New Year

Rather than stay up late and see in New Year we did something a little different - watch the sunrise on 1st January.

The night before we picked up Emi's mother, she stayed at ours for the night.

In the morning we got up, dressed etc. and jumper in the car.

Then we drove to Odawara and up the Hakone Turnpike (which was a little scary with frost on the road). At the end of the Turnpike is a Cafe that on one side has a clear view over the Pacific and on the other a view of Lake Ashi (Ashinoko means Ashi Lake) and Mt.Fuji.

We arrived early expecting it to be busy at is was - got there just after 4am and the car park was nearly full. If global warming isn't a load of rubbish (I'm not yet convinced) it wouldn't be helped by nearly every car in the car park having it's engine running to keep its ocupants warm. We headed straight for th Cafe and had something to eat and drink.

At 6:20 the horizon started get light so we headed outside, setup our tripods and started snapping away. At about 6:40 the sun started to be seening trying to shine through the cloud in the distance and 5 minutes later started poking out over the cloud.

5 minutes after this I ran across to the other side and started taking pictures of Fuji, which was changing as the sun rose - initially the light is a little orange and only Fuji is lit but as the sun comes up the light turns more white and the area around Fuji brightens.

In the end we spent around 1 hour taking pictures and I couldn't feel my fingers and toes it was so cold!

In the evening I took some pictures of sunset with Fuji from close to where I work. I got some good pictures of Fuji but unfortunately the huge Cannon technical centre blocked my view of the sun itself - better planning required next time!

I hope you like my pictures.