On Monday morning we headed inland from Tokyo about 3 hrs drive and a few thousand feet up. Our destination was a small town called Karuizawa, near Nagano - which once hosted the winter olympics. We took a small bus and were accompanied by a tour guide named Patrick who was originally from Hong Kong but had been living in Tokyo for some time. He regaled us with many interesting stories about Japanese culture but did so in Cantonese, unfortunately. Pingles translated from time to time. In the photo below, the A is Karuizawa and if you click on the picture you can see Tokyo diagonally down and to the right, on the coast.
As we drove out of Tokyo it took almost an hour for the cityscape to recede. We were slowly climbing up away from the coast - after two hours there was nothing but pine trees and rocky outcroppings. After three hours I saw Mt Asama in the distance, an 8,000 ft snow-capped volcano that has erupted as recently as February of last year. Karuizawa was at Asama's foot - we had arrived.
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