lost or what?

Lack of rain emergency stop

Tokorozawa Aviation Museum

Good news, as I type this it is finally raining. Bad news, it did not rain all day until now. In between news, since the rain was coming from the west and the hiking is to the west maybe it was raining there earlier? I will pretend that it was. Now I just need it to hurry up and go away so I can try and pull off two hikes in a row over the next two days.

So sad was I that I did not go hiking today that after the aviation museum, I actually walked from Tokorozawa aviation museum to Hachikokuyama park just because it seemed to have a trail running through it, and it did.

OK, so the main attraction was a museum with planes and plane related activities. This is just north of Tokorozawa station on one of the Seibu train lines that starts at Ikebukuro. Technically this is not even in Tokyo, but in Saitama, but there is really no difference other than real estate prices.

The museum itself is small, and located on the first airfield in all of Japan. There were a few school groups hanging about but it was relatively peaceful. Also, $5 entry and CASH ONLY. Too expensive and too inconvenient, but since it was my rainy day option and I had travelled over an hour to get to it, I reluctantly paid. Handing over cash is much harder than tapping a card.

My final destination in this chronologically all over the place recounting of the almost rain free day was a dam, which on the map is called Tama lake. Not a huge dam, but a dam none the less. Nearby was a spooky but not yet quite abandoned amusement park. There was music and people working, but no customers. I counted 7 cars in the only car park area that was open, there were spaces for 10,000 cars at least.

My journey back to the city centre was via a different route, starting at Musashi-Yamato station, before changing to the Chuo line at Kokubunji. While Chuo-ing along on their special rapid service, a series of alarms went off before the train screeched to a halt. I was the only one standing and was flung forwards a bit but grabbed a handle just in time to prevent a hilarious end to my day / holiday / life. The alarms kept going and as I was at the back of the last carriage I could see into the little area with the conductor / announcer and he was on the radio yelling, then hanging his head out the window yelling. Eventually the screens said Chuo line delayed due to unexpected noise, followed by conducting inspection. After about 40 minutes we were back on our way, with presumably a whole heap of Chuo line trains backed up behind us. The unexpected noise remains a mystery.

OK enough typing, it is time for more grey photos.