A funny thing happened on the way to Nikko.

So the lovely ladies of Shimodate (Crystal and Tressa) invited me to head up to a cabin in the mountains for the holiday weekend. We were to be spending the weekend at a campground in the lovely town of Ashio, which is about 30 mins NW of Nikko in the tochigi Prefecture.

We attempted to start off at 10am saturday because we needed to be in Nikko by 12:30, shouldn't be a problem, right? So... we headed out of Ibaraki prefecture, twards the capital of the Tochigi Prefecture, Utsunomia. In Utsunomia we were to pick up the food for our camping trip. Since everyone else was taking the train we were left to pick up the food. However, none of us know Ustunomia and we preceed to get lost. We get really lost. 1 hour later we littleraly stumble across the street and apartment where we were to pick up everything. It was pure luck. It was also 12:00. We were not going to make it on time.

After crammnig everything in, including ourselves, we were off to Nikko. Now... Tressa, Crystal and myself have been to Nikko before. You would think that we could make it there in 45 mins. We had arranged to meet some friends at 2:30 while the rest of the group went on to the campsite. This would leave us an hour or so to hang around Nikko and look at the monkeys. However, we ran into a little trouble. The trouble is that we are complete idiots.

We were noticing how we didn't see any signs that said Nikko was near.

Tressa says " I remember that there weren't any signs last time, but before you knew it you would be in Nikko"

We trusted her sage like opion.
We didn't see any signs for Nikko for a long, long, time. BUt in the end we did see one for Fukashima Airport. FUKASHIMA... the prefecture north of Tochigi!!!!! We were over 100 km away from Nikko!!!! It would be like driving from LA to SanFrancisco and ending up in Wyoming.
FUKASHIMA.
And since we were driving on the higway... we had just made a 2 hour/ $60 driving error.
BAKA = stupid. BAKA BAKA BAKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I called our friends to tell them what happened... they thought we were joking!!!! I only wish! So, Crystal burned some major rubber and made back to Utsunomia in no time flat. We got on the Nikko Highway, and in a manner of minutes we were at the Nikko train station.

We were going almost double the speed limit. Hopefully, we won't be getting any tickets in the mail. (Speed is watched by video, but the cameras are easy to spot).

We spotted our friends at the station and were on our way to the Ashio. The trouble is.. is that our 2 friends wanted a ride as well.








I don't know how we did it, but we managed to fit 5 people, all of their equipment, all the food for weekend and several cases of beer into the smallest SUV known to man. Thankgod it was only a 1/2 hour ride to the site. Well it would have been a half hour if we didn't get lost, again.
It's really needless to say, but I think we all REALLY needed a drink when we finally arrived.
I'll give you the rest of the camping details in a day or two. It is time for me to actually get some work done at school.