Nikko Circuit Motokids 4Hr Edurance Race

Yesterday Heather and I went out to a small local track to watch my coworker and his friends ride in a 4hr endurance race. The bikes classes are from 80-125cc. Ishikawa's team rides a Honda Ape 100. Of course as soon as I smelled the 2-stroke oil in the air, I wished i was riding rather than watching. It was however pretty cool to watch and though the race was cut 20 minutes short by a nasty rainstorm, their team managed to get a 1st place finish. Pretty good especially since it is their first year of racing. Congratulations to Ishikawa, Hana, and Kazu!

A Breif visit to Nikko 日光市

Pretty hot yesterday so we thought a drive to the mountains to cool off would be a good idea. Headed up to Nikko which turned out to be a bad idea. We took the back route up and it was fun driving as there were few cars, however, as its a holiday week we found the very popular tourist spot itself was over run with vacationers and tourist to the point that we really didn't get out of the car. Though traffic the was bad in Nikko-shi, it was still a nice day to get out of the apartment. The Nikko range is usually visible to us from our apartment most of the year and was nice to see the peaks up close. The snow capped pic is a view of the mountain from our balcony in Feb or March, and the others without the snow shot today at the top. We will return later this fall so we can check out the waterfalls, the lake and other nice stuff that Nikko offers.
http://www.nikko-jp.org/english/nature/index.html