We checked out of our hotel and hit the road again towards Atsugi Naval base with the hopes that they would let Mike park his van there for free for a week (we were planning to take the train to Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, then back).
By the way, here's a better sort of image of Tokyo's freeways (the calmer bits) with a newer Suzuki Every ahead (in white)!
We saw Japanese graffiti in English:
A new Renault Cleo Sport Turbo V6 - the most recent of the R5 Turbo lineage and more fun traffic lights:
At last we found the base!
We walked into the door to get passes/etc. and there was a long line. After waiting a while, we got up to the single guy working. Once he found out Mike was from Misawa's base he got really frustrated and said something like since it's the weekend he's not allowed to process us so we have to wait until everyone in line behind us has been helped, then he could talk to us. The line had been growing since we got there and was now out the door, so we decided to leave.
We were hungry so we walked around a bit. We found 'Mike's Mexican Food' (which they also had in Misawa) (note the plasticized food out front - just about every restaurant had it... I have no idea how they did that!):
But it was closed for an hour, beginning from 5 minutes before we got there. There were people inside but they told us to leave (gai-jin telling us to get out now! What is the world coming to?)
We went across the street into a Pachinko place but the sound was absolutely deafening and it was very smokey inside, plus nowhere to eat.
We decided to go back to the car. There was a drink vending machine next to it, so we went to buy something to drink - but it was broken. Literally the only broken vending machine of hundreds that we've seen. We decided to leave freakin Atsugi.
On the road again, we saw a new Volkswagen Scirocco - one of the very rare sightings of a German car in Japan AND it's not offered in the states!
We ate at a Bob's Big Boy (simply named "Big Boy") in Yokohama, and the pressure was put on ME to come up with a new plan. So I took the boys, via winding sharp turning mountain roads, towards Fuji-Yoshida. I did this for 2 reasons: 1) we would be within 10k of Mt. Fuji, which is cool 2) there's a small bullet train station within a half hour of it called Mishima, which would probably have parking.
Seemingly unrelated back-story:
Way back when we were leaving Misawa, before we got to Aizu-Wakamatsu, Mike casually mentioned something about how Misawa has this drink that is like a 'pancake juice'. It comes in a can and tastes just like pancakes. Billy and I were intrigued, and throughout the entire trip we had gotten pretty good into the habit of scanning every drink vending machine we came across (easily hundreds) for the elusive Pancake Juice, and still had yet to see any.
The winding mountain roads offered these views:
While we were driving among these roads, we were driving through a very small town. There was a vending machine on the edge of the road, perpendicular to it, that was probably the only vending machine in town. As we pass it going at least 30mph, probably closer to 45, I shout "THAT ONE HAD A PANCAKE JUICE!" and Mike immediately turned the car around. Sure enough:
We tasted victory that day, my friends. It tasted just like pancakes and syrup. It was served cold and it was extremely rich and sweet. (We had it again when we arrived back in Misawa, but served hot. Much better.) Interesting fact about Japan: In those vending machines, many different kinds of drinks are sold cold or hot (you can tell by the color around the price - see how it is blue around 100? That means it's cold. Red = hot). In order to keep the cans from expanding or contracting from the temperature changes, they have insulation. The result is an aluminum can that is almost impossible to crush by hand.
We arrived at our next hotel in Fuji-Yoshida around dusk, the Tabijiya. We found it 5 minutes after arriving in Fuji-Yoshida and they immediately had rooms available. Yay!
Let me say, at this point in the journey, I am flummoxed. Here we are in Fuji-Yoshida. A town that used to provide travelers with their last pit-stop before climbing Mt. Fuji, a town that is literally 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the base of the mountain.. and it is barely overcast.. and we could not see where the thing was. We literally could not see a mountain. Here is some not Mt. Fuji:
And Billy and Marika's room (more comfortable than it looks):
We went behind the hotel to a general store and bought laundry stuff (note: it's interesting how hard it is to tell what laundry stuff is compared to, say, dishwasher stuff, when you can't read the writing (no there wasn't an accident)), toys, and I bought some seeds to plant at home.
We got laundry started at the hotel. Billy tried to buy a TV-Card like in the other hotel, but we couldn't figure out where to put it... Billy asked the owner at the lobby and he said our room didn't have that service, so he gave us back our money out of his pocket (1,000 yen).
I taught the boys gin rummy (Billy had bought a manga magazine at the general store - when he opened it, it happened to have a deck of cards in it!) and we played with our toy cars and watched regular TV. Mike went to his own room and Billy and I stayed up waiting for the laundry to dry (it took a long time).
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