I’ve seen a lot of Alps in the past few weeks. First, as I left Rome for Munich I flew over the Italian Alps before enjoying my Oktoberfest at the Lufthansa lounge. If you ever have to spend nine hours at an airport lounge, you could do a lot worse than the Lufthansa first class lounge at Munich.
Then at Thailand I went north to Chiang Mai and Pai. Pai is sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of Thailand, and from that, and the large mountains you see behind me in the image below, I refer to those mountains as the Thai Alps.
Then it was immediately to Japan for work at the Asian Amateur Championship at Saitama prefecture near Tokyo, which is rather flat. I’ve not yet discovered the Saitama Alps. I went to Okinawa for a seminar and felt as tired as Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow’s Joe) who I came across on a secluded bench on Kokusai Dori. There is a striking resemblance here, although I clearly need to work on my hair.
And now I find myself in the Northern Japan Alps at the border of Nagano and Gifu prefectures. So that is the Italian Alps, Thai Alps, and Japan Alps all in less than three weeks.