Back to Japan for the 11th time - October and November 2024 - Page 7

I took the Hapi line south to Takefu station. I deliberately took a train that got me there 30 minutes before one of only 2 buses for the entire day would come so I would have time to go to the convenience store and find the correct bus stop. Takefu looks like a big enough place, 2 small department stores attached to the station, but no convenience store nearby. Nothing open at all nearby, no bakery, nothing. So I had to do a quick run through the streets to the nearest convenience store to get back to the bus stop in time, made it with 4 minutes to spare, with a lot of jaywalking (jay running).

The bus came right on time, and I was the only person on it for the entirety of my journey. So it may only run twice a day, but perhaps even that is 2 times too many.

But then I got off at Goanjoji temple (famous for cats as you shall see), and what was there 100m past the bus stop? A large roadside family mart convenience store. I consumed a bonus ice coffee and reflected on my unnecessary run through the streets of Takefu. But at least I got to see most of Takefu.
Anyway, the temple is nice enough, nicest of the many I saw during the day, but that is not why people come here.

This place is basically a free outdoor cat cafe. All of the cats are very friendly and will not run away from anyone. None of them wanted to fight me, which was a bit disappointing.

The oldest cat of all.

Bonus cat. I ate a muesli bar here, and they all came running over as soon as I pulled it out of my bag. But they all look pretty well fed so they got none of my muesli bar.

Baby Buddhas. I started my GPS watch from here.

Still a bit of fog around. Main peak for the day on the left of this photo.

Bottom Hino shrine was uninspiring.

It was only about 1.5km from the cat temple to the start of the actual trail, up this nice road through a 'post town'. At least they claim to be a post town.

Next shrine. A lot of shrines today.

The trail started. No bear warnings! The lower sections were very smooth.

I saw 3 other people on the way up, but then I came down via the non preferred path and saw no one at all.

This way up has some steps, but it would not last.

First view of the day. There was a bit of fog around so I made sure to get some shots from lower down. At this point the summit was still in fog.

Very colourful again today.

The summit is now clear of fog.

The last km or so to the top was all steep slippery rocks like this, often with a much appreciated rope. It was slow going.

You can see the rope here. Very steep.

Next view, nearly at the top.

Summit view. I am almost in the cloud.

There were actually a few little buildings around the summit area. Unlike yesterday I had somewhere to sit and eat my calorie mate BLOCK.

Here I am. I love these Uniqlo shorts, I will buy 3 more pairs.

Summit shrine.

The path down was lonely, but no less colourful. Also no less slippery, a lot of the time there was a rope.

Similar view on the way down.

This looks leafy, but slippery rocks await underneath.

Nearly back to the woods.

Another rest area. No other people, but plenty of signs that this hike is generally popular. No spider webs.

Random rocks were sign posted.

You know you are almost at the bottom when the flood control things start to appear.

Bottom shrine. The slipperiest of all paths was a flat section along here. I did not fall over all day, but almost did here.

Looking back at the mountains, the old lady you can see here had no teeth but seemed very happy to see me. She had an excited conversation to herself with me.

Nice view of today's small mountains, now to check when the train comes.. ok time for more running.

I made it back to Oshio station with time to spare. I should point out that today's trains and buses all took IC card.
After 2 hikes in a row, I guess tonight will be a shorter outing, but I guess that was probably going to be the case in a small town like Fukui anyway.

Overpass east of the station. Not a lot going on.

I found a drain, even less going on.

But then I found a supermarket, where there is a lot going on.

A great feature of Japanese supermarkets is that they often have this little eating area with a microwave, to heat up and eat the food they sell at the deli section in the store. I did this in Nikko once.

Final reminder that tomorrow is dinosaur museum day.

The top floor of the Seibu department store has a small restaurant floor. About 8 restaurants, half of them are specialist crab places like everything around here.

So I decided on pasta. I made absolutely sure I got a non cream variety. Tomato and eggplant. Not bad.
Tomorrow, dinosaurs (no hiking).

I arrived at the museum, and instead of going in, immediately climbed up onto the roof. It is your standard masculine set of 2 giant balls.

The staff were aggressively helpful, trying to make me get a guided tour device, forcing me to take a map I would not look at even once, and when I tried to not go down the escalator to the start of the preferred route, I thought they may actually sound an alarm. Anyway, here is part of the main dinosaur hall. It is very large but does not photograph well.

More dinosaurs.

And more.

And even more. The website says you need to pre book a ticket and time and all sorts of other nonsense, I think this is a legacy of when they first grand reopened during covid, now you can just buy a ticket and go in, as long as it is not the 2nd or 4th wednesday of the month.

OK, enough with the dinosaur main hall.

Here is the escalator I initially tried to not go down which caused a full on panic.

There is a restaurant, and huge gift shop of course. The restaurant meals are dinosaur themed, dinosaur shaped chips with curry sauce, that sort of thing.

I climbed up as high as I could and had this view to myself.

The scariest dinosaur of all!

OMG! They killed and stuffed Moo Deng.

The grounds outside the museum are also nice, but oh so smokey.

Shall I walk back? I pondered for a while but decided not to.

Here is Katsuyama station and the dinosaur bus. Do you think the station is named after the ubiquitous pork schnitzel?

I had 20 minutes until the single carriage train arrived to take me back to Fukui, so here is a smokey shot up into the bigger mountains, apparently this is where SkiJAM! is, whatever that is. There were buses taking people there, but I am very sure there is no snow.

I was glad it was not a hiking day, I might have suffocated. So now I have achieved dinosaurusness, prefecturally.

I found a little small arcade area behind the cinema that I had not seen before. The shop with the flags is secondhand clothes. There are a lot of secondhand clothes shops here.

I went back to the new mini eating place with the exposed duct work. I could of easily had dinner here, but I wanted something that was not part of the standard Japanese food offering, and I had already had the taco rice.

There is a tram network as I mentioned. It appears to go to nowhere in particular. Here is one of the trams. Disappointingly modern.

There are not many places to eat outside of the station, but there is an umbrella shop, open late on weeknights.

And for an unknown reason, the post office has a display in the window of all the instant curry mix boxes someone has collected, plus dinosaurs of course.

And here is my dinner. From the Chinese place in the station. It is mushroom and pork in starch sauce, poured into a ridiculously hot cast iron pot filled with burnt rice crispy squares. Really, the rice was just like rice crispy squares, you can see a bit of one in the top left of the above pic. There were a few of them in the bottom of the hot pot, the starchy sauce with mushrooms and veg gets poured over and they soften up and break apart. It was really delicious. I have not had anything like it before.
Tomorrow, trains and Tokyo.

I was up on the Fukui platform too early so as usual, wandered down to the end to take a photo, which resulted in a security guard following me with great concern.

Bullet trains on either side.

I will skip forward now to the oh so exciting hotel room shots in Tokyo, this is the Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kanda. This is actually a single room, with large double bed (around the corner). It is as big as what some places market as a double room though. The desk situation here is excellent.

The bathroom is fine, I prefer the shower with the closing solid door rather than a shower curtain so I can take control of the nozzle which has more pressure than a fire hose and clean the back of my knees and in between my toes without fear of spraying water onto my bed / laptop. You really do have to be careful with this, more than once I have turned a Japanese shower on and the pressure has been enough to lift the shower head attached to a hose clean out of the holder, where it then violently dances about like if you were teasing an angry brown snake with a stick.

And here is my lunch/afternoon tea. A mandarin and whipped cream sandwich. I prefer the kiwi and strawberry one, but they did not have it.
Now to check for rain, I have big hiking plans for tomorrow.

This is Asakusabashi station area. The JR line runs overhead. There are actually a lot of shops around here even if it is not apparent in this photo. I enjoyed getting the overhead train line in the shot.

Shaming of smokers, with photos.

I am back in the world of artisanal coffee.

Also artisanal bookshops. Yes this really is a bookshop. Now ask yourself why bookshop is acceptable as one word, but if I were to type say, umbrellashop as one word you would think I was a lunatic.

Am I back in Fukui? Oh no, it is a Godzilla not a dinosaur.

Approaching the shrine area. Tourists.

The top of the sky tree was in mist. Although there was no rain.

Some of the places along the main bit were still open, but generally in the process of closing.

That couple took about 900 photos of themselves, for 30 minutes or more.

Everyone has seen this, so only one photo of it from me.

I went into this store to buy, I am not even sure.

Back to a city with proper covered shopping streets. I will allow it to rain briefly at night now.

And for my dinner, this does not look like much but it gets a very high rating on review sites. The noodles are hand made Lanzhou style in the store, which seems to get reviewers excited. It is dan dan noodles, which is a Chinese style dish, but the flavour was much more Japanese ramen than you would expect dan dan mian served in China (or Australia) to be. Still it was very good.
Now I must go to sleep, tomorrow is an early start to a long hiking day.