lost or what?

Wait a minute. I planned todays activities based on the forecast of rain. Why is there bright sunshine? This was very confusing. Also the streets from Kawagoe station to the old area are very busy, colorful, developed etc. There are even big department stores.

The shrines in this area seem newer than the buildings in the streets. There are a lot of them. I think they have been built here to cash in on it being a tourist area.

This quiet street is just outside the official tourist zone on the maps they put up, so there is no one here.

Similarly, this building on its own is a couple of streets over, and looks to be genuinely the oldest of them all.

I have no doubt, this is the most photographed place in Kawagoe! I had to wait ages for a clear shot.

Coming in a close second to Starbucks is the bell tower most listenable scenery number 93 of 100. They did not ring the bell while I was here.

A bit more bell tower and blue sky. I was checking the weather radar, I want blue sky tomorrow not today!

Here we have a section of the old buildings on the main street. Apparently they have something to do with pottery. Mainly they sell tourist souvenirs. Thats smart, because this is a place tourists go.

I think these people are Chinese. Kawagoe is a great place to dress up and be followed around by professional photographers. This girl has an entourage of 3 photographers and a make up artist.

In this photo I am almost being killed by a bus.

Candy alley was strange. There are maybe 3 shops, generally selling kitkats and snickers bars. This is the only place I could see anyone selling anything unusual, which is a 3 foot long marshmallow thing that people eat as a stunt / dare.

This is candy alley, there are now more shops selling craft beer.

Many of the old places have a strange large animal thing out the front, generally a panda (so Japanese!) I decided for my photo to take a picture of this weird Pelican.

Nearby Kawagoe are a couple of shrines and castle ruins, I need to get my steps so off I go. Hmmm. Blue plastic.

The next thing on the tourist path according the signs I was following is the sewage treatment plant. It was shut. How annoying.

I visited 5 shrines and this is the only part of one of them not under some sort of construction!

Thats a nice backhoe.

Even the bonsai flower fair was partially under construction. I like the bonsai flowers though.

OK, now I am at the train museum, here is a bullet train transformer. Its a little known fact that all bullet trains can transform at any point when required to defend Japan against attacking evil robots / Godzillas etc.

I was asked to leave the build your own railway area. Racist. So all I could do was find a place above it to hurl abuse.

Hahaha, really? I got told off 3 times for taking photos, while people right next to me were taking photos! I even got told off for taking a photo of this sign.

The main hall is very impressive, packed with trains, this is not even all of them.

I like those older long nose ones with the elevated driving positions.

This is the most expensive of at least 4 restaurants inside the Museum. A couple of them are housed inside what look like trains. I bought a $2 sandwich from Family Mart.

It is a bit strange that you can sit on a train that looks just like a current still in service train.

You can also get under a couple of the trains and look up their skirts.

No really, I am fairly sure this is the actual train I took to get here earlier. Now its a museum attraction.

Probably an irrelevant shot since I kind of took it from another angle earlier.

There are also older trains to look at, but the focus is on the post steam era.

Ahhh, now I found some older trains to go and stand on. They could sell these to my old home town of Adelaide who are in need of an upgrade.

This is probably the oldest one you are allowed on. The even older ones are inside plastic bubbles, including one that was used to transport the Emperor with all the furniture covered by white sheets.

The horror! The horror!!!

This steam train has been cut apart and retrofitted with lasers which help it go into space.

Have I ever seen or been on a double decker bullet train? I dont think so. It looks higher than normal ones?

The bullet trains are in an annex building. I nearly missed it. There are also simulators in this building but the lines were long and they had signs saying no more spots available today. Not as bad as Disneyland, in the news today, one of the ride lines there had an 11 hour wait on the weekend.

From the roof of the train museum you can look at real working train lines! Oh yeah, its also very grey now, but not raining, yet.

I liked the model railway stadium, but again I was told off for taking photos despite 50 other (Japanese) people taking photos. Were they concerned I was stealing the secrets of how model trains work? This is a crap photo but its the only one I got before the no photo guard started yelling.

After leaving the train museum I headed back to Omiya and boarded a real bullet train, presumably one that had just finished its shift standing still at the museum!