Back to Japan for the 11th time - October and November 2024 - Page 4

Atsuta station area has some half covered streets of former shops surrounding the shrine area. I suspect many are long dead.

Today the shrine is as busy as it gets, and there are numerous vendors setup on all sides selling fried orange things on sticks.

The gardens are extensive, there are many such brown wooden gates to pass through.

Hmm, not the main shrine, but possibly the most photogenic building. I think this is quite a modern shrine.

Here is the main shrine. Not particularly impressive. You cannot actually go in as there is some kind of pay to pray thing going on.

The grounds were more impressive than the shrine buildings.

Now to explore the Shirotori garden, the entrance is a bit underwhelming and the car park was almost empty.

However inside it was great. Here is a stream. There are many men in blue overalls attaching lights, fog machines and loud speakers to blast jingle bells to every single tree in the place.

Here is the mini fake waterfall. You can see one of the men in blue working suits attaching lights in this photo.

Those poles are the things to tie the trees up in the winter so the snow does not snap the branches off. I feel they should delay doing this for a few more weeks.

There are quite a few bridges crossing the mini lake. Not many people at all in this place today, strange.

Possibly picture of the day. Needed more colourful leaves.

Whatever this metal snake in this part of the fake lake is supposed to do, it is not doing it. And so now it looks like a sewage treatment plant pond agitator.

After exiting the garden, I walked along a river and got to another sewage pond looking area, but what is that weird building in the distance? Let's go and find out.

It is Nagoya Century Hall, some kind of conference centre I guess. The thing at the top is earthquake bait. It all looks a bit run down. OK that is enough photos for a rest day.

There it is. The same thing can also be seen in Sapporo in a similar park. The Tokyo and Osaka ones are not really in parks.

I could have had dinner at the overpriced peanut cafe with a view of the tower. The peanuts are very popular in Japan, but even more so in China. Weird.

Seems legit.

I walked back under the tower where homeboy was dropping some phat beats to a crowd of mainly dancing babies and puppies.

Last tower pic!

Next up I had to get onto the roof of Oasis 21 bus terminal as promised. Under it tonight they had set up a skate boarding street battle thing, which had a decent crowd watching. You can see a bit of it here if you squint.

Here is the roof. It is a big pool you can walk around.

From the roof I spotted the ferris wheel, so that was obviously my next destination. I have not been on this one, I have been on a few in Japan. People no doubt find the thought of me riding around in a ferris wheel on my own hilarious.

Now for the street scene around all the department stores. There are probably 5 or 6 big stores in a row.

I headed up to the top of Parco and there were lines for most places, so specialist omurice chain Rakeru won by default. I ordered what is advertised as their diet option, instead of a huge omurice, you get a tiny one, with tomato sauce, plus a chicken thigh fillet and potatoes. Rice and Potatoes.

And for my final pic of the night, some more of the large department stores along here. Most are connected at level 7 by sky bridges.
Tomorrow is a hiking day. I will be mocking people who take a cable car to the top.

Here is the view from Kintetsu-Yokkaichi station, where I changed trains to the Yunoyama line, which I would take to the last station.

Behold - Yunoyama Onsen station. That is not today's mountain behind it. Great weather in the morning.

The walk from the station to the actual onsen area is about 3 or 4km, along a road, but this is the kind of view you will get. I believe there is a bus, good luck with that.

I remembered taking similar shots last time I was here. Yes I have hiked in this area before, to the top of Mount Gozaisho, but last time in 2015 I took a completely different trail.

Here is the onsen area. It is quite run down, a lot of abandoned buildings and no convenience store! There is none at Yunoyama Onsen station either, so once again, safest to get what you need before leaving Nagoya.

Mount Gozaisho is up there, you can see the cable car going up. It would be my last peak of the day as I will go on a huge loop course.

A red bridge.

A bit more onsen. With so many photos a lot of my descriptions will be brief.

First I will head in that direction. It looks nice, should be easy enough.

I joined a 'trail' at this flood control area, and immediately got lost.

Great sky.

So far so good, this was still obviously a trail.

Hmm, ok there is a way up and around this.

I could get a view briefly at the top of the flood wall... but then...

I spent the next 3 or so hours in a valley making very little progress.

The stream seems to be the trail and I had to cross it 50 times. Thankfully there were ribbons in the trees. I was following my GPS sort of, but I feel the actual trail is mostly destroyed.

After climbing out of the valley via tree roots, I got to this sign. Yes I had taken the expert course somehow by accident.

But we were not done yet. Great moss.

More mini waterfalls to climb.

More rocks to scramble over.

But eventually, I climbed out of the valley once and for all, and there was autumn to behold.

I will eventually go to that peak on the right. You can see the buildings on top of it where the cable car goes to. It looks very far away, but first I will head further away from it.

This section was very steep and sandy, but I appreciated the lack of creek.

Almost at the top. I had already come from all the way down there where you can see a town.

Redundant view shot.

The other direction. A bit more sun would have made for brighter looking shots.

This is the peak of Kamagadake. Alltrails needs to update their map for this hike.

There is a shrine at the top, and other people who have climbed around from Gozaisho, probably after taking the cable car. These were the first people I had seen all day! I never saw anyone else down in the creek filled ravines.

Some more nice clouds. I wish that guy was not sitting there.

Time to head half way down again from Kamadake to go up Gozaisho. It was also steep.

Nice rocks. There will be a lot more rocks.

You can see Gozaisho up there. It still looks far away.

The trail was much more defined now, I would not get lost anymore.

Well defined but steep!

But also with signs of autumn.

I am running out of things to type.

OK, that peak to the right of the rocky outcrop is Kamagadake, where I had come down from.

More rocks, that pink ribbon on the tree is to show you the way when it snows. Although I was reliant on them in the valley / ravine earlier.

That is also Kamagadake where I had come down from.

Yes! Look at my awesome nose. I can breathe a lot more air than regular humans.

Here is a nice smooth part of the trail, a rare relatively flat section, with low bamboo.

Getting closer to Gozaisho, that looks like a massive staircase.

Getting really close now, and this is clearly an actual staircase.

Here is the summit of Gozaisho, it is a bit away from the cable car top station, but there is a paved path to walk over... or a chairlift as you shall soon see.

Apparently this is also a ski resort. There were a few buildings dotted around.

There is the top cable car station and restaurants. I will wander up and have a look. Last time I was here it was really windy and the cable cars were not running for a few hours. There was an immense line of elderly people waiting for a way down. I had no issues going down on foot, but I do recall nearly getting blown off the mountain... I guess that would have been an issue.

Looking back on Kamagadake over on the right.

OK it is a ski resort of sorts, and here you can see the chairlift that goes up to the top of Gozaisho. It looks like I could have ran down the grass area, there are people walking down there. Next time maybe.

Here is restaurant 1 of 2.

And restaurant 2 of 2. Note some really old bent over people are here enjoying lunch. I did not sit down for lunch as I was filthy dirty. I did buy an ice cream from a vending machine. I was also running out of daylight.

I climbed up to the top floor to the cable car museum, and got this excellent view down.

But for me it was time to go down on foot. And it was really steep!

This is the best I could do to prove I did not take the cable car down. You can see one of them here if you look carefully. I saw only one other person on the 2 hour journey down.

There was the occasional section of big rocks.

And still some autumn colours.

The sun was about to go behind the mountain, so it came back out from the cloud briefly.

And then finally I was back at the onsen. Nice cloud. Abandoned buildings.

As a reminder, that is Gozaisho. I am now far from it on my journey back to the train station. It was getting dark but at this point I was back on a road.

And finally, back at the station. Thankfully the train came almost right away, and it was a very quick journey back to Nagoya, just over an hour. Epic hike, long day, tonight's outing will be brief.

Just outside of my hotel, Asahi has been trying to give away 0% alcohol beer for a few days now, without much success. The 200 yen on the sign is to buy food to go with it. I had one of these zero alcohol beers at a car show in Tokyo years ago. It was terrible.

The mall itself encourages people to walk laps. OK then.

The food area was on 3 levels. And all looked very good. In fact most of the mall was devoted to food, quite unusual.

Here is my soup curry, with 20 kinds of vegetables! It was great.

But wait, on the top level, a food court. I could have got a cheaper dinner! I doubt any of the food court options came with 20 different vegetables. I made the right choice.

And for my final pic of a long day, here is about half of the Aeon mall at Noritake. There is more to my left.
Tomorrow will be a rest day. I am down one hike in Nagoya due to the rain early on. Due to the length of today's hike a double up would seem unwise, so now I have no plan for my 'rest day'. My rest days still get at least 30,000 steps, it is just that they are not steps taken getting up a cliff.

Here is the station area at Inuyama. Bus stop to Meiji-Mura is on the right, well sign posted, they take IC card, this is the first stop, Meiji-Mura is the last and the bus comes about every 30 minutes. You cannot stuff up.

The bus was not even half full, but some of the old folks that got on seem to have covid or worse. Great.

The gate area where the bus stops was largely unimpressive. It is $25 to get in! A tough ask for me... but I knew that before coming. The uninspiring gate area had me questioning my wisdom.

OK, I guess this is a nice old building. The Mie prefecture office. Remember, they picked it up and moved it here!

A couple of old train carriages the emperor and empress once rode on. There is a steam train and old tram that go around the park, both were not running today, the signs explaining they were not running today had a level of permanence about them.

Next I went back to school. The desks are very narrow, modern students are too fat to fit.

The insides of most buildings were probably not worth going into, but at this stage I had no concept of how big this outdoor museum was.

I do not even know what this building was / is, tricky light for the photo.

A few old buildings in a street setup. The grounds are very nice to wander around too.

This is the old telephone exchange building. They had old phones and switchboards inside.

Here is the inside of a hospital building, with beds. You are not allowed to lay down on them. For $25 I think I should be allowed.

Genuinely old, and in some places I felt like I might fall through the floor.

Here is an old tram car. I am pretty sure this still runs around the park some of the time, but I did not see it going today.

The inside of the machinery shed has a bunch of huge old looms. If you want to see similar looms operating, go to the Toyota car museum, yes really, before cars they made looms.

The Uji-yamada Post Office. I just checked, Uji-yamada is about 150km away.

There are quite a few restaurants dotted around the park, but they all seem to only be serving the types of meals I would eat for dinner, too much for me for lunch.

This is an actual full size cathedral. It is massive.

Complete with all the ornateness on the inside.

Even the Knights Templar or whatever this is.

And so I thought the cathedral was at the edge of the park, and then I walked behind the cathedral and here is the view over the hill. A lot more to go.

Now I am inside the old jail. I believe Japanese jails still basically look like this. You can now get put in jail for texting while riding a bicycle.

Annoyingly, they have fallen for the keep the kids interested by putting up anime signage everywhere trend. This is the Imperial hotel.

And now an old library.

This is the former head office of the Kawasaki bank. Kawasaki is an outer suburb of Tokyo so I presume it used to be located there. There is an added on staircase to climb to the top, but frustratingly the best view is blocked by a filthy perspex window.

this is the best view I could get from the top of the old bank building.

Part of an old historic railway bridge, that now goes nowhere.

An old train and what is claimed to be the Japanese immigrants assembly hall, from Hilo in Hawaii.

Now we get into the Addams family / Munsters area of the park. This one has the USA flag. It used to be the Seattle evangelical Japanese church, and before that an ordinary house. Really. This has been moved here from Seattle. It looks suitably spooky.

The park is located around a large reservoir. In case you get sick of buildings you can go look at the lake.

And for my last pic, the scariest looking building of all. Complete with a crowing black crow on the top of the spire - 'The Kitasato Institute was founded as a research institute for infectious diseases by Dr. Shibasaburo Kitasato'. So yeah, that sounds like crazy stuff probably happened inside.
So in summary, probably worth $25.

After a mini tornado seemed to be blowing through, it was time to go underground and go as far as it would take me.

This is a tarot card reader. They are everywhere here. Not even in back streets in hidden booths but out in the open in the underground malls.

And if placing your faith in a few cards was not bad enough, here is the local lotto ticket place, which has a shrine for you to pray at. Classy.

The christmas decorations here have incorporated a miniature railway, in the subway station. I was thrilled.

Next up in the tour of ridiculousness, the claw machine megaplex. 4 levels of claw machines.

The prize here, a jar of pineapple pieces. Would you eat a jar of pineapple won out of a claw machine? Assuming you win, what do you do with it upon winning, carry it around for the rest of the evening? In Taiwan these are believed to be a giant money laundering operation, I suspect the same applies here.

This is right in the middle of the nightlife area, where the Family Mart's have smoking rooms and boys with blonde permed hair wander the streets with jars of pineapple looking tough.

If you want a cheap chair, this is the place to go.

And as per my intro, here is the idol group performing in the stair well. The girl in green is out injured so is sitting through the whole performance. Either that or she misbehaved so the manager hobbled her. Not a joke sadly, read about it! The small crowd of guys with glowsticks yelling the chorus at the top of their lungs was a site to behold.

Every Japanese city has a donki, the main Nagoya one is well lit. Sometimes the lights show a game of tetris. For the uninitiated, donki or Don Quijote to use its never used full name, is basically a cheap as chips / reject shop, spread over many levels.

And then finally, my ramen. Full of tiny dried shrimps, partially rotten, mixed with fermented beans.