Trypticon: Tag japan

Day Sixteen: Views High, Views Low

Trejkaz — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 15:08:00 +1000

It was Sunday, and I had a free day which wasn’t initially planned. The weather was good, so I knew that I had to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, and get some photos of the surrounding skyscrapers from up there. After that, I knew I would be going to a park, but I decided to make the decision of which park, dependent on which platform of the Yamanote Line I happened to find first. (LOL)

It’s a nice building, really, on the outside and at least on the inside of the observatory. And going on a Sunday was a really good idea because there was nothing else happening in the building other than the operation of the observatories. I imagine that at other times of the week, there must be much more going on in there.

I got several shots of skyscrapers which look like plastic models from that high up. For some reason things seem more surreal from up there, compared to the view from Tokyo Tower.

On returning to the station, it seems I had found the “soto-mawari” line (the outer circle, which runs clockwise) first, so good… I get to go to Ueno Park.

Ueno Park is full of museums, but actually I didn’t enter any of them because I wasn’t interested at the time. It was also a bad time of year for appreciating plants, but I did take photos of a few of the buildings in the area.

The food vendors are all very impressive. I ate some of the largest takoyaki I’ve ever seen (¥500 – cheap!) and watched the guy making them. He was a real pro… not like the ones you see at festivals back home. No offense to the guys cooking the stuff back home… I think the guy at Ueno may have actually been superhuman. :-)

Returned to the hotel with some time to kill, so I finished the rest of my laundry (ended up coming home with only about four dirty items of clothing) and then went exploring the local area. Otemachi has main offices for many major newspapers. Other than that, I located Otemachi Station (I would need to be there the next day so it was a good thing to know where to go in advance) and found another convenience store with relatively low beer prices.

Discovered that this newest and cheapest hotel actually had on-demand movies, unlike all the other more expensive ones. Watched a couple of older movies which I never got to see, and another random one which I didn’t expect would actually be good (but I can’t remember the name of right now.) If you pack in the movie watching in this fashion the price is similar to renting DVDs, since pay TV is a flat rate per day.

Day Fifteen: Another Hotel Transfer

Trejkaz — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:48:00 +1000

On waking up I was able to appreciate the Hotel Grand Palace, it’s quite a good place. Shame the only reason I got to see it was due to an emergency booking, and also a shame that I only got a couple of hours of waking time in the hotel.

I was up early, making calls to book for another hotel.

I wanted a place which was relatively close to the hotel I was already in (to reduce the taxi fare between the hotels) and which was relatively close to a train station (to reduce the cost of returning to the airport.) A cute girl at the front desk gave me a list of places from a tiny book of hotels with even tinier writing.

One of the hotels, Hotel Villa Fontaine (Otemachi), even had vacancies. Actually it seems they had several. Must have been a relatively unpopular hotel. I had to settle with a room on a smoking floor though.

This day once again followed the “check out by 11:00 and BTW you’re not allowed to check in until 14:00” pattern (a problem which I wish hotels would fix.) So I spent more time in the lobby of the hotel playing Jump Super Stars, a game which, without Japanese reading ability, is difficult to get the hang of. But I was getting the hang of it slowly.

As the room was a smoking room, the place smelled slightly wrong… but anyway, for only two nights, it wouldn’t be so bad. And I was able to just run the air conditioner on full fan to take my mind off it. This was the third hotel with free high speed Internet, which really makes the Shinagawa Prince Hotel look like a house of crap.

The local area of this new hotel was rather interesting in itself. It’s in Otemachi, but it’s actually closer to Kanda station. There is a shopping street at the west entrance to the station which is rather diverse, but sadly a lot of the shops were closed on the weekend. The food places were open though, as were the convenience stores. Sadly, the sake shop was not.

Soon enough it was Saturday night and I went out to a few random pubs bars in various areas just to check them out. Alcohol prices are either ridiculous (e.g. ¥900 for a pint of Guinness at Dubliners in Shinjuku) or at the complete other end of the spectrum with all-you-can-drink. Sadly, most of these types of places have a shit taste in music. Unless, that is, you happen to like hip-hop.

Dissatisfied, I returned to the hotel room with a cheap take-away dinner and spent the rest of the night watching television. There was still nothing good on, though.

At least tomorrow would be a full day.

Day Fourteen: Checking Out

Trejkaz — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:24:00 +1000

Ah, day fourteen… the end of the trip.

Or was it?

Hotel check-out was at 11:00am, and the flight was to be at 21:10pm. The latest bus heading to Narita airport left at 17:00 so I still had about 8 hours of time to kill, 7 once you account for lunch. But instead of killing time going places with a fully loaded backpack, I opted for finding quieter places to sit and play games (Nintendo DS FTW.)

The weather on this day was truly horrific. It was impossible to put up the umbrella because of the wind. I witnessed numerous people’s umbrellas turning inside out, which always strikes me as a brilliant comedy routine. Later in the day it happened to me as well, but for some reason it didn’t seem as funny. :-)

The dash from shelter to the bus (around 5 metres) was more than enough to get completely soaked through (you can’t carry an umbrella in such situations because it won’t go through the bus door.) Luckily the backpack held out, nothing got wet except the very top edge of my passport.

On arriving at the airport, it was immediately apparent that something wasn’t right. The whole departures lobby was FULL of people. There were very few people queueing up; the airline wasn’t letting them in. On sitting around for a couple of hours waiting for news on our flight, it turned out that it was cancelled. The plane which was supposed to land (and then become our plane) had been redirected to Haneda due to the awful weather conditions.

And as is probably normal, when an entire plane full of people have their flight delayed, you get an entire plane full of people immediately trying to book the first available flight out. So when it came to my turn, the first two following nights had already been booked out and I had to make do with the third. That wasn’t the problem.

The first problem was that there was no hotel near the airport with any vacancies, because about half the flights had been cancelled that night and everyone had booked them out. So I had to travel all the way back to Tokyo again. The second problem was that there was no hotel (or at least no hotel on the system used at the airport) which had three consecutive days’ vacancies. So they booked one night at the Hotel Grand Palace, and I said I would book the other two nights myself (I really needed to sleep in the meantime.)

Ahead of me was the long trip on the bus back to Tokyo. Never underestimate the amount of time it takes. Was dropped off at Tokyo station, and then had the task of hailing a cab. It was still raining, I had two suitcases with me and of course when you have two suitcases you have no spare hand with which to hold an umbrella.

I did find a slightly sheltered place to drop my bags though.

What was amusing was a sex worker randomly approaching me during this time and asking if I wanted to come into her shop. She was using English, but had a Korean accent. It’s not like I had time anyway. Nor cash (I had spent the last of that on a drink at the airport.)

I did find a cab and it was the most elite cab ever. The driver spoke fluent English (I found this out after I had given him the destination in Japanese, and actually done a good job of it for a change.) The car had a GPS display half the size of my laptop screen, and it had extremely high detail on it, showing the boundaries of individual properties instead of just roads. So he had no trouble at all, unlike other cabbies during my time there.

By the time I finally got a chance to sleep it was about 01:00 the next day, and I didn’t even get a good night’s sleep.

Day Thirteen: Final Shopping Run, and Kabuki Theatre

Trejkaz — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:08:00 +1000

(Finally, some time for more catch-up.)

Day thirteen was my last full day in Tokyo. As there were a number of things people had requested me to find that I hadn’t found yet, I decided to devote the middle of the day to one last shopping spree, as the evening was already covered by a booking to go see a play at the Kabuki theatre.

As the shops I was looking to visit all opened at staggered hours, there was the opportunity to get to each place during the first hour or so of opening time, taking the train between each location in time for the next one to open. This plan would work unless I got hung up on some store or another.

I ran down to Tokyu Hands right before its opening time of 10:00. I had the feeling that they had hanafuda decks because I recalled that they did have a game section with a large collection of other traditional type games. Turns out that they did have the Nintendo brand decks, and what was really lucky is that they had the highest quality sort. I bought four decks, two red and two black. (¥2,100 per deck) I’ll keep one red and one black for myself. :-)

I also bought some other cheesy stuff there which is probably best left unmentioned. No, I didn’t buy a model of a glass of beer, although it was really tempting to do so. And no, I didn’t buy a fake afro either.

Got out of there by 10:15, got to the train station by 10:25 and made it to Akihabara before 11:00 when most of the shops open there. Ran straight to the nearest game store to pick up a copy of Gundam Battle Royale for PSP which XF had asked for (I don’t own a PSP, you see… my Sony boycott is still holding.) Probably paid slightly more than I had to (¥4,300 or so) but time was limited.

Once that was out of the way I was on a mission to try and find a decent cat headband, but I failed it. What I did find in Cospa Akihabara though was another of the white on black Haruhi silhouette t-shirt which Conrad had asked me to get him. (¥2,900) I also found another t-shirt I’d never seen before (¥2,900) which I picked up for myself (I own four Haruhi t-shirts now, if you include the one I custom made.) I hadn’t expected to find such a large collection of t-shirts in what was presumably supposed to be a costume store.

Still unable to find any decent merchandise related to Welcome to the NHK!, nor Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. About time to give up on those.

For some reason I spent more time than necessary in Akihabara (honestly I have no idea where the time goes) so it was 11:45 or so when I finally got back to the station. Caught the train straight back to Shibuya, returning to the hotel to drop off the loot and then heading out to Cospa Shibuya.

Cospa Shibuya is a much more impressive costume shop than Cospa Akihabara. Not what you would expect at all. They had a lot of props and full costume sets for various characters. They also had various animal headbands (kemonomimi, if you must use that term ;-p) but I’m too picky so I didn’t buy anything. They seem to do custom jobs, so that might be one way to go about it… but I’m not desperate.

Eventually returned to the hotel some time around 14:00 and rested my feet.

Left again at around 16:30 for a bit of a mini-tour. It couldn’t really be called a tour because it didn’t involve seeing many places… I only handled it as a tour so that I didn’t need to think about transport and organising dinner (put it down to laziness again.)

We had dinner at a restaurant on the pier, the name of which I have forgotten. The food was good, but not fantastic. The umeshu they served with the food was fantastic, though. :-)

After dinner we moved onto Kabukiza to watch the night’s performance. Due to the screw-up on the previous week I’d been unable to catch a performance without paying extra for better seats, so I was looking forward to it.

Somehow we missed the start of the performance by a bit… we were making good time, too. Anyway, it was an amusing show. I managed to understand half of it, but what made it even easier was the earpiece I had in running an English guide, which didn’t actually translate everything but gave more information about what was going on than we were able to see. Very handy.

After the show, returned to the hotel by train, too buggered to do anything else for the night, so I just spent the rest of the night relaxing.

Days Eleven and Twelve: Day Trips Out of Tokyo

Trejkaz — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 18:44:00 +1000

As Tokyo was starting to become expensive (in terms of shopping anyway, and other things) I booked two days worth of tours further away from the city to fill larger quantities of time without spending too much money.

On day eleven I went to Nikko. The main attraction was the Toshogu Shrine, a complex of many interesting buildings which my photography won’t do justice to even in places where it was permitted (it was generally prohibited on the inside of any given building.) We had time to enter a couple of places and I used some of my free time to look inside another.

During the day we also had lunch on Lake Chuzenji, drove up one side of the Irohazaka and down the other, and visited Kegon Waterfall. It seems that Wikipedia has no information on Irohazaka, so I’ll just say that it’s a pair of mountain roads with 48 hairpin bends in total, each bend lettered in the “iroha” ordering (which is certainly mentioned on Wikipedia.)

On day twelve I went to Kamakura. This day trip was overall more interesting, despite the tour being cheaper. ;-)

We took the train to Kamakura. That much was as expected. Then we took the Eno-den line to Hase station, but this second train was unique for two main reasons. First, it was an extremely old looking train, a great contrast from all the modern things we’d seen all throughout Tokyo. Second, it passes directly through residential areas which are so close to the train line that it feels like you’re driving through their back yard (the places there, of course, have no back yard.)

At Hase, we visited the Daibutsu and the surrounding area. We also visited the Hase Kannon Temple, which was really impressive too although I have a recollection of photography being banned inside there too. Outside, though, I have a bit of that covered. The view of the ocean from the temple was quite impressive.

Actually not far from the Daibutsu, I discovered a shop selling shuriken and all kinds of other prohibited items. ;-)

Returned to Kamakura station via the same old train. In that area we walked to the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine. The walkway is in the middle of a main road, and on the edges of that road are many shops (I returned there later, although on this particular run of shops I didn’t find anything really interesting.)

The steps up to the shrine were hell but I made it up there eventually… actually I took a lot of photos around here too, as always the photos are of the outside. We had a little free time but I needed to spend it getting a canned coffee (or was it two? It’s hard to remember how many canned coffees you go through.)

We then went to a tea house and enjoyed some [extremely bitter but] quite tasty tea. The walk back to the station went through Komachi-dori, the shops of which did finally contain some stuff worth buying as souvenirs. Mostly this involved cheesy types of foodstuffs like edible Buddhas.

After that we returned to Tokyo and I had another quiet night of rest.

One day wasn’t really enough time to cover either area properly, but I’m not sure if I would choose to return to these areas next time since there’s so many things to do elsewhere that are equally worthwhile…

Day Ten: Could You Please Stop the Rain?

Trejkaz — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:14:00 +1000

On day ten I had planned to go to Shinjuku to check out the observatory of the Metropolitan Government Building. But visibility was poor, and indeed it rained again.

I did manage to book the rest of the week’s tours, though. [Note: turned out that the weather wasn’t actually so bad on the days when I actually had to leave the metropolis. Lucky.]

What I did get done on this day was to go to Ginza and check out a few shops. The main purpose of this trip though was to check out Hakuhinkan Toy Park, another rather large toy store. Toy-wise I found yet more giant Totoros (again, sans price tag, meaning that they’re ludicrously expensive) but I’m still not tempted to buy one. The only other interesting toys were some plush mushrooms, which were really cute.

They did have an entire floor of games though, most of which were the traditional kinds of games instead of computer games. A whole cabinet of chess sets, a whole cabinet of Mahjong sets, and various other games. They didn’t seem to have hanafuda except for the lowest-end type, which I wasn’t interested in. They did have a huge collection of playing cards though, and yet again, a huge collection of tarot. What’s up with this trend of tarot cards appearing in game stores? It’s weirding me out.

Anyway the trip to Ginza was unproductive so I returned to Shibuya and checked out a few places which I hadn’t entered yet. The Yamaha store was large and interesting, but devoid of Tenori-on which is apparently not yet out even though various web sites originally suggested it would be out in September (saves me money, I suppose. Now I can be sure that I’ll fall under budget for the holiday.)

Returning to Animate I also found another Haruhi t-shirt (¥3,045) and a strap for my mobile phone (¥999).

I can’t remember what I had for dinner… it’s entirely possible I didn’t even eat any. If I did, it must have been convenience store food again. :-)

Days Eight and Nine: Weekend Cut Short by Tiredness and Rain

Trejkaz — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:30:00 +1000

I originally had more plans for the weekend, but it turned out being much more quiet than I’d originally planned.

Went shopping at Tokyu Hands. Impulse bought a bottle rocket launcher kit (¥5,250) including some spare connectors in case I lose one set. I’ve never seen this sort of thing in Australia, although I do hear they exist in the US. This particular kit is Japanese made though, and rather sweet looking when the rocket itself is well built. Should be fun anyway, good way to kill some time that doesn’t involve sitting around doing bugger all, although I guess at the end of the day it’s still a fairly geeky project.

I also found a sweet blue LED clock (shows the date and time on a scrolling blue LED display) for ¥14,000 but decided against it for cost and space requirements. It would be nice… I’m still considering it. I can’t find it on Google anyway.

I was actually looking for laser stuff, but didn’t find a single thing. Did find a lot of interesting random crap though. You can buy the models of food and beer which are displayed out the front of restaurants. The beer looks pretty realistic except that it the bubbles obviously don’t move. :-)

I also finally managed to check out Mandarake here, and their Shibuya branch is rather impressive. They had all sorts of tempting stuff but nothing that I felt the need to buy on the spot.

Saturday night was spent in. I actually checked out several other stores in the area for random stuff, and there were a lot of steps. My legs were killing me…

Sunday morning I went on a mission to Jimbocho to find a specialist game shop called Okuno Karuta (nearer Suidobashi) station which focuses on traditional Japanese games. They had many neat card games. I was actually looking for hanafuda but the sort I was after weren’t to be found. I’m dead certain they’re still around though. I still have a few toy stores which I want to check out for other reasons so it can’t hurt to look around in those too.

What was interesting about Okuno Karuta though was its extensive collection of tarot decks. Really odd, considering that the store is supposed to be focusing on games. Know many interesting games you can play with a tarot deck? :-)

And then at around midday Sunday it started to rain, so doing anything else became a problem.

Food was mostly bought from convenience stores these past two days, partially to save money, but also out of laziness. But you’d be surprised how many noodles a ~¥250 cup of noodles contains – easily 3-4 times the number of noodles of a normal cup. Cheap and effective (I only just managed to eat it all.)

I also found the best rice crackers I’ve ever eaten – they taste like curry. At this rate, why use restaurants? They might only taste slightly better than this, Japanese cup ramen is surprisingly good compared to its western clones and I keep finding better snack food to eat. ;-)

I had planned to go to Ueno today. Perhaps I can still squeeze in a visit there for some other day.

Day Seven: Transfer to Shibuya

Trejkaz — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:39:00 +1000

On day seven, most of the americans returned home, while some stayed in the hotel. However, I had opted to stay in a different hotel which had a somewhat better reputation.

Slept in, checked out (only had to pay for one day of Pay TV in the hotel even though I used it on three days… presumably an error on their part.) Took a cab (~¥3,500) to Shibuya Excel Hotel Tokyu. The excessive cab fare is because the cabs all have doilies on the seats so you pay a doily tax.

Checked my baggage, but check-in time is 14:00 and I got there around 11:00. Walked around for an hour or so but the backpack is packed full so it isn’t a comfortable way to waste time. I’m currently sitting on a bench outside Starbucks in the Mark City Building writing this part of the weblog post. There is no wireless hotspot here, or at least, none that I’ll be able to get into. I see the SSID “0033” again which is the same as the one in the hotel which didn’t even work. And indeed, on trying to connect, it has an error again. Every single hotspot in this city is broken, I swear. They are all run by NTT, the Japanese equivalent of Telstra. This goes a long way toward explaining the problem.

To add insult to injury, the laptop battery was running out so I had to stop writing the entry. So I found some other way to pass a couple of hours, mainly sitting around watching people walk by.

The new hotel kicks some serious butt:

It has 9 megabit (presumably it’s 10 megabit, but the speed test said 9 so I’ll go with that) Internet access, which is free (included in the price of the room, I checked.)
It has enough power outlets to actually plug in everything I need to recharge!
It’s practically directly on top of Shibuya station (the hotel lobby is floor 5, the station is floor 1.)
It has glass elevators! Well, two out of the four elevators are glass. I have taken a video out of one of them, but it isn’t the ideal one. If I ever get in the elevator in the corner directly facing the infamous intersection, then I’ll take videos of it going up and down. :-)
It already has vending machines on every floor, and the vending machine prices are the same as the convenience stores instead of elevated to hotel prices.

The only complaint I have is that my view of the crossing could be better. It looks like the rooms closer to the crossing are the more expensive rooms (they are bigger on the floor map.) Figures.

I’ve already downloaded and watched episode 11 of Welcome to the NHK! and downloaded but not yet watched episode 12 (that can come some time when I truly have nothing to do, like early hours of the morning or really late hours at night.) The show is getting better and better still.

I spent much of the afternoon catching up on posting blog entries as you already know. I also mapped out a few places to go later at night but most of the places I wanted to go were closed to gaijin. ;-)

Eventually went to bed at around 02:30 the next morning. Next day might be shopping again, but I’ll have to do something at night since it’s Saturday. How about ageHa?

Day Six: Free Day: Shop, Shop, Shop Dash!

Trejkaz — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:29:00 +1000

Day six was the free day for the set tour, and even though there were many other options open to me, I decided to go and look for stuff to buy again.

The day went well, details are within. Actually, I’m writing this entry on the evening of day six as I’m catching up on my backlog. But you probably won’t have seen it until a day or two later, because I first need to (a) find some Internet access that doesn’t suck in a country which is allegedly well-connected, and (b) get all the previous entries checked and put up first.

I found the wifi hotspot in the hotel, but my laptop can’t connect to it so it’s as good as broken. Why can’t they just give us an ethernet jack and be done with it? I’d rather pay ¥500 per day for that than the same amount for wifi that doesn’t even connect.

…and as for what happened today…

First, off to Harajuku to properly check out a couple of places which we didn’t get time to see the other day. I got to experience rush hour trains… the pushers were doing their job of pushing people into the cars of the train. I somehow managed to get standing spot in a corner which was stable enough to play DS.

Unfortunately I arrived at 09:00, an hour before anything opens, so I had to waste time, and the only cafe which I found which was open was Starbucks… too bad. After wasting the best part of an hour drinking a coffee very slowly, I went back out to the shops.

I looked through Kiddy Land trying to find suitable plushies but didn’t find anything really good except a supreme Totoro, much bigger than the last one I’d found which was already bigger than the one I actually bought. I could only guess at the price of this biggest Totoro, as it didn’t have a price tag attached (which means it was supremely expensive… perhaps ¥50,000.)

I also checked out Book-Off for a moment but the amount of kanji was already starting to freak me out after only five minutes so I evacuated. It may have had more than books, DVDs and music, but at that point I wasn’t ready to try and find out.

Next, to Shinjuku, where I went to check out the Odakyu department store. After buying nothing at the department store I wandered around for a bit, and found more seedy DVD shops. Actually, the density of seedy shops was increasing quite steeply so I pulled out the GPS and found that I’d made it about half way from the station to the red light district. Time was starting to run out again so I forced myself to make it back to the station and besides, the day was still early (around 11:00 at this point.)

Then to Ikebukuro, which was skipped on the tour the other day due to a lack of time. I checked out the Tobu department store there too, as it is practically grafted onto the station. It looked more or less exactly like the other department store earlier in the day, and I started to wonder if all department stores look the same.

Interestingly though, Japanese department stores don’t put perfumes and cosmetics on the entry level, so it’s quite possible to make it to where you want to go without being assaulted by smelly samples. Also, and this probably goes without saying, but department stores sell alcohol. There was quite a bit of cheap sake available, although I didn’t pick any up at either location because I knew how much I would be walking around for the rest of the day.

The final step on the shopping run was Akihabara (this makes it my third visit there.) Originally I thought I would use this time to buy up doujin comics, but actually it turned out quite differently because I had remembered some other things I wanted to buy.

I spent some time looking through the various electronics shops for a portable media player which could play DIVX, and which had a video output on it. I must have searched at least eight different stores before finally giving up on that one. I found a few units which did handle DIVX, but not one of them had video out capability as well. I will just have to use a more expensive option from back home… I really thought Japan would have had these sorts of things.

Then I ran around looking for games to cross off my list. Apparently, my taste in games is quite similar to the norm, because it took some time to find what I was after. In one of the larger stores I bought a brand new copy of Jump Super Stars (¥4,180), which is still considered a current release even though it came out a very long time ago. I then discovered that both of the other games I was after were no longer current releases, so I would have to start searching second hand stores. I did search several larger second hand game stores, but had no luck. I was heading back to the station when I ran into some of the other people from our tour. We talked for a bit, and then some of them went into Club Sega while I went off to search again (why, I have no idea.) Turned out to be a good idea – on a side street I never would have seen, I found a tiny store which had both of the other titles I was after, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (¥3,980) and Electroplankton (¥3,980). Electroplankton came with cheesy headphones, too. Good to see that second hand game stores are just as big a scam over here as they are back home, price-wise… but it wasn’t like I was able to buy the games new, let alone back home.

I also found more awesome model shops (one of them had extensive collections of model trains, costing immense amounts of money but looking really cool) and quite a few more porno shops. Seriously, you can’t throw a cat in Akiba without hitting a porno shop.

At this point I was nearly dead so I returned to the hotel and did some catch-up on the blogging.

Day Five: Fuji, Hakone, Karaoke on the Tour Bus, Gedo Senki

Trejkaz — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:26:00 +1000

Day five was mostly a scenic tour, to give us a bit of a break from Tokyo.

Actually I’m planning to take another such tour (or two) in the second week, with another tour company (seems they only need 1-2 days notice as long as there are slots, so I’ll organise all that in the gap between check-out and check-in for the two hotels.)

First stop was to the Mt. Fuji Visitor Centre. This is really just a rest stop as the next leg of the journey is reasonably long and toilets get progressively shittier (pun intended) as you go further up the mountain.

The price of water and all other drinks increases too. As a benchmark, the price of Pocari Sweat (and any other similar drink) in vending machines on the street is around ¥150 for a 500ml bottle.

Sidetrack: have I mentioned yet that you can’t walk ten metres without seeing a vending machine? Well, it seems the hotel staff noticed that it was possible to walk ten metres on this floor without seeing a vending machine, so we now have one. It’s not cheap though… I think that bottle above costs ¥200 up here, and 375ml cans of beer (Asahi – there are cheaper brands) cost ¥250. 500ml cans of beer are ¥270 at the cheapest convenience store I’ve seen so far. At the department stores they’re cheaper again but I didn’t remember the price because hauling it back from the other side of the city is a hassle. I have only noticed one actual bottle shop here, selling nothing but alcohol.

Another sidetrack: as I’m editing this from the new hotel in Shibuya, I’ll add another comparison. The bottle water-like stuff is ¥130 here. Surprisingly cheap for the inside of a hotel… convenience store prices.

Anyway, like I was saying, the price of drinks rises as you go up the mountain. So the Pocari Sweat at the Visitor Centre was ¥200. Bottled plain water was a tiny bit cheaper but at this point you’re not paying for what you’re drinking, you’re paying for the amount of energy it took to haul it to the location.

The visitor centre had a bit of stuff but perhaps the only cool thing it had were the “Fuji-chan” plush toys. I didn’t get one though, they were sort of… I dunno, tacky. Also, I’d spent plenty on plushies already and didn’t want to drop any more money on them unless I happened to find a plush tanuki somewhere. They also had postcards but honestly, I’ve seen Mt. Fuji postcards in at least five different stores here in Tokyo already. Plus, this holiday isn’t about Mt. Fuji, it’s about experiencing Tokyo.

The visibility from the Visitor Centre was crappy, we couldn’t see the mountain at all from there, whereas normally it has quite a good view. We headed off up the mountain about 40 minutes after arriving, all the way up the winding road (full of hairpin bends, which the bus driver handled spectacularly) to the Fifth Station.

The visibility was still crappy at the Fifth Station, but the mist moved apart for a while, and I think one of the photos on my camera does capture the peak. There isn’t any snow on it yet though, so it doesn’t look like the Fuji everyone knows. Photos will follow when I later get time to edit and annotate them all. The tour guide said that Fuji has a goddess (as opposed to a god) and because she’s female, she changes her mood quite often (it seems the Japanese had women figured out many, many years ago. LOL.)

We checked out the shinto shrine up there though, and I did buy a couple of souvenirs here. The first was a slightly overpriced Mt. Fuji Hello Kitty towlette (¥800). There were about six different ones I could see at the Fifth Station shops, and in fact, I’ve seen various other Hello Kitty towlettes in other shops here in Tokyo. They’re collectors items, it seems. The other was a Mt. Fuji snow globe, with dinosaurs! (¥1000) WTF?

Oh yeah… another sidetrack. I was thinking about this just now, but if you receive a gift from me after reading these entries, you’ll know how much the gift cost me, which is normally taboo. But I thought it would be nifty to know how much various things cost, particularly in Tokyo (which until fairly recently was the most expensive city on the planet.)

We took our souvenirs and few lucky photos and went back down the mountain on the bus, and the hairpin turns seemed even more impressive on the way down.

Lunch was at a buffet restaurant, but what’s funny is that Japan calls these “Viking” restaurants. Apparently rape’s not included in the deal, though. Anyway…

This looks like a busy day, now that I look back at it. But it was really the most relaxing day so far, comparatively. Not nearly as much walking as there was on some previous days.

Next stop was Lake Ashi, where we took a bit of a cruise over the lake. Now originally, the tour was supposed to allow us to ride on the pirate ship. I’m not sure exactly what happened there, but it had already vanished from the itinerary before the tour had started. Perhaps it got booked out. We did see the pirate ship though, it was sailing around not too far from our catamaran ferry, so we got a few shots of it from the outside, which we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to take.

The bus had been following us along for that journey it seems, as it was already at our destination (is it stalking us?) We took the bus to the Mt. Komagatake Ropeway, which is an aerial gondola seating 100 passengers.

Visibility was still crappy, but I got a few interesting shots. The first thing we noticed is that the tree line is different for different kinds of tree. So there is a line where one kind of tree stops and another starts, which looks like a kind of battle between the frees. The tree cover was so thick that each tree flowed into the next quite seamlessly.

The next thing we noticed is that the fact that when the land is on a mountain, it does not stop the Japanese building a golf course on it. The slope was quite steep… in my mind, I was seeing the ball roll back down it.

When we got to the top of the ropeway, visibility was still crappy but this only made things more interesting. Usually, the view is presumably stunning from the top of the ropeway. But on this day, the mist was so think that you could only see about 10-15 metres ahead. I have some shots demonstrating just how thick the mist was. The ropeway building looked like it was out of some sort of old 3D game, with the mist thrown in to mask the low polygon count (and in case Turok is wondering, no, I’m not pointing fingers at anyone.)

There were walkways up on the mountain which were fairly easy to follow. On the way, we found an abandoned restaurant, which looked exceptionally creepy due to all the mist surrounding it. We also found the shinto shrine, which apparently the tour guide was originally going to show us and then decided not to due to the mist, but we found it anyway. They had some interesting rock arrangements (and a lot of spongy ground, which felt at times like you would sink into it.) Of course the shrine itself wasn’t open. I’m not sure what times of year it is, or if it ever is.

We found our way back through the mist to the ropeway by following the same paths, and went back down the ropeway to the bus.

Incidentally, here’s a story about learning kanji. We were in the middle of the mist and ran across a sign which we could barely read. But I saw the character “宮” (kyuu) on the sign, which I remembered from “凉宮ハルヒ” (Suzumiya Haruhi). It means shrine, princess, palace, or constellations (in the case of Haruhi you have to assume that it means “princess”.) So we figured out that a shrine was in that direction given only that part of the sign. So you see? Rampant obsession about a single anime can occasionally have useful results.

The bus then began the trip back to Tokyo. But the bus ride was getting a little dull, and then the worst possible thing happened: one of the tour staff discovered that the bus had karaoke facilities.

So we watched some staff and a few fellow tourists make fools of themselves on the bus karaoke system, on the way back. Unfortunately it didn’t have Bohemian Rhapsody, which we were hoping was there so that the entire bus could sing the song. Too bad… shitty karaoke system, if it doesn’t have that song. I don’t care if it’s Japanese, that song should be a staple.

Dinner this night was a beef bowl at Yoshinoya (you may remember that name from the news. Do a search on beef bowl yoshinoya and you’ll find stories about how they cut off supplies of beef from the US and found new supplies in Australia.) It wasn’t entirely bad, for fast food.

After dinner, we watched Gedo Senki, the new Studio Ghibli film. I was initially amazed that I understood more than half the conversation in the movie (it was in Japanese, of course, and without subtitles) but then I realised that Ghibli movies are by and large made for all ages, so of course the Japanese used will be mostly at a young level. Still, it means I’m learning something, and gives some incentive to learn more.

But if you ask me, I need to focus on learning more kanji so that I might be able to read. I have several reasons now to learn how to read Japanese:

Getting to read manga way ahead of time and without scanlation errors;
Light novels almost NEVER get translated into English, and there are many of them;
Working for a fan translation team (either for manga or anime) would be cool;
Finding my way around a city would be much easier if I could actually read all the signs.

I carried some beers bought outside the hotel into the hotel’s cinema, which got through unnoticed. They have the usual cinema rule where things can’t be bought outside the cinema, only they had expanded it to say things can’t be bought outside the hotel. As there is beer available in several places in the hotel, I could easily have said that what I was carrying was bought from the convenience store, a vending machine, the hotel supermarket, etc. There was actually no rule preventing the drinking of alcohol in the cinema.

As for the movie, it was okay. I’m not as impressed with Studio Ghibli’s works as I used to be. They’re a sort of Japanese Disney now. The quality isn’t bad, it’s just that certain other studios are pumping out material dozens of times better. Presumably Ghibli are still using entirely cel-based animation, as Disney were. But these days, it just doesn’t work out if you try to restrict yourself entirely to cel-based animation.

And at that, the day was over. The next day is a day free from the tour guides.