This morning I was pleased to wake-up to bright sunlight after the cold rain of yesterday. It was a beautiful day in Tokyo and across a good portion of Japan. I decided to not stay in the city and head for the country side. I jumped on the 9:28 bullet train headed for Niigata. I got off at Echigo-Yuzawa, the station serving the small resort town of Yuzawa, famous for skiing and popular given its easy access from Tokyo (the bullet train gets there in just over about an hour and fifteen minutes and deposits you at the base of the slopes). The skiing season was long since over, though there was some snow on a few of the trails I walked on and certainly still some snow on the higher peaks of the Japanese Alps. The town was quiet with few people and so I headed straight for the ropeway that takes up to 166 people at one time up to the Yuzawa Kogen (Yuzawa plateau) in about 7 minutes. Fortunately only a few other people were on the cable car and just a few more had arrived at the plateau before me so it was a nice break from the crowds of Tokyo. I spent the remaining part of the morning and the afternoon walking around taking pictures. There were not so many flowers in bloom but still the green hills and trees were calming. The longer hiking course wasn’t open yet (still some snow remaining and the trail hadn’t been fixed up yet for the tourists) so I only took the shorter course around what is actually a ski area in the winter. All-in-all a nice day trip from Tokyo. I would probably go back again given how easy it is to get to from Tokyo.
We had a great week of weather in Tokyo last week, but unfortunately the weekend was gray and rainy. Looks like from tomorrow (Monday) it will be sunny and hot. I would really like to get a some pictures with a blue sky, but alas this doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen this weekend. Instead of going anywhere I just went to Tokyo station to take some pictures of people who were going somewhere and the trains that get them there. The bullet trains in Japan are quite an impressive sight. Maybe I’ll find an excuse to take one somewhere soon.
I had a few extra hours on Friday of last week to take a look around Bangkok. It’s the 4th or 5th time I’ve been there but sadly I don’t have many photos from those trips. So this time, since my flight home wasn’t until late at night, I took a trip down to Wat Pho and Wat Phra Kaew. I had also intended to walk over to Khaosan Road to get some street and people shots, but the heat got to me so I never made it there. It was over 35C (that’s about 95F) with high humidity so I was soaked to the bone in sweat after just a few hours outside. Both Wat Pho and Wat Phra Kaew are very famous and thus very touristy and you can find thousands of photos of each on the net already, but still I wanted to take a few pictures with my own gear. While I did play with the colors a bit in Lightroom after I got home, it was mostly to try to get some blue back in the sky as I wasn’t using a polarizing filter and the midday sun kind of washed the color out of the sky for the most part. Otherwise I think you can see from the pictures just how colorful temples in Thailand can be. The golds, greens, and oranges really jump out.
You can find all my pictures from my trip to Bangkok here on Flickr.
I’m off to Bangkok, Thailand early Monday morning. It’s a lot hotter there than Tokyo. But Tokyo did have good weather today and lot of people were out at the “beach” – if that is what you can call this bit of sand along the water in Odaiba pictured here. As for Bangkok, it has been a few years since I was there last. It’s a business trip but my flight schedule worked out so that I would have little bit of extra time on Monday after arriving and at least half a day on Friday before my overnight flight back to Tokyo. So naturally I’ll be lugging my camera and a couple of lenses along with me. I’m hoping to come back with at least a few good shots, unlike when I was in Kuala Lumpur and never got a picture of anything except the view from my hotel room. Don’t except any updates until I get back as I won’t have my own pc with me, but should get a lot of new pics up next Saturday after I recover from my flight.
Amazingly enough I was able to spend 5 days in Las Vegas and not have to visit the ATM machine once. Slots are all about luck and I had some. The first stay I won a couple of hundred dollars playing Lobster Mania at New York New York and followed that up with a $1,200 jackpot at a slot machine at the Bellagio I don’t even remember later in the evening. The second day on a Deal or No Deal machine again at the Bellagio (where I was staying) I picked up another $5,200 jackpot. After that I didn’t do particularly well but still that was enough to finance most of my other gambling as well as a small shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue later in the week.
Besides gambling I ate well most of the week. I few steaks, Chinese, and a couple of trips to the Bellagio Cafe. My last morning I enjoyed some pancakes. In Japan you generally don’t find pancakes served anywhere except maybe as a desert food. The portions in the US were typically too much and I guess I must have put on a few extra pounds while I was there.
All things considered I had a pretty lucky holiday. Flights were on time, won some money, saw my family, and was even able to find clothes in my size (difficult considering how tall I am). I don’t think I’ll want to visit a casino for some time. I’ve had enough of the noise and spinning wheels, but I’m sure I get the bug again to visit Vegas in a another year or two. It’s just such an easy place to take a holiday with everything from food to entertainment to shopping to swimming in the pool being just a few steps from your hotel room.