G'day mate!

We spent only a few days in Sydney, but had a great time.

We stayed just one night in a hostel and then three with friends. Christi knows Audrey from work in Switzerland and we both met her husband Mario for the first time here. Both super nice and fun to hang out with. Thanks!!

We took it pretty easy while here and spent the time exploring the city and beaches around this area.

Darling Harbour.

We took a ferry boat across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach.

Opera house.

Bondi Beach


Flying fox bats in the botanical garden.

Tokyo

Tokyo by night

Take away sushi shop in the neighbourhood

Ueno Park, a huge park with nice temples in the middle of Tokyo.

Ueno Park

Japanese packaging is great. So many things have cute caracters on it, like this chips bag with the comic on how they grain was growing.

At a sock shop in Shibuya

Tower for the Olympic flame of the 1964 games. First we thought it was a huge diving board tower.

Waiting in line for the freshest (and pretty cheap) sushi in town.

Here is some of the sushi we got there. OISHI!!! Very delicious!!!

Sake

Naoko and Davids little sunshine Riana

Oktoberfest in Tokyo

Fondue Party at David & Naoko's house. The pary was great - thanks guys!

Plastic dishes with plastic for desplay at a restaurant in China Town. You'll find these in front of many restuarants and they are very helpful if you are having difficulties identyfiying those Japanese characters.

Mt. Takao

Time to do some exercise after eating all that sushi last night. We decided to climb Mt. Takao, which is only 50 min outside of Tokyo, by train.

The way up was easy. Not too steep...well okay, we took the cable car for the first, steep part....and then there were lots of steps to climb up. Along the trail we passed some cute rock statues and the Yakuo-in Temple.

Find Semu

On the way down we chose a different trail. We had to hurry a bit to make it in time for the last semi-express train back to Tokyo. It had already been raining pretty hard by then. The steep, wooden steps were very slippery and part of the walking trail that was supposed to go nicely along the river actually turned into the river. But it was still really fun to be on this trail. Anyhow, we ended up running most of the 3km down the hill, jumping roots and puddles. We definitely got our exercise for the day.

And yes, caught our train JUST in time!