Japan for the 9th time - Oct and Nov 2019 - Page 1

I think I took a photo from roughly this spot on my way to Europe a few months ago. On the left you can see Australia's weak imitation of the glorious pants building in Beijing.

Here is my breakfast at the lounge shared by Virgin and Etihad, I ordered an omelet, which came without toast, so then I made my own toast and also got some yoghurt and fruit salad. Fascinating I realise, but photos of airport lounge food are the most linked of all my website content. Seriously.

It looks like my plane is not even here yet. So here is a photo of an air India plane. These photos are also very popular with people searching google image search. If you came here searching for boring plane photos, please read my whole site, I promise there will be more photos of boring stuff!

Its definitely boring photo time. I stopped at Pacific coffee for a burnt brown sugar and ginger latte. I like these a lot and wish they had them in Australia. Pacific coffee is apparently Hong Kong owned, where as Starbucks is Mainland China owned, and hence, some Starbucks stores have been molotov'd lately.

I walked to every corner of the airport, but eventually ended up at the satellite concourse where most Hong Kong Airlines flights leave from.

Here is my shower. Lovely moldy wood paneling. American spell checker is doing its thing.

I have not much else to do, so heres a photo of a toilet and mirrors and whatever. Squint and you can see me.

And finally, here is my nap spot. Maybe. Hmmm. Its very dark in here, so this is a noisy photo to get some exposure whatever.

Upon arriving in Japan, I still like to get a wifi thing, instead of a SIM card. That way I can use my regular work SIM card to receive SMS's to log into various secure work related things. Anyway, I preorder it months in advance from the same place I have always used which is probably the most expensive. I knew the post office would be shut for another 10 minutes but that was fine, theres a coffee shop next door.
I post this here because everyone arriving in Japan needs to collect something from this shop, either a wifi thingy or a SIM card. So here is the shop. It opens at 08:30.

I took this photo on a previous trip and used it to debug the way chrome re sizes photos with very poor quality. So I took it again so I can analyze later and become frustrated that Google has again changed / broken something.

And for the last boring photo. Its an airport. Lots of construction going on inside and out. There was basically no carpet anywhere inside, just dusty concrete. It really is a crap airport.

My hotel is right near Ueno station, so first up, I took a tour of the area around Ueno station. I am very familiar with this area.

Here is a look down a street. In Ueno. Quite a heavy crop, my camera has no zoom!

I still dont know what this means. There was Van Gough paintings, a turtle, photos of Mount Fuji.

Heres a photo I took last time I was too early to check into a hotel in Ueno.

I was a bit early for the actual main street to be closed off in Akihabara, but there were lots of people even before lunch time, including lots of people here for the rugby world cup. I am a little disappointed I did not receive an SMS advising me that public urination is not acceptable. Before rugby games the government has been sending various messages to foreign SIM cards connected to a Japanese mobile network reminding rugby fans that punching random old people is not an acceptable fun time activity in Japan.

My lunch consisted of vegetables and a pastry. It was very nice, but not a lot of food. I am starving right now, typing this as fast as I can so I can go get some dinner.

DO AS THE SIGN SAYS.

Even the back streets of Akihabara were busy before lunch today. Look at all those uber nerds.

I normally save the photos of the reeds / lilies / weeds here in Ueno park until my last day, when they are dead.

Because today they are not dead yet, here have a second photo of them.

Nearby the temple is having a Halloween festival with a girl band and middle age men who are way too into it and sing all the words and know the dance moves. It felt uncomfortable.

In Japan, religious festivals at temples involve girl bands, potato twister on a stick thing and Halloween.

And then, after way way too long, I got to check into my hotel. It is simply called the Ueno hotel. It is cheap and my room has an amazing shower. I like it a lot, I think its my third time staying here.

Here are some bikes, some pipes, and a guy lit up by bright lights. Thats a new form of Haiku. Guy at the end of the alley was yelling loudly to himself. I yelled back. He was a better yeller than me so I scurried off. I cannot win this battle. Knowing when to retreat is the mark of a great warrior. If you retreat before the battle has started you will never be defeated.

Here are some tracks, people, neon.

I remembered to look up to have an upward look from under the tracks. Things are looking up.

The markets selling fresh fruit, bear bile, sea grapes and supreme t-shirts were still going strong on a Sunday night.

I have been up those steps before, I think theres a view, but not tonight. My poor legs cannot take me there.

For dinner, I had almost all the Japanese cuisines at once. If they could have thrown some Ramen on the plate I would be done. Actually I had something that was just that in a Nagoya train station years ago, which I believe was literally called, everything on a plate, with sauce. OK THATS IT. BED TIME.

Frequently, when I get to the start of the trail, I cannot actually take a photo of the mountain because it looks like a wall of trees with no peak. To remedy that, today I took a photo out the bus window. There are actually 2 peaks to climb, the male and female peak. I climbed both. This photo came out really well considering its taken through glass from a moving bus.

The view from the bus stop was decent. A bit hazey today, absolutely no wind, definitely shorts and t-shirt weather.

Hard to get lost, the giant red gate shows you the way. Those are some nice powerlines too!

Obviously there will be a shrine. Both trails up start from here, turn left for one, turn right for the other.

DAMN IT! As I said, theres more than one path up, and a different way again most of the way down. Its convenient that they added English to the sign, and Chinese, no Korean though. Luckily I can not read Korean, otherwise I would have been here all day reading the sign had they remembered to add it.

Time to engage in some forest bathing. It is now legally mandated that all salary men spend one day a month forest bathing (unpaid).

There are many auspicious rocks on this mountain, most of them have something to do with fertility, as does the whole male and female mountain thing. The bus to get here had a soundtrack explaining it all, suggesting that the mountain peaks were highly compatible.

There are also mini roped off shrines that you cannot really get to and see. Japan loves ropes.

This rock gives men amazing power! Theres a page of Japanese text, and in English it says 'MAN POWER ROCK'. Hmm, it looks way more feminine than masculine.

The horror, the horror! Despite quite a lot of kind of dangerous scrambling over rocks, a lot of school groups featuring children no older than 10 are making the journey, very very.... very slowly. No way to pass. No amount of me swearing and throwing stuff at them would make them get out of my way. My journey up from here on in was slow. They had not come the entire way up, but the path over the rocks from the cable car is the tricky bit.

A glimpse of the cable car that delivered small children onto my path.

Summit time. This is the female summit. Fun fact, male and female are the same sounding words in Chinese and Japanese, nan for men, nu for women.

The view. I culled a lot. Some of that haze is farmer smoke. I think I saw on the tv news this morning a smoke warning.

The path across the ridge, past the other cable car (there are 2 different ones) to the man mountain.

NAILED IT! On the first attempt too!

Here is the mini shrine on the top of the female mountain that is a girls only toilet, make up shop and place to gossip about how your other female work mates are all bitches.

Like most Japanese mountains, there are many contraptions set up to allow the Emperor to effectively communicate with the sky demons.

You will see that on the saddle area between peaks there are a lot of shops. This shop however is on its own in a very nice spot, so nice that it has zero customers. I got their hopes up as I staggered out to the edge to take this photo. But then I just walked off.

Here are the shops near the other cable car station, from these I made a purchase as you shall see.

I knew what the coffee was, I take mine black in Japan when it comes in a can, but the biscuit / cookie looking thing I had no idea. Will it be savory or sweet? It had no discernible odor. I bit into it, half expecting it to taste like fish or soap. No! It is a block of honeycomb! Now I have the diabeetus!

If you get off the cable car and buy a block of honeycomb, this is your view.

The short path up to the top of man mountain was not long, in fact it was short as I just said, but still had some technical sections like this to scramble up. Fun times. Some of these rocks had been worn very smooth, quite treacherous on the way down.

View from man mountain.

It was now time to head back to girl mountain, or more politically correct, woman mountain, and find a way down to the other shrine / cable car. Lets get going!

I found the other path, which was a lot less technical.

THATS MY BUS! I ran dangerously down the last bit, the bus set off without me, I stood in the road and flagged it down and he let me on, but this caused all kinds of confusion in charging me the right extremely high fare as the machine had already ticked over to a slightly less extremely high fare. There was more confusion when I got off again, and a lot of very fast speaking in Japanese, to which I nodded and smiled.

Yeah, its the inside of a bus. Despite the high cost, Mount Tsukuba is a fun day trip from Tokyo, especially if you are not into 6 hour plus hikes, this one can be done slowly in about 4 hours. Slow because of school kids.

Here is one of the shopping streets in Asakusa, near the shrine. I go here regularly when I visit. I like all the small stores selling traditional wares. I buy nothing of course. My favorite shop this evening was selling nothing except for blue aprons for people that slice fish. That is all the entire store had for sale.

Pissing in public is a big problem in Japan. These signs are particularly prominent in car parks, reminding drunk guys returning to their cars not to piss and drive.

Shrine. Seen it before, at least 4 times before.

I was not even going to take a photo of the Skytree, but I liked the station lighting at the bottom of it.

And here is my delicious dinner, featuring hot soba and some tempura vegetables. Right now I am enjoying mandarin slices in white flavourless calorie free jelly for dessert.