Robot Restaurant

A couple of my coworkers are heading back to the US so we went out in Tokyo as a kind of last hurrah. I happened to see this robot theme restaurant on TV a few days before which was famous for having these huge robot women. You were able to control their faces and eyes etc... including making their boobs bounce up and down.
My coworker Jason was lucky enough to jump up on one.

This is one of the costumes the ladies wore while operating the huge robot women.

They also rode a motorcycle back and forth. Maybe not the best idea as it was in the bottom of a not so well ventilated restaurant, but anything in Japan.

The general theme was kind of war like or a battle, here are a tank and an airplane full of girls in bikinis... of course this restaurant gets 2 thumbs up.

Motorcycle riding with FHI boys

Went on an awesome motorcycle ride with a few guys from FHI this weekend. It was great mostly because I didnt have to plan anything and they all have things like navigation so all I had to do was show up. First stop was a ropeway in Nikko that I have been to a few times, but it was a beautiful day.

We headed to a restaurant the specialized in game type animals where they served Bear and Deer, but they also served Salamander so we had to try it once.

The salamander was ok, kinda didnt really have much taste but you eat the whole thing.

Anyone who happens to read this who lives near Tochigi and like to ride motorcycles the route we rode on was from Nikko on 169 to 23 west, then back on 23 towards Yunishigawa Onsen, then to 121 and up to Hunter mountain on the Nichien Toll Road (400 yen for bikes) towards Shiobara I have ridden the opposite way on this road before, and this way is a better ride, I think we took 400 down to 56 then back to Utsunomiya.

Hiking Mt. Asamayama

This weekend was the annual all FHI hike. We piled on the FHI bus at 5:30am to drive to the most active volcano in Japan.

The last eruption was in April of 1982, and I was assured the volcano is at level 1 the lowest level of danger, so hiking is ok right now. We saw a few of those little creates on the board, apparently they are a species of antelope, but not like any antelope I had seen before.

There were some really beautiful views as usual on these hikes.

A big group of people came this year (27), here is everyone passing through the tori gate.

A view of the former caldera, and the current peak of the mountain.

Peak marker along with the new caldera forming in the background.

This is Isaka san and a yama (mountain) girl (Seiwa san). Yamagirls are girls who are dressed to the T in the best mountain gear, usually in bright colors. I think the clothing is the only requirement for this title, but she seemed to know about the berries and such as we were climbing so she might not be the superficial yamagirl, hard for me to tell since i didnt talk to her much, as she was the only young girl on the hike so she got a lot of attention from the older guys.

There was a shelter on the top just in case the volcano erupted again.

This ladies sole came off of her shoe, the same thing happened to an older gentleman last year on the FHI hike.

Here is everyone taking a break at the free rest station near the top of the forested area.

At the base of the volcano was an onsen called tengu onsen, the most red onsen in Japan due to all the iron/rust in the water. I guess its ok to bath in that? Tengu is kind of a mythical demon thing, hence the association with red.