Of course I am back in Japan yet again - Oct and Nov 2018 - Page 8

Here is Okutama station. I survived the stamped off the train. The 5 or so stations prior to this one all have stupidly ridiculously amazingly good looking scenery. The map shows a lot of canyons running through the villages, and on the way back I saw kayaking and people with tents set up along the edge of the rivers.

Here is part of the bus line. It extends over the road. Cars were being held up by people in line on the actual road as police blew their whistles. It was a very easy decision for me to avoid this situation and just walk the 4km.

Before heading up the road to the trail I checked out the little town of Okutama. They had numerous hiking stores.

It really looks like this, this is not a computer generated render.

The road followed this river with the blue water running over rocks.

I think that mining train line with the little carts has not been used forever. They leave it like that to make for good photos, so I took one.

It was just that colorful. And bright. Check out the bright sun reflecting off the water.

There were also sheer cliff faces as shown here, and a number of waterfalls.

By this time I was on the trail, and going fast in the lower flatter sections, the scenery was still spectacular though! I resisted the temptation to take hundreds of photos.

The path to todays summit, which I should have mentioned earlier is called Mount Kawanori, loops around the back of what was about to become a very steep mountain. I believe that bit sticking up in this photo is very near the summit. Lots of vertical photos today, I like to wear out your mouse scrolling wheel.

More color, more water, more view.

It started to get a bit mossy in the bits that get no sun, still looks great to me. Maybe I am easily impressed by leaves and rocks and streams and trees and sun.

Last one before having to put my camera away properly to ascend the very steep path to the top. At times ropes were needed but I didnt really think it was dangerous going up. I was however very glad to not have to descend that way, which would be treacherous. My heart rate stayed over 150 for a 90 minute stretch going up today, peaking at 172. I tried to push hard! Over 2000 calories burned in the 6 hours it took to complete the hike apparently.

The very last part to the summit is less strenuous, I bounded up to the hordes of fellow hikers, who all yelled KONINCHIWA at me for no good reason.

As I warned, the view from the top is actually nothing to write home about, and theres trees on 3 sides. It was all about the journey. Actually for me its always all about the journey, that just doesnt translate well to photos and meaningless ramblings too well.

Here I am, looking into the mid distance, pondering which way to go down (there were 3 choices).

One last one of the summit area, now lets go down fast. Also great weather again, shorts and t-shirt weather again!

The path down started smooth and full of dead leaves and naked trees.

Before too long it became pine plantations, which are a bit boring, especially compared to the trail on the way up. I enjoyed some of the moss covered fallen trees.

Looking back, I think that was the peak, the middle one. But I cant be sure. It doesnt matter. Its on the map, google it.

2/3 of the way down you come to a logging road, a tiny shrine, and a heap of people having their UMPTEENTH tea break for the day. I got mass Konichiwaaaad again. A lot of groups seemed to be on paid tours, matching hats, name tags etc. You really do not need to do that to climb this mountain.

The forest logging track and the peaks from earlier in the background. Compare that to the picture a few before this one and you can see its a long way through the forest to get to here, and still more to go!

Another 45 minutes or so and I finally arrived back at the town of Hatonosu. Also highly picturesque.

The station was full of hikers who had compelted the same course as me today. The train runs often, I only had a ten minute wait, but the return journey took longer as the first half stopped at all stations unlike this mornings holiday super express hiker special.
Hmm, probably the best hike of this holiday so far, probably in the top 5 best ever.

Just a regular old street light in Tokyo.

Here is Takashimaya. It is actually not in Ginza, the area just before there is also very nice big stores. The Mitsukoshi store there went for many blocks. I believe there is another one in Ginza itself just up the street and around the corner.

After my long day hiking and eating only a chocolate chip cookie and a cake, I was starving, so needed dinner immediately. Luckily the local 10 level bookstore, Maruzen, has a cafe that is famous for its curry sauce, according to the window display. So thats what I had, in the form of curry demiglaze mushroom omurice. It was very good!

My new tactic, make friends with the bears!

Here is the main street through Ginza, Chuo Dori, under construction!

Despite the construction I took a photo anyway. This is a heavy crop, these kinds of photos need a lens longer than 28mm.

All of the xmas displays in the windows are impressive. The polar bear is enormous and it moves.

Just another random street area somewhere quite near Ginza.

I have been here before, its the Tokyo forum. My new camera does a great job here at night. I was able to stop it down to f4 to get lots of the awesome roof trusses in focus. Yes, I am talking about my ability to focus on roof trusses.

Shot of the evening. Standing here is quite an unusual sensation.

Yeah, its a bus terminal. I had never actually seen the bus terminal before. I think its new? Or the building is. It is attached to the Tokyo train station and very large, especially the roof area.

I took this same photo last year. This years is better. Last years was fully grey sky. I talk about the sky a lot.

Here is another one of the moat around the castle. Notice the terrible lense flare at the left? I dont care. Maybe attaching my lense hood would fix that, but I doubt it. Maybe I should stop taking photos pointing my camera at the sun.

Over the road from the imperial palace area is another shrine area. This one has a new ancient torii gate under construction, a red one! I peered through the scaffolding to see the metal wrapped concrete core.

I dont know the name of this shrine, but you can see its getting re-built.

Out the back you can feed the fish for a while. There were no cats near by being mesmerised by the fish. Tokyo has a lot less cats than the rest of Japan.

The little garden here is kind of bland, but its free!

OK, here is something no website has ever shown before. It is Shinjuku neon sign street, in the daylight, sans neon glow!

Who is sand dog and does he like umbrellas? Also why is this sticker all over Shinjuku?

I found this interesting. In a camera shop they have these little photo books showing about 10 photos for every lense they have for sale. I am not sure it would help anyone decide what lense they need, but you get to stand in a store and look at someones photo albums, thats always fun.

This is my old Neighbourhood of Yoyogi. The first 2 times I came to Tokyo I stayed right about here. It has not changed. There is a level railway crossing here that always takes ages to cross, you often have to wait for 5 trains to pass.

After spending an hour or so in Shinjuku and Yoyogi not finding my lunch, I decided to stay hungry and head to Meiji Jingu. The main path is wide and completely covered by an awesome tree canopy. Every tourist in the world was here today.

Unfortunately this photo did not turn out as well as I hoped. There is a big building behind the gate in the distance, you can barely see it.

'No photo!' guy was no match for my elbows. I was easily able to get to the front to gawk at these people playing fancy dress. Apparently the bride wears that hat to disguise her devils horns? No really, heres what the Internet says, "the headdress is big and bulky and is said to hide the brides 'horns' as a symbol of submission".

People everywhere. I am taller than most of them.

It is very common to dress up your kids and make them walk great distances in wooden clogs. Some people ask to take their photo, I just wait for someone to do that and also take a photo.

Its the greasers. I will have to do a comparison to an old photo but I think its the exact same people.

Inside the park there are a number of fountains, and dead looking trees.

Here is a bit more fountain and tree death.

Where are all the freaks? It is mostly western tourists having a picnic. Where did the freaks all go to instead?

I walked 3 laps of the park until I found some actual leaf color (momji) so here it is, enjoy!

First, by special request, here are some pictures around where I am staying in Kanda. Much like Shimbashi, many of the places here choose to shut on Sundays.

Another one of Kanda.

Last one, train going over head.

On my journey tonight I had to go into Tokyo station to buy my 3 day train pass that I will start using tomorrow. There was no one in the line but both open counters had someone being served. Both of those people were absolutely useless. One of them needed to get to Ueno station from Tokyo station, and was trying to buy a ticket and book a seat on the Yamanote line for Wednesday (3 days from now). The Yamanote line is the main metro line, there are definitely no reserved seats, and the train runs roughly every 28 seconds. Anyway, this photo came out pretty well for handheld.

The next station along is Yurakucho. The train line provides hundreds of holes for small restaurants under the tracks.

Here is a particularly low rent location with a low rent looking eatery.

Near Yurakucho is one of these multi level seafood places. I think I have seen this exact same building in other locations. So now I think these 3 level restaurants are mass manufactured kit buildings made to look old and interesting.

The back streets had some little places to take some atmospheric moody photos or whatever adjectives you want to use.

Between Yurakucho and Shimbashi on this side of the tracks they are renovating the under track tunnels, so its my chance to take a shot of nothing lit with sodium lights.

Once I got to Shimbashi I was greeted by the new imperial army, who have parked their hand painted armored terrorist vans out the front of the station. I could not see any of the guys in their rising sun uniforms.

Right next to where the racist idiots had parked is this train dressed up in Christmas lights driven by Santa. Perhaps the Japanese KKK had bought their kids to see the Santa train?

Here is a Shimbashi back street, about half the places are open.

This is probably the main back street, theres also a main street but thats just filled with brand name shops and convenience stores.

Time for one last photo of the restaurants under the tracks. I like this one.

I was told I should have a traditional dinner, so I had Sichuan fusion Ramen, the least traditional thing I could find. It was delicious! It was inside a place where you can still smoke, I thought that had been banned? Generally the smoking places have better food! Probably because the smokers have killed all their taste buds with tongue cancer.

Wait a minute. I planned todays activities based on the forecast of rain. Why is there bright sunshine? This was very confusing. Also the streets from Kawagoe station to the old area are very busy, colorful, developed etc. There are even big department stores.

The shrines in this area seem newer than the buildings in the streets. There are a lot of them. I think they have been built here to cash in on it being a tourist area.

This quiet street is just outside the official tourist zone on the maps they put up, so there is no one here.

Similarly, this building on its own is a couple of streets over, and looks to be genuinely the oldest of them all.

I have no doubt, this is the most photographed place in Kawagoe! I had to wait ages for a clear shot.

Coming in a close second to Starbucks is the bell tower most listenable scenery number 93 of 100. They did not ring the bell while I was here.

A bit more bell tower and blue sky. I was checking the weather radar, I want blue sky tomorrow not today!

Here we have a section of the old buildings on the main street. Apparently they have something to do with pottery. Mainly they sell tourist souvenirs. Thats smart, because this is a place tourists go.

I think these people are Chinese. Kawagoe is a great place to dress up and be followed around by professional photographers. This girl has an entourage of 3 photographers and a make up artist.

In this photo I am almost being killed by a bus.

Candy alley was strange. There are maybe 3 shops, generally selling kitkats and snickers bars. This is the only place I could see anyone selling anything unusual, which is a 3 foot long marshmallow thing that people eat as a stunt / dare.

This is candy alley, there are now more shops selling craft beer.

Many of the old places have a strange large animal thing out the front, generally a panda (so Japanese!) I decided for my photo to take a picture of this weird Pelican.

Nearby Kawagoe are a couple of shrines and castle ruins, I need to get my steps so off I go. Hmmm. Blue plastic.

The next thing on the tourist path according the signs I was following is the sewage treatment plant. It was shut. How annoying.

I visited 5 shrines and this is the only part of one of them not under some sort of construction!

Thats a nice backhoe.

Even the bonsai flower fair was partially under construction. I like the bonsai flowers though.

OK, now I am at the train museum, here is a bullet train transformer. Its a little known fact that all bullet trains can transform at any point when required to defend Japan against attacking evil robots / Godzillas etc.

I was asked to leave the build your own railway area. Racist. So all I could do was find a place above it to hurl abuse.

Hahaha, really? I got told off 3 times for taking photos, while people right next to me were taking photos! I even got told off for taking a photo of this sign.

The main hall is very impressive, packed with trains, this is not even all of them.

I like those older long nose ones with the elevated driving positions.

This is the most expensive of at least 4 restaurants inside the Museum. A couple of them are housed inside what look like trains. I bought a $2 sandwich from Family Mart.

It is a bit strange that you can sit on a train that looks just like a current still in service train.

You can also get under a couple of the trains and look up their skirts.

No really, I am fairly sure this is the actual train I took to get here earlier. Now its a museum attraction.

Probably an irrelevant shot since I kind of took it from another angle earlier.

There are also older trains to look at, but the focus is on the post steam era.

Ahhh, now I found some older trains to go and stand on. They could sell these to my old home town of Adelaide who are in need of an upgrade.

This is probably the oldest one you are allowed on. The even older ones are inside plastic bubbles, including one that was used to transport the Emperor with all the furniture covered by white sheets.

The horror! The horror!!!

This steam train has been cut apart and retrofitted with lasers which help it go into space.

Have I ever seen or been on a double decker bullet train? I dont think so. It looks higher than normal ones?

The bullet trains are in an annex building. I nearly missed it. There are also simulators in this building but the lines were long and they had signs saying no more spots available today. Not as bad as Disneyland, in the news today, one of the ride lines there had an 11 hour wait on the weekend.

From the roof of the train museum you can look at real working train lines! Oh yeah, its also very grey now, but not raining, yet.

I liked the model railway stadium, but again I was told off for taking photos despite 50 other (Japanese) people taking photos. Were they concerned I was stealing the secrets of how model trains work? This is a crap photo but its the only one I got before the no photo guard started yelling.

After leaving the train museum I headed back to Omiya and boarded a real bullet train, presumably one that had just finished its shift standing still at the museum!

My journey took me back through Akihabara, which I have photographed too many times so had no intention of taking a photo. But then a train stopped on the bridge as I went past, so I could not resist another photo.

It always amuses me that the real estate in the most visible position with the most foot traffic anywhere in Tokyo is filled with shops selling extension cords, capacitors and funnels.

Ochanomizu station has been under construction for 10 years now. I am certain the same cranes and equipment were parked in the same spots at this time last year.

Whats that I see, could it be Tokyo soup stock? IT IS! Early dinner I shall have then, and instead of the two soup combo, I mixed it up with soup and salad. The salad has chicken and pecan with a basil dressing. I still dont know what the soup is. I am going to try and eat healthy until I leave so I have less 'bill shock' when I return, bill shock being the price you pay for excess weight charges. Its just like phone data only not at all.

Here is a guitar shop. It is huge. It has 6 levels. It is called guitar planet which is apt.

Here is another guitar shop. The bargains they have are second hand guitars that were only ever sold to the Japanese market. I want about 20 guitars in this store alone.

The roller coaster is really quite high, and it is running despite the drizzle and the fact its a Monday night.

They have some nice lighting all the way around the dome, I walked 2 laps.

Not a great photo, but the roller coaster does go on top of and through that shopping mall on the left.

The merry-go-round is more my speed.

Surprisingly, the food here looks great to me, healthy, and reasonably priced. This wasnt the only option, next door was a Korean place that also looked great. I will have to remember for my next trip, I am unlikely to pay a repeat visit on my two remaining nights this time.

I argued with this robot for a while. I lost.

Final photo tonight, the rainbow equality arch lighting. I am confused as to why I didnt line myself up correctly in the middle.