Back to Japan for even more - Oct and Nov 2017 - Page 7

The road through the city to the park where you start your ascent to storm the castle was very nice, even in the grey.

I took a wrong turn and found myself at this temple complex, with some really nice autumn color, well it would have been on a sunny day.

This woman will be here until march sweeping leaves.

The temple itself.

They have decided to try and compete with Kyoto with the red gate tunnel. Weak effort, try a different color, be unique.

I have no idea what this place was, but it was really nice and quite a large compound of many buildings.

Now I am at the city park, and if you squint through the fog, you can see the castle on top of the hill. There is an art gallery here with a Michaelangelo exhibition going on. Quite a few buses of domestic tourists.

Also, like all of Japan at this time of year, the flower show. This one has a mini pagoda and bridge as part of the display.

A bit more flower show, there was heaps and heaps of flower show. If you like flower show you would like this park a lot.

The garden was large and colorful. I did not explore it all.

I did however explore the little pond with lit up neon plastic Japanese historical figures. Note the fish in the water.

This was a bonus pagoda. Apparently made from wood from a bridge that collapsed in an earthquake in the 1890's. Although it doesnt say when the pagoda was made, it looks new and they are still finishing the landscaping around it.
It is often very very hard to take a photo without power wires. It annoys me!

I selected my path, apparently a path an exiled brother used to sneak up on the castle and murder his entire family and reclaim the throne. Quite common in Japan to this day.
The so called path was a rock face! I was genuinely surprised, but excited to climb up jagged wet rocks.

A bit more rock face, it went on and on. My hands are a bit sore now as a result. Needless to say, I saw no one else at all attempting the rock face.

And now a view of the fog.

As far as I can tell, this is only one of two spots to take a photo of the castle. You will see the other later.

Inside you have your usual array of weaponary.

And of course a few suits of samurai armour. Terrible reflecions from the horrendous fluoro lighthing. Buying a few normal lamps would make this place look 100x better.

Now we do the view, of the fog! And also those damn wires.

More fog, and the cities famous river. I know its famous, the station has an information board telling me the city is famous for the river and the castle.

Last view pic. Nice phone tower poking up from the trees. I think the foliage would have looked spectacular on a clear day.

Lets do the stance!

This is the other castle view, you have to stand in the entry of the ladies toilets. Nice power wires again.....

There is also another museum building included in the price of admission, and a squirrel park. Squirrel park had no squirrels although I did see some on my descent.
Bonus museum building had some more armour.

What the bonus museum really had, was the complete history of the castle, as told in manga. Apparently theres a big budget Japanese movie about this castle and the various mass killings of everyone.

Time to make my descent down the meditation path. I meditated on not slipping the hell over.

It remained foggy my whole descent, which I enjoyed.

The lower parts were less slippery, but dark and spooky. Todays small walk turned into a technical hike, which was a nice surprise.

The view from the 43rd floor. My building at home has more floors and seems small compared to many around it.
Here in Japan, 43 seems really high. Thats the train station below.

Some more view. That other big building is also owned by the city government.

Last of the view pics. It was really hard to take decent photos through the glass.

Next up, we head to the crappy mall. There was a highway overpass to take a photo from. Its not really up to the standard of the Tennnoji one from the other day in Osaka.

There was nothing else to see in the mall other than perusing the fantastic selection of second hand goods in book-off. They sell lots of second hand clothes also, its hard to tell many are second hand.

I had no idea what this place is, but they rolled out the red carpet for me.

And here is the building I was taking photos from the top of earlier. It was now starting to get foggy again.

My vegetarian buffet dinner. It was a fun activity.

I bought my ice cream from a gigantic up market supermarket. This is their curry powder / paste / spice block aisle. I couldnt fit it all in the shot. Do Japanese people eat curry every night?

And the rain started to fall just as I got back to the roofed streets once more. This might be the last ever photo you see of Gifu in your life. Remember it for its many roofs!

I got up early and walked around Gifu. This open sewer was quite picturesque in the early sun.

The reflection of the leaves on the water and the leaves on the water on the roof of the tunnel of the bridge was quite interesting.

On all the previous occasions I went past Fuji on the Shinkanesen, it was raining. Today I could see it, so I took this poor quality photo.
As my camera has no zoom, its a crop, through pollution, from a moving bullet train.
I have seen other tourists have a tantrum and start crying when they realised they wouldnt get their photo of fuji from the train.

And last photo for today, my hotel room. Daiwa Roynet again, exact same config as my last Daiwa Roynet in Gifu with a slightly more modern decor.
I like it, its large.

The entrance to Chinatown. I was excited to be back amongst my own people.

A lantern dragon.

Hong Kong street, complete with pay to use toilets. Very entrepreneurial.

With so many world champions of dim sum and cooking you would assume this place would have at least one customer, but they do not.
One of their so called champions is also a woman, which is impossible. All great chefs are men.

I felt like shark fin soup, but it was too expensive. That however is the biggest shark fin I ever saw.
Japan has shark fin soup, ivory, whale meat, live fish eating. Its all good.

There were so many reasturants, I decided to make my choice from one of the places on this alleyway, or else I would never choose.
The first place I went into, I knew what I wanted, saw it on the big sign out the front, house specialty, Taiwan beef noodle.
So I sit down, and out comes the honey chicken menu. I ask for the real chinese menu, in Chinese, and get answered in Japanese. So I left.
Everything on the English menu was also 3x the price.

Next place was dark, old looking, and I saw the chef smoking in the alleyway, so you know hes the real deal. No honey chicken menu here, menu was written in Chinese.
The mapo tofu as I wrote above was fantastic. $7 including soup, rice, dumplings, pickles and dessert which I turned down.

I am amused that the taxis seem to say 'the contribution to society' which is a term I attribute to reformed criminals.

THIS IS THE POLE I WALKED INTO.
I was reading google maps, and suffered a catastrophic groin injury. I tried to laugh and walk it off. I saw at least one guy laughing at me. It was pretty funny.

This outdoor mall went for many miles. I did not get to the end of it.

And just because I didnt take enough photos earlier, here is a random street in Yokohama. Quite shiny and new looking.

Yokohama is very yellow. Leaves are plentiful, at least 10 leaves fell on my head today just as I was walking around. This keeps an army of people employed sweeping all day. Some even shake trees to make more leaves fall down quicker.
I also saw quite a lot of people being supervised collecting rubbish with tongs, community service perhaps.

Down near the port is a big rose garden. Very un-Japanese.

The port tower is still functioning. Crap photo.

This cruise ship was also a hospital ship in WW2, and is now a museum. I thought I might go on it, but no admission before 11AM, so you wont be getting my $3.

The very modern skyline of Yokohama. Looks a lot like an Australian city. The weather today was still amazingly good, and I wished I was wearing shorts. Its supposed to be warmer tomorrow also.

This is the overseas passenger terminal for cruise ships. Its quite an amazing place. Seems to be made of wood and grass and is enormous, really gave a great view inside the ships berthed either side.

This bridge goes all the way across the bay back to the south east of Tokyo, at some point I believe it turns into a tunnel before becoming a bridge again. If only they let you walk over/under the bay using it, I would do that for sure!
Its so long they have 2 sets of 'roadside services' in case you run out of fuel or urgently need ramen whilst crossing.
UPDATE: I checked google maps, this connects up to that bridge / tunnel, nearer to Kawasaki.

This is how you do a model ship, make it big enough to actually sail in the ocean.

The red house is now a shopping mall, also opens late, so I kept going. Thousands of school kids hanging about pointing at me and hurling insults.
Kind of feels like a cold square in the Soviet Union.

Obviously I am too early for the ferris wheel, but thats ok, I have been on it before.

There is actually more than one amusement park, if thats your thing.

This long avenue of colorful trees leads to the Nissan car company global HQ. I had read you could go in and see every old car they ever made on display. I could not find that, just a modern showroom not worthy of a photo, and a starbucks, and a gran turismo simulator with a busted controller that had the horn button jammed on.

Another example of the clinically cold architecture of modern Yokohama.

Its only once you get to the Yokohama central station area that it looks more like the rest of Japan. Quite a small area and still filled with very large department stores and underground malls.
This old part of town is a long way from where the Chinatown section and the main people hanging about areas of town are these days.

Guns are a real issue in Japan. Mass shootings are occurring almost daily. Actually I dont know that theres been any gun murders this year.

On my way back to the hotel, I went past the big baseball stadium, and they were in there training. I could see in and take a photo. What appeared to be a junior player was standing guard at the gate, I asked if I could take a photo and he seemed too shy to answer.

Next to the stadium is this little garden. I have actually been here before. I also saw someone on the internet who went and took photos of a snake in a tree in here!

And then at the Lawson, I found 0 calorie Calpis! How a fermented yoghurt drink can have zero calories is no doubt patented Japanese secret technology. It tastes exactly like the calorie laden original to me though.

The entry to Motomachi street, with golden eagle.

I first walked away from the main area, to check out the poor end of the street, still quite nice.

There are lots and lots of dedicated little shops along here.
This one sells every kind of honey, honey related products, and honey themed accessories. In addition to honey they also sell pictures of bees.

I do not think they can open this store in Australia without changing the name first, although we do still have coon cheese.

The main part of Motomachi is nicely lit up, dont let the swarovski store fool you, its mainly independent stores.

There are lots and lots of shoe shops. Hence the golden shoe. Some of the shoe shops seem to be making the shoes, not just selling them.

RAMEN TIME! And it was amazingly good ramen. A new winner for best of the trip so far. I dont know what the flavour base was, maybe a mixture, including chilli. The huge amount of vegetables, some of them pickled, made it great.
The pork was also crispy on the edges, very very good. Finally, the noodles were hand cut rectangular almost Taiwanese style.

I liked this Ramen so much I took a photo of the outside of the shop to remember if I ever come here again.
As you can see they mainly serve the one thing, every picture on the shop is of that one Ramen dish which I was I ordered, 760 yen including tax, great value!

Xiao Long Bao man is here to save us all with soupy pork filled brain.

And to add a series of different colors to the web page, heres a random fish tank. It is inside a banks little night room where they have a row of ATM's.