Planning for the Weekend

After two weeks of running around, I finally had a day with no meetings a very long to-do list. So, naturally, I decided to play hooky in the middle of the day. Why? Because, I am a seasoned procrastinator.

Granted, I polished off three-quarters of my to-do list before lunch, of course leaving the really big stuff for last. I read somewhere that you should tackle the biggest most difficult things first and get them over with. But I didn't remember about that until much later. And by that time the easy stuff was done.

After lunch, I was settling into one of the bigger tasks on the list, and I got distracted by the fact that Monday is a national holiday in Japan. As usual, I hadn't planned ahead. But here was an opportunity to see more of Japan, so I started digging around on the internet for some ideas. I'm already planning on going to the sumo tournaments on Saturday, so I need to go somewhere that is relatively close to Tokyo.

Nikko is about 2 hours northwest of Tokyo by train and is supposed to be beautiful. It was too late for me to ask our company travel agent to help me find a hotel room, so I took a risk, left the safety of the office, and entered the Land of No.

When I got to the Tourist Information Center, there were several backpackers being told that Mount Fuji was closed. I pulled one of them aside later and set him straight. I was behind a young couple who were trying to get the TIC worker to get them a reservation in a Love Hotel, wink wink. I let them think Fuji was closed because they were weird.

Almost an hour later, I left with a reservation at the Nikko Koryu Sokushin Center. It's only $40 a night and it looks like the kind of place where they might wake us up at 4 AM and make us march around the grounds breathing deeply. But, according the to TIC and our travel agent, it's the only game in town. Stay tuned...