In and Around Tokyo

First the good news- we weren't served fish for breakfast after all! When the owners of our guest house made us a traditional Japanese breakfast, we were pleasantly surprised:

We had a hard boiled egg with a brownish skin (don't know how they do that), a type of pulled beef with onion and spices, broccoli (who in the world eats broccoli at 8 am!), asparagus tips, seaweed, potato, carrot, tomato, rice and Miso soup. It was delicious.

With basically no English in Japan on what the food is, I've decided to use scouts to try it before I eat:

Here, Cathy and our owner Tetsuo tried some street food that turned out to be chicken. There are a surprising number of street vendors here and the food is excellent and inexpensive. You just don't know what a lot of it is.

We're still trying to get our heads around the the train/ subway system. We bought a Japan Rail pass and the good news is that the bullet trains are just that, they go like hell:

You can also use this pass for Tokyo local transit but a bit different (think Go- Train using TTC tracks). The Japanese pronunciation is tough in trying to understand the name of streets and train stops so getting around has been a challenge.

But we're trying. We went to a town called Nikko with shrines dating back to the 16th century:

This shrine was built by the grandson of the first Shogun circa 16th century. Shoguns were the de facto rulers of the country.

We also took a bullet train to another small town called Hakone, known for their landscape and natural hot springs. Here you also get a stunning view of Mount Fuji:

December is fall weather in Japan and the foliage is in full colour: 

I now understand why Asians love coming to Canada- our colours are so much more vibrant. In Japan their fall is pretty but nothing compared to the brilliant reds and yellows and browns of a Canadian autumn.