured after last week's ticket, I really didn't want another - the guy in the $150,000 car probably doesn't mind the speeding fine, but until the Navy decides to pay me a little more, I'll avoid that again!