Japan for the 10th time (Finally!) - October and November 2023 - Page 9

Ikusabata station. Today will be a loop course that ends at Sawai station. You can also end at Mitake station, it is almost exactly the same distance, but since I have already been to Mitake on this trip I elected to go to Sawai.

The aforementioned closed convenience store. There are vending machines for drinks and cigarettes.... Also, other hikers, on a Tuesday morning.

The walk up to the trail head was very picturesque.

There were a couple of shrines to walk past. The busy roads had a footpath too.

Here is the trail head. I will help people.... 35.82176320733035, 139.2001447186296

First I had to pass the flood control concrete. No chance of flood today, amazing weather again!

The path started through cedar / pine forest. Much of it will be logged in the future. Stay tuned for logged area photos.

This hike is popular enough that there is some trail furniture even where there is no view.

Near the summit of Mount Takamizu is this shrine in the forest. The area around it has some nice scenery where they have planted trees.

As mentioned, the area around the shrine with nice trees.

Great view!

The summit of Mount Takamizu has no actual view. Do not be concerned, there is view to come. Not too high today, 759m

The path after this summit was almost road like... for a while.

This stretch would look great with a bit of sun. It was over the far side of the valley so gets very little sun.

Probably the trickiest section of the hike today. I enjoyed it on what was largely a relaxing stroll in the woods kind of day.

Second summit, Mount Iwatekeishi. I now realise it is higher than Takamizu so I do not know why it doesn't seem to get top billing. Like everywhere around here there are multiple ways to climb up and down and join everything together, and Takamizu has the shrine, so that is probably why it is the 'known' peak along here.

However if you want a view, Iwatekeishi is the place to get it. This is back towards Tokyo.

Other hikers. Bear bait as I call them.

I have climbed a lot of those.

A bit more view.

Another contender for shot of the day. I used a bit of zoom on this one. Very clear skies the last few days.

More leaf colour.

Here is a bit of the hill that has been logged. It is useful as it provides a view that otherwise would not be there.

The trail I had followed came up and along that ridge seen here, then around off the left of the screen to where I am standing.

This is the final peak of the day, again with a shrine and other hikers, again with no view, but just past the view in the previous pics. Mount Sogaku.

The path down from here was mostly back in the forest.

Occasionally, a single yellow tree snuck into the forest.

Here is where the trail let out back onto a road.

Sawai station is on the side of the hill, this is the view!

And finally, here comes my train to take me back to Ome. It arrived one minute after I stepped onto the platform, great timing by accident. From Ome I managed to time it for the special rapid, that skips a lot more stations straight back to Kanda, the return trip in total was under 90 minutes.

A scene familiar to many.

This is the train section in one of the stores I mentioned above. You can buy actual train uniforms, in case you want to sneak onto a real train and take it for a spin.

Warhammer is still a thing. I do not really know what you do with all the things once you paint them. Melt them with a magnifying glass perhaps.

One of the surviving hardware stores. There used to be a lot more.

Under the rail bridge.

Space baby is here to kill us all.

I snapped a passing train going across this time.

I do not know what is going on here exactly, but I can relate.

Here is my excellent dinner. It is not okonomiyaki but yakisoba, super spicy yakisoba, when I ordered it they guy yelled with excitement... SPIIIICYYYYDESSS! Something like that. Anyway they actually cook it in the kitchen, bring it out cooked, and throw it on the hot grill for you to burn some of the noodles. Very delicious.

An art installation out the front of where I got my dinner. Something about electrical transmission between two plains. They had ads for it all over the place.

And tonight's final pic, please ban this shit. It is dangerous and gets in the way of everyone.

To start off, I found a nearby shrine, somehow elevated above the roads, with a garden with a river elevated above the shrine. I will call it, the elevated shrine.

Here is the shrine in the early morning light. They are doing the flower judging routine, more on that later too. Note the little bridge going to the shrine on the right.

A nearby dragon guarded by tiny Buddha had me on edge.

I have been here before. Roller coasters in the literal middle of the city. No one has been decapitated here in recent history to my knowledge.

There are a few different rides here, but all I think about is 'no longer compatible with life' during the press conference when the people were killed at Dreamworld in Australia. Note the rollercoaster coming through the hole.

A nearby subway station demonstrates that someone made strange budget related decisions.

I always enjoy an overpass, and look at the weather! How old do I sound?

The moat along here has old man fishing world. Note that there are toilets over the water.

Next I headed into Shinjuku Goen and headed straight for the tropical green house. These orchids belong to the public and are being judged. I gave my ratings.

For 200 yen you can sit in one of those lily pads.

The garden is a sea of camera colour science challenging yellow lawn.

Formal garden area. After I took my photo I went and stood in the middle to ruin everyone's photos.

This is taken from the Taiwan pavilion. I have been to Taiwan.

Some nice light and reflections.

I am over sharing garden pics, but later I will compare to the last time I went, which I recall had excellent weather too.

OK, last garden pic. I sat and had a picnic on my own.

Time to head towards the massive metro area of Shinjuku. I really should have put on sunscreen today.

Hmm, really not that colourful during the day.

Also not particularly busy, this qualifies as not busy by Shinjuku standards.

And here is the Godzilla street, looks rather ordinary without neon.

And now I need to WALK BACK some previous allegations. When I passed through Shinjuku station earlier on this trip I accused them of having done nothing to fix up the construction since whenever I was last here. That is true for transferring inside the station, but before the gates, I believe this tunnel area is completely new since my last visit, and actually finished. Amazing.

Shimbashi main area is a bit before where this photo was taken, but I took photos of that area a couple of weeks ago, therefore due to a mortal fear of repeating myself, I did not dare take those photos again.

Hello there. There is a park around this, some of it seems to be a hotel, then there are private streets where road rules no longer seem to apply. Kind of strange.

I snuck around the back to upskirt the tower, now I am a local.

OMG a food court. I really have not eaten in many food courts on this trip.

Despite the allure of the food court, I really wanted this, so I got it, Dandan noodles with added pork belly. Which is numbing and spicy soup, with minced pork and sesame. A Chinese dish from Sichuan, the tastiest part of China.

Unlike most other nights, dinner did not signal the end of the evening. I started my walk towards Roppongi, which is not far, and goes past Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower, the new tallest building in Japan. It only has about 64 levels, which is a little unusual for a building of it's height of 320m, most buildings that high have 80+ levels. I wonder if the top bit is a facade around some kind of non inhabitable structure. It will actually lose the title as soon as 2028 too.

Heading towards Roppongi, it says so on the bridge.

Roppongi is famous for its many musium's.

The Mori tower area always has nice lights to gawk at.

This is a long exposure, look at how the Tokyo tower lights up the clouds. It was this bright by the naked eye too, not just because it is a long exposure.

Another long exposure of a nearby illumination.

And... some more illuminations in the streets outside. Light pollution, everywhere. Reminder: tomorrow is a hiking day... the last one!

It is a national holiday today for labour day. So everyone is going hiking. This influenced my decision to pick a lesser known hike for which I did not need to fight for a bus. Here you can see Musashi-Itsukaichi station, and a huge line of people who did not get on the first buses leaving after the train arrived.

It was a 1.6km walk to the start of the trail proper, the town here is quite big. Some people are camping along the 'river'. The clouds were great today!

The trail starts at Komine park, where this shrine is, you can find Komine park on google maps.

The first part of the trail through the park is very developed, but today had a good mix of different elements.

No bear warnings today, snakes! What kind of bell do I need for snakes?

From a distance I thought this might be an elevated wooden ladder like at Dakeng in Taiwan, but it is just steps.

The aforementioned power station, literally between hills hidden in the woods. The quarry was huge and even more hidden. There were a lot of watch out for snake signs around the power station, possibly to discourage hikers from entering the power station.

This was probably the most technical bit of today's hike, which is to say, not very technical.

I almost did not bother going to Kongo falls, as it is about a 200m detour, but it was worth it, very mossy, dark, rocky as you shall see.

A tiny waterfall, but I had it to myself, and it was dark and spooky.

A very cool spot.

This is the to of Mount Imakuma. Public toilet or shrine? I genuinely did not know!

A summit marker. No actual view from here, and not very high. Mount Kariyose was about 700m I think, so also not very high. Today was not a day for people who like to get high.

Just past Imakuma is a view spot, that is Musashi-Itsukaichi below. Is that the actual town name or just what it is called on train maps so people do not get confused with other places named Itsukaichi? Either way, note the huge number of power lines.

This is a public toilet. So the previous building was probably the shrine! This is my best public toilet photo of this trip.

Time to push on to Mount Kariyose, it was getting sunnier.

I climbed up a ridge to peer over into the logging areas.

Wow! Peak colour!

This is right by the summit of Mount Kariyose, great view, great clouds.

Just around the corner, logging areas provided the view.

I was looking for the looping path down through this area of logging but could not find it, so I decided to turn back.

Before too long at all (due to a lot of running) I was back at the power station.

Which just left a different very long stair case to go back down to Komine park, which I re-entered from a different entrance.

The park area is a popular place for picnics. The light really was quite surreal through the partial cloud cover.

And now here is my final hiking related pic of this trip, the view from Musashi-Itsukaichi station. I will probably return to this station in the future, if I continue the way I went today it links up with Jinba which links up with Takao. Another between the tracks opportunity!

It is certainly very busy in the station area, as everyone is going from one line to another to get to the nicer areas of Yokohama.

The first thing to do was to go find some dinner. The local Sogo department store was a good bet, more so when I discovered it had a grass volcano in between all the restaurants.

Bread AND rice. Why not. I had non Japanese curry. It was pretty good actually.

Next I exited out the wrong side of the station looking for non existent neon. Instead I found triple stacked highway overpasses. Earthquake bait.

Out the other side of the station is the taxi area, and more department stores, and not much else.

Also buses. Basically anything to take you away from here.

I am being unfair, there is a vast network of underground shopping areas, and they do connect to some other areas such as the port, but I did not have enough time to go all the way there this evening.

Instead I wondered why this statue and gas lamp exists in the middle of the busy station area.

And for the last pic of the evening, clearly once again, I am on the wrong side of the tracks! Over here it is just me, on the otherside, everyone.