Trip 13 to Japan - October and November 2025 - Page 1

The duty free, now run by South Korea in Melbourne, gets bigger every time I go through it. It is a tough sell to get me to buy something to carry around for hours and or a month depending on what it is. They do have the cheapest bottles of water in the airport, although of course I did not buy one.

Once you exit the duty free mall, there is nothing. A lot of nothing. Every shop is gone.

Not to worry, I headed into the Singapore airlines Silverkris lounge which has nowhere to use a computer comfortably and proceeded to wash my hands repeatedly to remove the layers of Skybus scum.

This left just enough time to have a free breakfast, and coat myself, my laptop and immediate surroundings in a thin layer of melted jam.
Now I will go for a walk before boarding.

Proof that I was in Singapore airport, which is no doubt familiar to many. I think their marketing team does a great job at during the never ending airports awards season.

Here is the butterfly garden. I think it was basically dead one time when I visited a couple years ago, now it is all green again.

And in case you were wondering, butterflies love pineapple.

And finally, the view from where I am seated drinking about 2L of water out of tiny bottles.
I think my flight to Tokyo Haneda is delayed 20 minutes, but I also do not know where the gate is, so I had better hurry up and finish typing this and go find it.

This photo was taken before departing Singapore. It is my plane, another Airbus A350. I thought I had better included one plane shot.

Now for the 3 photos of the hotel room, here is the first one, pretty standard, bed around to the left but where is the bathroom door? It is not just to my left. Note the desk and chair in this photo.

Behold, second desk. A hotel room with 2 desks and 2 chairs. How exciting. I will alternate between the 2 desks to type this nonsense. Also the bathroom door is down that weird hallway towards the second desk. I also have a lot of windows to deal with.

And finally after a very long day, the obligatory bathroom photo.
Tomorrow (Today as I am typing this) is raining all day, so no hiking.

My hotel is Ochanomizu is on this little shopping street, full of second hand stores, bookshops, plant shops and other things that appeal to people on bikes with beards. BTW, it is the Sotetsu Fresa hotel, famed for its rooms with 2 desks. I know if I do not put the hotel name I will be hounded to the ends of the earth until I do.

Since it was raining quite hard now, I decided to hang out under an overpass and check out the local drain scene.

Then it was time to take the underground route for a while, noted for it's lack of rain.

At Setagaya I changed from a subway to a tram. I realised I had been here before, an area noted for it's old style rundown shopping areas and second hand clothes store, all of which have the exact same odour.

Here comes my tram. I was disappointed as google maps showed an old tram, not this bright orange new tram.

However when I got off, a completely preserved old tram which you could even go inside. I sat in it for a while, became overly excited, left.

Here it is, the entrance to Gotokuji temple. Quite popular on a rainy Sunday morning, I expected there to be no one here, soon you will see madness.

The grounds were very nicely maintained. Apparently this is a Buddhist temple, I often get confused by all this, but since I had looked it up, I can be sure that this one is Buddhist and not Taoist, Shinto or Scientologist.

I stood for a while waiting for lightning to hit this and cause an interdimensional rift to open. No such luck.

Around the back is all the waving cats. There are a lot of places that have thousands of waving cats. They all claim to be THE waving cat place. There needs to be a list of 'Waving cat places of Japan'.

Further out the back, following a path and tourist maps directing me to it, is the local graveyard, which then has signs asking you to not be there unless you are visiting graves. Make up your mind.

And then I took a while to figure out what was going on here. A line seemingly not moving that just ends and people turn around and come back. I joined it briefly but then thought better of it when I saw others just walk along side the line and go past the end of it, so I decided to do the same. It was then that I discovered it was a line to have your photo taken with a statue of a waving cat. His paw was shiny like the penis on all those statues in Europe tourists rub for luck. I am glad I left the line.

The streets around the temple are mainly shops selling waving cats, but also vegetables.

The I spotted this, on every light pole. I had to go and investigate. Maybe people dress their cats up for Halloween? The date confirmed it was on today. I was excited.

The path took me through a plum tree grove, where a man was sitting in the rain with a suitably black Halloween style cat, although the cat was not in costume, so no photo.

And then the shocking disappointment. Cat's Halloween is nothing more than a local school band wearing silly hats playing the theme from Titanic and a street performer blowing up black balloons. Halloween lasts about 3 months in Japan.

Behold, Nazi's. They hate it when I film them and wave and give a thumbs up and peace sign while they are preaching about destroying anyone without pure Japanese blood. A lot of their henchmen hide their faces, and the police are always there filming them too.

Then it was time to walk back to my hotel, which passes at least 50 guitar stores all on the famous guitar street. They have great stuff, but importing it to Australia is just too hard for me to be bothered with.

It was not raining when I set off, but everything was still wet, which makes for great shiny light shadows.

I did a lot of skirting around the edges this evening, here are the edges of Akihabara.

A nice bridge, the buildings were disappearing into mist, the Skytree was basically invisible.

Further skirting around Akihabara.

The one pounder. Disgraceful.

Time to head down some damp alleyways.

As always, I enjoyed following the elevated rail line, usually there are interesting things crammed under them.

Cool bridge. I managed to not get run over.

After walking along the river for a while trying to spot the Skytree hidden in the mist, I arrived at the back end of Asakusa, skirting around the shrine.

It was mot raining, so I did not head into the covered shopping streets. I took a photo to record that I did not go into them.

Here is my expensive vegan Halal ramen. The brown thing is a mushroom.

And then it started raining again. I headed back to a random subway and changed trains 3 times to get back to my hotel area, then stood in the rain to take a photo fo the rain.

First up, the change to a new 1000 yen bill is still causing dramas across Japan. These are the vending machines on every JR train platform, and they only take the old ones. This must be costing the vending machine companies a fortune to change them over but also in lost business.

Here is the view from Fujino station. It was strangely dark for much of the day. I have started a hike here before, but turned right up to Jinba, today I will go left.

My journey took me over this bridge. That is lake Sagami, I have done a hike up the other end of this lake (left of this photo) that had been badly impacted by a cyclone.

The first part of this hike was along a road.

Finding the starting point of the trail was not difficult.

Now for the leech warnings and the free spray. I spent a few minutes studying the various chemicals on offer, then just coated myself in all of them. The lack of bear warning was encouraging though.

The real trail commenced. Steep at first.

Not a lot of views on offer today, and those that were available were strangely dark.

A peak of sorts.

Probably the main view point. Note how dark it appears?

Here I am, unshaven. I am basically wearing running clothes (full length tights) today, to fight off leeches.

The peaks were not at all high, but there was a bit of up and down.

I enjoyed running on the flatter wider stretches, leeches cant climb up me while I am running. Although there is a theory they fall out of trees, a recent study proved that to be incorrect. Also, apparently the type of leech you find here, you can just flick off with no lasting effect, no salt required.

To draw my dinosaur picture, I had to double back a few times, this was the main spot. It will all make sense below. That is my long suffering runners backpack that I use for hiking. I do not have the water bladder in it, instead I just put 2 bottles of water in it, as well as calorie mate BLOCK.

The next bit of the path was very smooth, almost like a road.

And then it was a road, unexpected.

So dark!

You can climb up here, but I don't think there is a view even if you do, so I decided not to risk plummeting.

The road was narrow and muddy, with consequences.

A bit more view. Threatening clouds but it never rained.

This is where I turned around and doubled back after creating the leg of my dinosaur.

The path got muddier.

There were also roots, I think of leeches hiding in leafy areas, but I really have no idea.

One of the non remarkable almost no view to speak of summits. Generally denoted by a picnic table.

A bit of blue sky!

No red leaves yet, but it was starting to get slightly sunny at times.

Near the end of the main loop and ropes appeared. With the muddy trail they were definitely required.

I came back out onto a road near the lake for some great light over some farms. It was near here that I saw snake number one of two.

Even though you walk around the edge of the lake, this is just about the only view you get of it.

Near the end and there are some possibly abandoned hotels. This one is shaped like a ship. I saw snake number two of two near here, on the road.

This is not my bridge, I had to stay on my course to complete the picture I was drawing.

Although this is a bridge, it is not the same one as at the start of the day, but I am nearly there.

Here is the view from the bridge from the start of the day, in the opposite direction, now with additional sunshine.

And there it is, Fujino station. The same station from where I started my drawing... what drawing you ask?

Well apparently the hike I did today is very popular, even though I saw no one, because you draw a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is my Garmin app, and yes I took a photo of my laptop screen because it is just easier with my whole work flow for maintaining this monstrosity of a website.
You can clearly see where I doubled back to draw his leg and mouth, but also on the bottom left, his (or her) genitalia?

Food trucks are still a thing, everywhere. There is still nowhere to sit at a table, instead you just pour whatever you ordered into your lap or onto the ground. As long as you take a photo first its all good.

The buildings around here aver very square and uniform. Apt.

Here is a store for the people that helped me draw a bad picture of a dinosaur earlier. I went in and showed them. They asked me to leave when I asked if it was a boy or girl dinosaur.

Tokyo station, from over the road.

Tokyo forum... from over the road.

Now it is time to explore the tunnels under the trucks. Modern and concrete.

Yurakucho, with a camera shop, and more train tunnels.

This train tunnel is lined with old bits of metal.

Multi level seafood restaurants always do the most external decorating. The top floor has some kind of strobe light situation going on.

Many of the train tunnels are smoky.

Here is tonight's superior cheaper ramen. 1000 yen ($10). Green chilli salt ramen, with extra green chilli. Very delicious.

And then after not too long at all, I arrived at Shimbashi. You can tell by the old train parked out the front. I have stayed in this area a couple of times.