J³ (James, Joel, Japan)

Kamata is actually the location of the headquarters of Toyoko Inn. While wandering the streets yesterday looking for dinner, I happened to spot the other Toyoko Inn branch in Kamata, and noticed the signage looked kinda… old fashioned, so I wondered if maybe it was the first Toyoko Inn – it’s easy to confirm, as all Toyoko Inns are numbered in order of founding. Back at my hotel that night, I checked the Toyoko Inn hotel directory, and yep, it’s hotel number one (mine is number twenty). Kamata Station is almost precisely midway between Tokyo Station and Yokohama Station, which is why they called it Toyoko Inn.

And actually, when I took this photo, which I posted two days ago:

I was standing less than half a kilometre straight down the road from the Toyoko Inn Headquarters – I just needed to turn left instead of going straight, and I would have been there. Would I have visited had I known it was there? No idea. On the one hand, it’s just an office building, which I can see perfectly well on Google Street View. On the other hand, it’s not like I had any particular place I needed to be…

I’ve still got no idea what Toyoko Inn’s 4&5 logo is supposed to mean, though…

So, anyway, I had breakfast.

Started off the day by going up to the top floor of the hotel and seeing if I could get out onto the emergency staircase for a view. Once again a typhoon had passed, and once again it was bright and sunny. I was quite surprised to discover that the top floor had rooms on only one side, and the hallway was actually a balcony, open to the air. Couldn’t get out onto the emergency stairs, though there was a nice view towards the station from the front of the building. Couldn’t get out on the two floors below either. So I wound up just going back to my floor – the sixth floor – where I’d tested the door previously and found it open.

Then I decided to take a roundabout walk to the train station, along the nearby Nomi River. As I passed Kamata Elementary School, they appeared to be hosting their annual Sports Day (i.e. what we’d call an athletics carnival in Australia)… but it’s Saturday. Also saw a volunteer force doing garden work by the side of the road.

Today’s plan was big city sightseeing and souvenir buying – complete my once-per-trip pilgrimage to Akihabara, visit a couple other of the big centres around the Yamanote line, that sort of thing. So I hopped on the Keihin-Tohoku train, and hopped off at Akihabara Station. Fairly sure this is my first time arriving at Akihabara on the second-level north-south platforms since 2010 – on my last two visits, I (and we) arrived on the east-west Chuo-Sobu line platforms on the fourth level, and it was… weirdly different being on the lower level. I went for a quick wander, got lost, took an exit I found that lead directly from the station into the Atre shopping centre, got even more lost, and eventually found myself standing on the street opposite the Labi building, the one with the escalators on the building facade which I’d photographed every visit, but have thus far never entered.

So I entered. It was all shiny inside, filled with all manner of computers and computer peripherals – including half a floor of USB hard drives, which would have been nice to have in Ichinoseki when I was looking for one. I rode the escalators all the way to the top, browsing just enough en route to make it look to the shop assistants like I wasn’t just there to ride the escalators to the top, then rode the lift back down to street level. (Oddly, at the top floor of the shop, there was a closed-off staircase where the escalator should have been, and it was… rather decrepit and decayed looking. You’d have thought they’d either maintain it or hide it out of sight.)

I popped into a few shops trying to find the figurine I’d been trying to find on my last visit (though, I said at the time that I realised it wouldn’t come out until October, but closer inspection of the listing on the website today revealed that it had actually come out this October). I was finally able to find it in the third shop I entered (actually, the very same shop that pointed out I was looking too early last visit)… only to discover that it cost 100,000 yen, or about twice the posted price on the manufacturer’s website. Guess it’s in pretty high demand. I did find the figurine of another character from the same series, but she’s not really my favourite, so instead I made an impulse buy of a different character from a different series… honestly not entirely sure why.

I had a go at couple of crane game machines – because so far, I never had – but then I decided to pop into the Gachapon shop and see if I could find any machines with prizes I was interested in. I found one with Spider-Man (and also Night Monkey and Mysterio as other possibilities, though I got Spider-Man), and one which was completely blind lucky dip, but it cost only 200 yen (the rest were 300-500) so I went for it… and got a rubber keychain thing. Honestly, not too sure what I was expecting, considering that rubber keyring things or badges seem to be quite common.

I’d planned to meet someone for lunch in Ikebukuro, who’s a member of the online forum of the website where I study kanji, but I still had about half an hour until I needed to go, so I thought I’d drop by one more place: a location colloquially dubbed the “Akihabara Creepy Vending Machine Corner”. On the ground floor of a slightly decaying corrugated-iron-clad building on the corner of a street just south of the Kanda River is an open space, which is entirely crammed full of a haphazard collection of vending machines. Some of them normal – drinks, nuts, popcorn – some odd – plastic beetles, Himalayan rock salt, tinned bear meat, cannisters full of bells, or train tickets from the Showa era – and some downright mystifying – whole machines filled with mystery boxes wrapped in white paper, with odd… um… stories on the front (in Japanese). Like, I don’t get what’s going on here. Who put these machines here? Who stocks these machines?

I walked within a block of this place back in 2017 – at one point, I crossed a bridge and turned left, but if I’d turned right, I would have seen it, and so somehow I completely missed it. I decided to buy one of the mystery boxes, for the fun of it – the story on mine starts “I went to my friend Tanaka-kun’s house for insurance sales, and his mother received me, and I was able to give lots of information about insurance.” It continues from there with the mother… uh… asking for more information on insurance, wink wink, so I don’t think I’ll continue translating. There was a second story hidden on the bottom of the box, which I’ve not started attempting to read yet. The actual contents of the package was Choco Bats – basically, those sponge finger biscuits covered in a layer of chocolate (so they look kinda like baseball bats, I guess), though I confess I’m not entirely sure they cost what I paid for it. Good for an occasional snack, though.

(Just watched a video on YouTube (opens in a new window) where they buy ten boxes and open them all to see what’s in them. All snack foods – crackers, animal crackers, occasionally Kit Kats. Also, in the same vlogger’s earlier video filmed here, she found tinned bread in one of the machines, which I really wish I’d seen, because I’d like to try it. Next time, I guess…)

Headed from there to a fun t-shirt shop I’d visited on prior stops in Akihabara, at which point I suddenly realised it was already very nearly time for me to be in Ikebukuro, so I scrambled off to catch the Yamanote line train, and by the time I’d boarded and found a seat, it was already the time we were supposed to meet. What happened to all the extra time I had?

I hurried to our planned meeting spot – the lobby of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre – a mere half-hour late, taking the wrong exit from Ikebukuro Station as I did so. As I stood in the lobby trying to spot my friend, fortunately he spotted me – I made a point of wearing my red jumper today, and I’d sent him a photo of what I look like in it the night before. We were meeting here for lunch, and a restaurant specialising in rice balls – I had one with negi-miso, and one with salmon-mayo. Very yum.

Then we headed out for him to show me some of the local sites – first, there was a woman painting a picture in front of a seated audience on the floor below the theatre lobby, and outside was a choir singing (not at all what for).

But more to the point, today was Ikeharo – the Ikebukuro Halloween party (“haro” being short for “harowin” = Halloween). Japan’s really taken to Halloween (having imported it from America) mostly because it’s an excuse to get dressed up and eat lots of sugar. But mostly the dressing up – Japan really knows how to do costumes. But because Halloween itself is on a school night more often than not, it hosts the main celebrations the weekend previous. Which is this weekend.

Point is, Ikebukuro is hosting a big cosplay (short for “costume play” = dressing up in costumes, often of characters from anime or games or manga, though not always) party today. So we headed over to the other side of the railway lines via a pedestrian underpass, which is in the middle of having its walls painted in a lovely pastel pattern (and passing en route the exit to the station I’d taken way back on day 1, except today I completely failed to recognise it in the slightest).

Our first destination was Naka-Ikebukuro Park, in the shadow of the Ikebukuro Animate Building (“Animate” being the name of the company which is Japan’s largest retailer of anime, games and manga, rather than a verb) where the Ikeharo Main Stage was located, featuring costume judging and corporate booths and a face-painting tent and so forth. I wandered around there for a bit taking photos of cosplayers. It’s polite to ask them first before photographing, so that they can display for your photo how they want to appear – striking a pose, not picking their noses, that sort of thing – but I found it difficult to approach people in the crowd, especially with everyone watching the stage, so I only took a couple of photos.

When I arrived, though, I noticed a girl on the stage dressed as Elizabeth, a character from a manga and anime named The Seven Deadly Sins (the one in pink) – I discovered after returning to Australia, that the girl is Enako, known as Japan’s number one cosplayer, who earns more than a million yen per month from her cosplay. My little… not-quite brush with fame. And also, a guy holding a rabbit.

We extricated ourselves from there, and headed for the next location marked on the event map, South Ikebukuro Park, but… nothing seemed to be happening there. I guess perhaps everyone was just at the main stage? We headed from there back towards the station, spotting on the way this ridiculous bus. I’m not sure it’s quite got enough wheels.

Back near the station, my host graciously shouted me a hot chocolate from Starbucks so we could sit and chat for a bit, but soon he had to head home to watch England play in the rugby semi-finals. He pointed me towards his favourite bookshop on the way, so I popped in there to see if I could find a few books I’d been looking for but thus far hadn’t found – and was completely successful. (Also saw a movie poster for “Sora no Aosa wo Shiru Hito yo” aka “To Those Who Know of the Blueness of the Sky” aka “Her Blue Sky”, the film I mentioned a while ago by the writer of Anohana and Kokosake, and discovered that it’s already out in cinemas in Japan – actually, it was released the day I arrived. Sorely tempted to go see it.)

With the sun setting, I decided to return to the station and head for my next destination, Shibuya. Except I’d hoped to visit the Kinokuniya Main Store which I’d thought was in Shibuya, but as we pulled into Shinjuku Station, I suddenly realised that I’d mixed up Shinjuku and Shibuya again. In a sudden impulse decision, I scrambled off the train and went to visit Kinokuniya anyway. It was… fairly large, but it was nine storeys tall, rather than one floor the size of an airplane hanger (mmm, hyperbole) as is rather typical for Japan, I guess, so it was a little tricky to get the true scale of it. There were uniformed elevator attendants, which I’ve not seen in a long while.

Back on the train, I soon arrived at Shibuya for real. For in Shibuya there was to be another Halloween party – the Shibuya Pride Shibuya Halloween party. Several roads are closed to traffic, and people walk all around them in costume. And please note the “Pride” part doesn’t mean it’s a gay pride parade, but rather that they’re trying to insert an element of “let’s take pride in how lovely Shibuya is” – last year’s party got a bit rowdy, and a truck was overturned, among other things, so this year alcohol on the street is banned.

First thing’s first, though: I headed up to the top of the Magnet building, just to the right of the station, where I’d heard there was an observation deck overlooking the Shibuya Scramble. It costs 300 yen to enter (as a crowd management measure), but it’s a pretty good view over the Scramble. You can also pay extra for selfies taken by a camera further up on the building, which are magically sent to your phone.

Then I went to have an early dinner before the event started. And because I hadn’t had sushi yet this trip, I headed for Genki Sushi, a sort-of sushi train restaurant chain where you order what you want off an iPad, and it comes out to you fresh right to your seat by the train. Or, I guess maybe it’s a sushi monorail? Though, after placing my first order, I was sitting already with the camera to take a photo of the food coming out, and I happened to glance behind me, and saw a waitress coming out with the food in her hands – I must have looked disappointed, because she faltered, turned around, and disappeared back into the kitchen with the food, which soon came out on the train. I’m… really not sure why she was bringing it by hand.

It was… well, it tasted like sushi. But yeah, the place is a gimmick rather than a Michelin-starred restaurant. I had some regular stuff – tuna and salmon nigiri, corn genkan, inarizushi, some burdock root rolls – then decided to try the hamburg sushi, tiny hamburger patties on rice. Finished off with some apple jelly. And over dinner, my external phone battery ran flat, for the first time on this trip. The horror! Had to change to my backup (the one that had been my primary before I bought this battery here in Japan in 2018). Actually, I noticed the phone had been running quite hot today, which is not very conducive to charge speed or battery capacity.

Lots of foreigners in the place – I had to help my neighbour read the cocktail menu, which wasn’t in English for some reason. I found a gachapon machine by the registers with tiny trains in it – I got a model of the E231, which is the same model of train as the simulator I’d been trained on way back at the Railway Museum in Omiya – then left to find a much longer queue waiting than when I’d gone in.

By which point, the Shibuya party was kicking off in earnest, except… it was really just a huge crowd filing past each other up and down the street, where a few of them happened to be in costume. Saw a few people in costumes that I’d seen back at Ikebukuro, though.

A page I found on Google suggested that costumed people might be more approachable if I were also in costume, and suggested that Don Quixote (a Japanese discount store chain known colloquially as Donki, since “Don Quixote” in Japanese is “Don Kihōte”) would be a good place to buy one – and there was one right there, so I popped inside to maybe buy some devil horns to go with the red jacket I was already wearing… and found it packed full of people doing the same thing.

One fun little thing about the party, though, was the local Burger King getting in on the act turning itself into a world-first Ghost Store, filled with zombies, and selling only Ghost Whoppers (basically, whoppers with a white bun). I didn’t actually go inside, though.

I was a little bit over the crowd, so I decided to head back towards the station. When I got there, I decided to walk around behind the station building to see if the new Shibuya Scramble Square building was open – it’s got an observation deck on the roof too, but a much grander deck and a much higher roof. It would be having its grand opening on November 1st, but I thought just maybe it’d be open for business prior to the grand opening – I’d seen a press tour of the place on the news, and they’d sure looked open for business – but no.

Once I was there, though, I spotted a side overpass that intrigued me, so I wandered in that direction… and found myself in a new shopping centre built in the former Tokyu Toyoko line Shibuya Station (and yeah, that Toyoko is the same name as Toyoko Inn – Tokyo plus Yokohama). A video did the rounds of the internet a few years ago of engineers converting a surface train station into a subway station in a single night in 2013 – you may have seen it, but here it is if you didn’t (that’ll open in a new window; turn the subtitles on for English) – that was this station. (Well, actually, it was Daikanyama Station, the next one in line, but you get the point.) By connecting the Toyoko Line to Tokyo Metro’s comparatively-new and completely underground Fukutoshin Line, it also allowed traffic from Tobu, Seibu, Tokyu, the Tokyo Metro and the Yokohama Minatomirai Railway to cross the entire city without stopping. Plus, it allowed them to demolish the raised Toyoko line Shibuya Station and connecting tracks. And I dunno why, but I kinda like this track-sharing between companies – it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. (Actually, one of my trains during the Underground Mysteries game yesterday was a Tokyu train, which had started on the Tobu Skytree line, was currently on the Metro Hanzomon line, and would be finishing on the Tokyu Den-en-toshi line. But I digress.)

The former station platforms had now become a new shopping centre named Shibuya Stream… and that name reminded me of a place I’d wanted to see near here – the Shibuya River. The river has always run through this valley, but in modern-day Shibuya, it had become a bit hemmed in by buildings and concrete, and a but neglected. But it turned out the Toyoko line tracks used to run alongside the river, and they’d now been turned into a very nice linear park, lined by lanterns with paper shades designed by kids. So I strolled gently along the park until I hit another new shopping centre named Shibuya Bridge, located where the former tracks turned away from the river heading for the next station, so at that point I decided to turn back to Shibuya Station. And even though I left the party early for an early night, I wound up leaving Shibuya quite late after all.

Back at the station, I decided to see why there were signs pointing the way to the JR Station up the escalator (even though the station entrance should have been at ground level) and encountered an entrance to the Metro station which I’m certain I took back in 2017… except at the time, it was just a dark staircase in the middle of a construction site. I mean, it’s possible it was a different entrance – I had been pretty lost at the time – but it’s an amazing change in just a couple of years.

Changing at Shinagawa Station to the Keihin-Tohoku Line for my hotel, I decided to buy a bottle of iyokan drink (it’s a Japanese citrus fruit) which mentioned “1% fruit juice” on the label, and… I’m pretty sure it was 1% fruit juice and 99% water. A homeopath’s idea of fruit cordial. Water that had once been in the same room as an iyokan. One star, do not recommend. Bleh.

Back at Kamata, I happened to come across a roast sweet potato truck just outside the back door of my hotel. I kinda regretted not getting a roast potato from the truck I’d seen in Kyoto back in 2017, so I went to go see if I could buy one now… except he’d just finished for the night, and was only packing up. Very sad face.

Plus, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d clean forgotten to visit the third – and largest – event location for Ikeharo: the Sunshine Plaza. Whoops.

Welp, here’s my little toy collection from today, in any case:

Today’s photo count: six hundred and fourteen.

Today’s pedometer count: 22,695 steps – 16.6 kilometres – 19 flights of stairs.

Sometimes it seems to me like every single place I’ve been to in Japan offers exactly the same type of paper serviette – and it’s basically a plastic sheet that doesn’t absorb a thing. Always the same size, always folded the same way. Is it at all possible that there’s a single company which makes serviettes in Japan that’s somehow cornered the market? It makes me rather grateful for those places which also give me a moist towelette, whether disposable or reusable.

Well, in any case, I started with breakfast. First breakfast at the new hotel.

Then it was time to head out-… well, actually, I discovered I’d forgotten to charge my flat camera battery from yesterday. See, today’s planned activity was the Tokyo Metro Underground Mysteries – if you recall, I last did this during my visit in December 2017, and enjoyed it greatly, so I wanted to do it again. (I’d actually intended to name this post after the event, except I’ve already got a post named “The Underground Mysteries”.) Anyway, point is, I expected it to be a long day – one of my regrets in 2017 was that I started so late (just before noon, actually, from the time on my photos) that I finished after sunset (or shortly after 7pm), so I wanted to get started early this time… but I also expected I’d need all three camera batteries, sooo… I decided to delay my departure by about an hour or so, and get it as charged as I could.

So, an hour or so later, I headed out. As a recap, the Tokyo Metro Underground Mysteries, branded as a “Real Escape Game”, run in partnership by SCRAP and the Tokyo Metro railway company, is a puzzle-solving game that involves players riding the Tokyo Metro from station to station solving puzzles. For 2400 yen, you receive a pack including a booklet with the puzzles in them, a pegcil (=combination peg and pencil), a bunch of different extra bits for use in puzzle solutions, a plastic wallet to carry everything in, and a 24-hour Metro ticket. It’s run each year from October to January, and this year is the sixth edition – though, for some reason, this year it’s actually from October 15th to February 15th; not sure why the delay. This year for the first time, it’s also available in Chinese.

To give an example of how the puzzles generally work, the puzzle book will have some kind of diagram or image which represents an item of public artwork that exists somewhere near a Metro station – the solution involves actually going to that artwork, and matching elements of the artwork to elements in the book.

Today’s the only day I’m spending in Tokyo which is not a weekend, so I decided I had to do it today, even though I expected I’d have to contend with the “TGIF” crowd coming out of work around the time I was finishing. Since it’s only been running a couple of weeks at this point, I actually paid for my pack in advance, to be picked up at Tokyo Station (the Metro station, that is), and fortunately it (or rather, the JR station) is one train from my hotel. Well, so’s Ueno Station, where I’d been originally intending to start.

Downside of booking ahead, though, is that I was locked in to do it today regardless of the weather. And, thanks to Bualoi scraping past the coastline today, as I’ve mentioned before, it was forecast to bucket down all day long. Until about sunset. But I guess, considering my other options for Tokyo, I probably would have gone ahead with the Underground Mysteries anyway.

So, I arrived at Tokyo Station, found my way to the Metro Station (fortunately without having to pass through the rain – though it certainly made a serious attempt to come into the train carriage en route), and picked up my puzzle pack, just over an hour earlier than my start last time. I asked the woman giving out the packs if there was any danger of the trains being suspended today, and she quite emphatically said no, which was a relief.

And I headed off… which means that now is the point at which I stop describing my actions in great detail, for fear of spoilers. The puzzles change each year, but it’s always the same puzzles for everyone within a single year, and we’ve barely started the game period, sooo…

For a few highlights, though, I was astonished to discover that this is a Buddhist temple. Very different to every other temple I’ve seen in Japan – though apparently it’s heavily influenced by temple architecture from India.

At one point, my energy levels were starting to flag a bit, so I ate half the Calorie Mate that I’d bought for my hike in Oku-Nikko but never ate. Then at the next station, I came across an entire food court inside the station’s ticket gates – I can’t even imagine the logistics of getting all the food supplies into the restaurants through the ticket gates – so I stopped at a place specialising in curry for lunch. I had hayashi rice (hashed beef with rice). Yum.

I must say, though, despite all the train rides being underground, I’d quite forgotten how much above-ground wandering around was involved. Which is fair – one of the major reasons for the game is to demonstrate to people how much there is to see in Tokyo by riding on the Metro trains, and you can’t see all of that from inside the station. One thing that frustrated me a little bit was how often the book would direct you to leave the station via a specific exit, turn left, walk down the street, cross at the lights, fashion a hang glider from coconuts and chewing gum, trade the banana to the monkey for a can of corn, then turn right, and the puzzle you need to solve is in front of you… except as you do that final right turn, there’s another exit from the same station sitting right there. Might have been more entertaining if there wasn’t rain. And increasing levels of wind.

One plus point, though: when you solve a puzzle, which tells you the name of the next station, the puzzle book explicitly confirms that you were correct – and then there’s a couple of pages of the sights you can find around that station, before it gives you the next puzzle. 2017’s book did not, which had me heading off to Shinjuku when I misunderstood a clue. Downside, last time I ran into piles of other people doing the puzzle, and occasionally we’d work together, and the camaraderie was very nice. This time, I only saw a few other people, and the ones that I did see tended to ignore me, not even returning my greetings, which was a bit sad. I guess the rain kept people away, perhaps.

And then… I was finished. At 3pm. A full four hours earlier than last time. I enjoyed myself a great deal, but I actually felt a little bit let down at how little time it had taken me, compared to last time. I mean, I guess last time I also saw a lot of side attractions, like the Bunko Ward Office tower, and spent a while heading in the wrong direction. Also, I distinctly remember crossing from one side of the city to the other so many times that my head was starting to get turned around, but this year, I rarely rode more than a few stops on any one train before changing trains or going outside. Also, thanks to the rain, whenever I did go outside, I tended to scrunch down and walk at full speed (and even then, my shoes and trousers got soaked and dried out more than few times) rather than strolling gently.

Well, to be completely accurate, I still had one final puzzle to solve, but the book said I could solve it anywhere – I could even do it at home. I found myself in Ginza, so I decided to stop for afternoon tea at a place nearby named Tsubaki Salon Ginza, which specialises in those thick, fluffy Japanese-style soufflé pancakes, using ingredients from Hokkaido – as a reward for doing well in an optional puzzle, I’d been given a coupon for a free drink with any pancake order, otherwise I wouldn’t have thought to visit this place.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought to visit this place even if I’d been wandering down the street specifically looking for any place that sells pancakes, because after following the Google Maps directions to the place’s doorstep, I still couldn’t spot it. The salon was on the third floor of a building, and though the building had the usual column of signage outside saying what was on each floor, the sign for this place was just “Tsubaki” in kanji, and in a fairly archaic kanji style. “Tsubaki” means “camellia”, incidentally. This is the building in question:

(Side note: This optional puzzle involved watching the display screens for safety messages and such, and working out which word in the message was missing in the book… except thanks to all the notifications about line closures and stoppages mostly holding over from Hagibis, some of the safety messages never came up, so I had to guess.)

But in any case, once I’d found the place, it was really very pretty inside. There was a big stone (or stone-looking) table in the middle, which had a hole carved in one side that exactly fit a grand piano, and tables around the windows and walls (and mirrors at each end of the windows which took me half my visit to realise were mirrors and not more tables). I had pancakes with chocolate sauce, with sides of a choco-banana in fruit salad and yoghurt, and Hokkaido-milk gelato with cream. And a warm mug of Hokkaido milk to drink. (The other options on the menu seemed to be savoury, including one which was pancakes with bolognaise sauce.) Most tasty. And I was right back in Kawagoe when I said the choco-banana needed to be cold – with a crisp chocolate shell, it was quite scrumptious. The very artistic cutlery looked concerningly like gardening utensils. Though, until a married couple walked in towards the end of my visit, I was the only man in the entire place.

By the time I’d finished there and left, the rain had stopped. Oh, it tried to start again once or twice, but otherwise it was so refreshing to breathe the free air again, unrestrained by the umbrella. I walked a few blocks to the south to visit something on my To Do list: the Hakuhinkan Toy Park, a massive toy shop with all sorts of toys and games to look at – and even try out. Actually, I’d already visited their branch store at Haneda Airport in 2017 without realising it – its the shop with the big toy car racetrack – and they had an even bigger racetrack here. I admit I didn’t stay there too long, and didn’t buy anything – though, I did get something from a gachapon machine featuring Koupenchan, and managed to get the one toy in the machine that’s not a penguin. Pondered having another go, but I decided not to. I was amused to see one thing there was a book promising a way to save 100,000 yen… which turned out to be made from thick cardboard pages with enough slots to hold exactly two hundred 500-yen coins.

Once I emerged from there, it was night, and not at all raining, and… even though I still had a ticket in my pocket that’d let me ride anywhere in Tokyo for free, I didn’t really have any specific places in mind that I felt like visiting. Well, I mean, there was still the general feeling of “I’m in Japan! I want to visit ALL THE THINGS!” but even I’d admit that’s slightly pushing the definition of “specific”. My only thought was to visit Roppongi Station, the the station with the deepest platforms in Tokyo, but the actual deepest platforms are on the Toei-company line. So since I was just outside Shinbashi Station at this point, and the Keihin-Tohoku Line stops there, I decided to just head back to Kamata for dinner. And I just now realised that the big ol’ steam train sitting in a square which I’d spotted from the Keihin-Tohoku train a few times is actually right on the west side of Shinbashi Station. Bah. (Fun fact: It’s actually possible to walk from the Ginza Metro station all the way back to Tokyo Station completely underground, a distance of about two kilometres. Since you can take the train in much less time, most people don’t do that. Meanwhile, I had to make some same-station transfers today by going aboveground. Hah.)

Back at Kamata, I went for a wander through the shopping streets on the west side of the station (after first being tempted by a bread shop selling a “chocolate baton” with a literal block of chocolate running down the middle), eventually deciding to eat at a place specialising in ten-don. And that’s not tendon, the things that hold your muscles on your bones – it’s ten-don, tempura-don. Tempura on rice, is what I’m saying. I had their “all-star ten-don”, which includes one each of tempura’d prawn, squid, scallop, octopus tentacle, maitake, green bean, and… a sheet of nori, which must have been at least ninety-five percent tempura batter. Tasty, though. On rice.

Heading back to the hotel through the train station, I was handed a packet of tissues as I emerged from the station building. Basically, people stand at stations handing out small packets of tissues with advertising on the packet – I’d seen this all the time in anime, but never so far in real life. Actually, the girl seemed quite happy to hand them to me – everyone else was ignoring her (which is fair, because if you always take the tissues, you’ll wind up with more tissues than you ever need).

In my room, I finally managed to solve the final puzzle of the Underground Mysteries. I’d given it a stab at Tsubaki, but I hadn’t really been getting anywhere, and all my bits and pieces were starting to get everywhere, so I just packed them away and had my pancakes. But now I’d completed it. Success!

Today’s photo count: four hundred and twenty-six

Today’s pedometer count: 15,950 steps – 11.2 kilometres – 31 flights of stairs. I was kinda expecting more stairs, actually, considering how many Metro stations lack escalators.

(First, a little note from the future. I mean, the present: I survived Bualoi. A little damp, but no particular issues otherwise. But on with the show – as anyone I’ve sent an e-mail to in the past knows, I always like to do things in chronological order; it’s less confusing that way.)

One thing I’ve noticed about Toyoko Inn is that they invariably seem to make the beds such that the bottom edge of the sheet is in line with the edge of the mattress, rather than being tucked underneath. It always means that my feet stick out from the sheet (though are still under the cover) if I stretch out. It’s… a little annoying.

Opened with breakfast.

After which, it was sadly time to check out. While I was in no particular rush to get going, I realised that if I could get to the station by 9:48, I could catch the fewer-stops Hayabusa train – all the trains afterwards, for the next seven hours, would be the slower Yamabiko (because the Hayabusa trains skip Ichinoseki outside of peak hours). Curiously, Ichinoseki’s sole ticket office (that I came across anyway – maybe there’s another one somewhere else?) is inside the station concourse, so I used the final day on my JR East Pass (and it’s also the final day in the fourteen-day validity period) and then went to book my final Shinkansen for this trip (aww). Sadly, an aisle seat again.

This trip, I’d be heading all the way back to Tokyo for the first time since I left early the morning after I arrived – the trip takes about two hours on the Hayabusa, but two and a half on the Yamabiko. I was seated next to a little old lady, but she got off at Sendai… and was immediately replaced by a salaryman. So instead, I went to take photos from the vestibule. I’d planned to take a photo of my hotel and surrounds in Toda-Koen, and a photo of the Railway Museum as we pulled into Omiya, but at the critical moments, I wasn’t paying attention. I also saw a cute little rice polishing hut sitting in the middle of fields and nothing else, but was too slow to get a photo of it…

Soon, we were back in the Big Smoke. The biggest smoke. At Tokyo Station, I pondered heading out to sightsee a bit, but decided that there wasn’t much adjacent to Tokyo Station that I hadn’t seen before, and I didn’t want to be dragging my luggage around, so I hopped onto the Keihin-Tohoku Line instead. (Despite the name, the line doesn’t go to Tohoku – it just connects Tokyo and Yokohama with the Tohoku Main Line. The “kyo” in “Tokyo” can also be read as “kei”, while the “hama” in “Yokohama” can also be read as “hin”, so Keihin-Tohoku.) I was quite pleased that I’d managed to grab a rapid express… except that it only skipped the next two stations, and then promptly turned into a local train. Bah.

Anyway, my next hotel is in Kamata. Just as Toda-Koen Station was as far south as I could get along the train line without being in Tokyo, Kamata Station is as far south along the train line as I could get while remaining in Tokyo – the next station along the line is Kawasaki, which is in Kanagawa Prefecture.

I stood outside the station trying to figure out why I couldn’t remember having practiced the walk on Google Street View like I had for my other hotels, when I leaned slightly to the left and spotted it right there, about a block away. Easy peasy. This is a slightly smaller city hotel, squeezed between two adjacent buildings – it’s actually got a hair dresser’s underneath, and back door leading out to the street behind. Possibly the tiniest lobby/dining room I’ve seen at a Toyoko Inn, though. Perhaps – I might have to check my photos.

Anyway, it was still a few hours before I could enter my room, so I checked in, deposited my luggage, and then went out to sightsee. There was one fairly minor location I’d been wanting to visit near here… but first, lunch. Took a brief detour into a bookshop to buy some books for Japanese reading practice. Well… brief-ish – it was ten past one when I arrived at my hotel, but ten to three before I found somewhere for lunch. I had tsukemen (= ramen noodles with separate dipping sauce) at a place specialising in Hokkaido-style ramen. Tasty. Not sure the soup was hot enough, though, because it was almost cold by the time I was done.

Then it was time to go stroll. First, passing Keikyu-Kamata Station. This is where I’ll be catching my train to Haneda Airport when it’s tragically time to leave – it’s the primary reason that I’m staying here in Kamata for this part of the trip; Haneda Airport is about three stops away. It’s an interestingly-shaped station, though – trains going one way stop on the second level above the ground, while trains going the other way stop at the third.

Wandered through tiny tiny back streets, two-way roads barely wide enough for a single car, people on bikes everywhere, and soon reached my target: Nanatsuji Kousaten, the seven-way intersection. Supposedly one of only two seven-way intersections in Japan, this one is heavily trafficked… but completely unregulated. Just stop signs, no traffic lights, no “you can turn left into that street but not this street” signs, and yet… it works.

There’s a sign up saying “Japan’s best give-and-take model intersection”, and a whole bunch of writing on the back which I’m going to need to sit down and decipher, but which I think is a bit about the history of the area. I first learnt about this place from a documentary about it on NHK World, and it’s quite a nice place to sit and people-watch. There’s a greengrocer on one corner. Fun fact about Japanese greengrocers: apples cost 200 to 400 yen each, but you can get a four kilo bag of bean sprouts for 100 yen. Meanwhile, at Coles, apples cost about ninety cents each, while bean sprouts are eight dollars a kilo…

I decided to satisfy a sudden craving for chocolate with a bag of Kit Kat bites from the 7-Eleven a few metres down one of the streets, and started wandering back to my hotel, munching on them. After they disappeared all too soon, I stopped at a vending machine for a bottle of Strawberry/Raspberry/Cassis/Cranberry/Blueberry drink (containing 0% fruit juice). One thing I noticed was kids out playing everywhere – riding their bikes, using the playground equipment, playing keep-away in their… well, I don’t know if I’d go as far as “dozens”, but there were at least a few severals. Not sure the last time I saw kids in Australia out playing together in such numbers. Arriving at the train station, I decided to buy an apple-filled taiyaki (fish-shaped cakes usually filled with red bean paste).

Back at my hotel, I was handed my room key – level six, back corner. The door opens outwards, because just inside it is the bathroom door. And coming properly into my room, I was quite surprised to discover it’s actually got a view over the street behind – I was expecting to only be able to see the side wall of the adjacent builing, but here at the back of the hotel, the adjacent building is only a few storeys tall. I do, however, have a nice view in to the building that’s adjacent to the front half of the hotel, and I can see in the windows of some kind of small bar or club – they’ve got a neon Budweiser sign and a pool table and everything.

And then I was even more surprised to discover the window actually opens. Most Toyoko Inns I’ve been in, the window just hinges at the bottom by a few centimetres. At Ichinoseki, it actually pivots horizontally around the middle of the window, enough to get my camera outside – and there’s actually a latch on both sides, which took me a while to notice. Here, it actually slides all the way open – I can lean right out, if I so desired. So, I took some photos.

Watched VS Arashi on TV – finally remembered it was on – and after that a show featuring a panel of celebrities reacting to cute animal videos. I decided with the fairly late (and fairly large) lunch, and the near-incessant snacking, I didn’t really need dinner.

Tomorrow’s weather is forecast to be rainy and windy all day, only to clear up after sunset. That’s just lovely. Thanks, Hagibis. I mean, Bualoi.

Today’s photo count: Three hundred and ninety three

Today’s pedometer count: 10,659 steps – 8 kilometres exactly – 7 flights of stairs

Today’s stamp count: One – Kamata Station.

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day about flood prevention methods in Japan. The government has built levees and floodgates and overflow channels and whatnot everywhere, designed to withstand a hundred-year storm, and possibly spending more than they can afford to do so… and last Saturday, around the region, several of them failed. Experts are suggesting that with the way the climate is going, it might be necessary to upgrade the defences to withstand thousand-year storms… but it might actually be more cost-effective to simply educate people to evacuate to higher ground faster instead.

Today, more breakfast. The mochi wasn’t on offer today, but there was some Napolitan pasta…

So, Ichinoseki is the furthest south, and second largest, city in Iwate Prefecture, part of the Tohoku Region. Iwate is actually the second-largest prefecture in Japan, after Hokkaido, though Hokkaido is so much larger than Iwate that it barely counts (actually, Hokkaido is more than twice as much larger than Iwate than Alaska is than Texas… if that makes sense. What I’m saying is that if Alaska is X times bigger than Texas, then Hokkaido is more than 2X times bigger than Iwate… actually, it’s 2.2X). It’s also got the second-lowest population density, after Hokkaido. Back in ye olden times, Ichinoseki marked the northern edge of Japanese territory (the name means “first barrier”) – everything further north belonged to the native Emishi people, who were largely wiped out as an independent nation after the year 802, being incorporated into the newly unified Yamato nation as the “Northern Fujiwara” clan.

Today, though, I headed to the neighbouring town of Hiraizumi. It was once the capital of the Northern Fujiwara territory of Oshu, which comprised almost a third of the land area of Japan, and town at its peak rivalled the capital of Kyoto in size. The town was destroyed in 1189, and the Fujiwara clan fell not too long after. When the haiku master Matsuo Basho visited in 1689, he wrote the following haiku after what he saw:

Ah, summer grasses!
All that remains
Of the warriors’ dreams.

Which, honestly, kinda reminds me of a Japanese haiku version of Percy Shelly’s sonnet Ozymandias (“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair”). Today, Hiraizumi is mostly known for the UNESCO heritage-listed “Historic Monuments and Sites of Hiraizumi”, which is what I came here today to see. (Actually, my original plan for this day was to head further north to the town of Hanamaki, birthplace of author Miyazawa Kenji, and since the sightseeing spots there are quite separated, and there’s basically no public transport that I could find, I was planning to rent a car and drive there, the first time I’d rent a car in Japan. In the end, though, I decided it was a bit silly to go all that way when there were places I wanted to  visit nearer Ichinoseki, even though it’d let me visit some Michi no Eki en route.)

Absolutely lovely weather today. Someone recently told me that there’s always nice weather after a typhoon, and Neoguri has disappeared from the JMA forecast, so clearly he’s puttered out somewhere, taking the weather with him. I even decided to leave my umbrella at home. Before leaving the hotel, I headed up to the eighth floor to take some photos from the fire stairs – not the highest floor of the hotel, but I’m fairly sure it’s the highest one with the door to the fire stairs unlocked. Very nice view. Because of my short sightseeing day yesterday, I didn’t need to change my camera battery, and decided not to do a just-in-case charge last night. I paid for that this morning by having my first battery run flat almost immediately…

So, I hopped on the train. It’s two stops up the Tohoku Main Line from Ichinoseki, and I made sure when I was at the station yesterday to confirm that I could actually use my Suica card at Hiraizumi, and I could – no repeating my error from yesterday. At Hiraizumi, instead of renting a car, I rented a bicycle – my first time renting a bike in Japan. My sightseeing spots are a little way apart, and I got the impression from Google that buses are… infrequent, so I decided I’d rent the bike to speed things up. Even decided to splurge for the electrically-assisted bicycle.

Hopped on and started pedalling up the road with the greatest of ease. First stop: there’s a Michi no Eki in Hiraizumi, not too far out of my way, so I went there. Pretty nice building. And there seemed to be a film crew filming something in the shop there. Also, there were stamps there as part of a Michi no Eki stamp rally, and they had gold ink. Gold! So pretty. And also a small booth selling local ice cream flavours – I decided to get Japanese mustard flavour, and… that may have been a bit of a mistake. It was quite a bit more bitey than I had been anticipating. Quite possibly that would be the actual mustard seeds embedded in the ice cream.

Took a brief detour up to the highway atop the embankment behind the Michi no Eki to see what I could see, and it was quite pretty, though a tad difficult to encompass in the camera’s view.

Then I rode back down and headed for my first main stop, the temple of Chuson-ji. En route, I found them re-doing the centre of the road with pavers… not all the way across, though. Anyway, Chuson-ji is said to have been founded in the year 850 by Ennin, a priest of Enryaku-ji in Kyoto, but other evidence suggests it was founded instead (or possibly it was re-founded) by Fujiwara no Kiyohara (who also founded the Northern Fujiwara clan) in 1095. With halls running up the side of Mount Kanzan, it’s the head temple of the Tendai sect of Buddhism for the Tohoku Region.

Parked the bike in a free bike parking area I came across, then headed into the temple. It was an pretty steep walk up from the main gate up to the first hall, but at extremely picturesque one. Turns out there’s a whole heap of different halls before reaching the main hall – a Hachiman hall, then a Benkei hall, then a Jizo hall, then a Kannon hall, and so on and so forth. The temple was also holding a chrysanthemum festival, displaying chrysanthemums grown by all of the local flower-growing associations, and even some from a local elementary school. There was a display of bonsai trees too, which I was quite impressed by. (Side note, there’s a big autumn festival here too… which starts the very day I leave Japan.)

The main hall was pretty impressive, but admittedly nothing particularly special – though for some reason, it had a statue of of a literal white elephant inside, made from what appeared to be papier-mâché. Sadly, noone talked about the elephant in the room. No photos allowed inside, as is typical.

No, the main drawcard here is further up the hill, past several more smaller halls – Konjiki-do, the gold-coloured hall. It’s a hall covered entirely in gold leaf, right from the tip of the ornament on the roof’s peak to the footings of the support pillars. It’s inside another building to protect it from the elements, and while the rest of the temple is free, entry to see the Konjiki-do costs money (though you also get access to the temple’s treasures museum with the same ticket). Sadly, no photos are allowed inside… but for some reason, temples of the outer building are often featured in tourism images for Iwate Prefecture – for example, the first image on the Wikipedia article for Hiraizumi. The hall is apparently the first structure in Japan to be declared a Japanese National Treasure. For a brief moment at this point, it actually tried to rain, but it quickly reconsidered.

At the top of the temple was a restaurant named Kanzan-tei, so I decided to go have lunch there. I had soba noodles in soup with tororo (grated nagaimo, Chinese yam, which has the curious property that it turns into a slimy paste when grated finely). I was also given a little thing which I’d taken to be red bean paste, but which turned out to be a small chocolate cake-like thing… filled with red bean paste. I confess, I’m getting a little bit tired of soba and udon, but it’s largely what seems to be available in places like this. Spectacular view from the windows, though. The minimum rental period for the bikes is four hours, so I’d set an alarm for three hours to judge how much progress I was making, and it went off while I was eating lunch – and I was still at my first sightseeing spot.

So, I decided I should zip back down to the bike and head to my next spot, probably. First, though, I went to visit Hakusan Shrine, which was next door. It’s thought to have been the first building constructed in the area – a writer in 1334 recorded that the shrine was already seven hundred years old. (The building itself is not, mind – it’s been rebuilt several times.) It’s also got an extensive noh stage.

Walked briskly back down to my bike. It was a nice temple, but I had to dodge busloads of Chinese tourists the entire time, except for Kanzan-tei and Hakusan Shrine. It was especially bad inside the Konjiki-do building. Back at the bike, I decided to skip stop number two, as it’s within an easy walk of the train station, and head for stop number three.

Stop number three was not within easy walk of the train station, hence the rental of the bicycle. Specifically, it’s 6.7 kilometres down Prefectural Highway 31. For some reason, I kind of imagined that the ride between sightseeing spots would be, like, unremarkable featureless forest, or something, but actually it was broad open countryside, alongside a river, covered with rice paddies with houses scattered here and there, and I had to constantly tell myself not to stop every five metres to take photos. Downside of the electric bike, though, is that while it’s real easy to start off and get to full speed, they’ve got no gears, so staying at full speed requires constant furious pedalling. (Well, specifically, the motor has three gears to assist in hill climbing, but the pedals don’t.)

About a half-hour later, I reached my next stop: Takkoku-no-Iwaya, a temple to Bishamonten. Designed after the stage at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, it’s built underneath a rock overhang, so it looks quite spectacular. The temple was founded in the year 801, but the current building dates from 1961. There’s also a hall dedicated to Benzaiten on an island in a pond in front, and a hall to Fudo slightly behind – which had plants growing all over the thatched roof – and even its own Kondo (gold hall) though this wasn’t covered in gold leaf. Curiously, the temple had three torii gates at the entrance, which is usually indicative of Shinto shrines. The temple was nominated to be included as part of the Hiraizumi UNESCO listing, but it was turned down for reasons I don’t entirely understand – they’re still working to get it accepted.

Departed for the next stop, another 3.2 kilometres away down the road, up and over a small mountain – and on the way down, there was a fairly nice view over a temple from the top of its graveyard. I also discovered the bike’s regenerative braking charges the battery if you’re coasting above a certain speed, but said speed was almost terrifyingly fast, and I only hit it this one time during the entire day.

Next stop was the other famous gorge in the area: Genbikei, the Gorge of Severe Beauty. And it was really quite pretty. No boat ride here, just a bit of a walk, and a few bridges to cross – including Goranba Bridge, a suspension bridge that one brochure says was “built for the Emperor”, but doesn’t expand on that.

But that came a bit later. First, I found a spot to park – I asked an attendant at one paid parking lot where I could park, and he kinda pointed vaguely down the road, before changing his mind and letting me park in the space between his booth and the fence (I got the vague impression that most people don’t ride bikes to Genbikei). Then it was down to a gazebo built at a vantage point over the gorge to try a local specialty: Kakko dango, “flying dango”. There’s a zip line over the gorge, and at the top end of the line is a restaurant specialising in dango – they send down a basket, you put money in the basket, hit a wooden plank with a mallet to signal that you’ve done it, and they haul up the basket, and send down a box with three sticks of dango and some green tea. 400 yen buys you the dango; I think the tea is free. They do make change, but I’m honestly not sure what happens if, say, you put a thousand yen in but only want one serve – it seems a bit like the restaurant guys watch who’s ordering and tweak the orders as needed; I was talking with a couple from South Africa right before ordering (they let me order first) and he sent me three cups of tea.

The Chinese tourist buses were back in force – while I was trying to pick up my change, a box of dango and three cups of tea with two hands, they all leapt up and pushed in front of the South African couple while I was getting in their way – but they told me later that the basket had come back down with a note basically saying “those two were first”.

I chugged down my tea to free up my hands for dango (though I may have tossed one cup on the ground). Like I mentioned, you get a nicely-wrapped box with three sticks – one with red bean paste, one with black sesame paste, and one with sweet soy sauce. Quite tasty. And I think I arrived just in time, because when I went to the bins after I was done eating, there was a sign on the basket saying “sold out”.

(Side note, you can also eat in the restaurant itself if you like – it’s just a short walk from the main bridge crossing the gorge. And you can, if you like, take a tour of the room from which they launch the basket – the walls are covered with photos of visitors, and they’ll also hang your country’s flag from the basket and play the anthem as they launch. I’m just reading this from the internet, mind – I didn’t actually go there myself.)

After I was done munching, I went for a quick walk down to the suspension bridge and back, enjoying the view all the while. Plus, some autumnal trees. Discovered that the resonant frequency of the bridge is fairly close to the beat of American Pie, because I was whistling it as I walked and stepping in time, so perhaps don’t do that if you visit. Also discovered there’s an Onsen Shrine just there, so I popped in for a look. There were dragonflies everywhere in the gorge.

Returned to the bike, offered to pay for parking (he refused), and turned to head back to town. Actually, Genbikei is closer to Ichinoseki Station than Hiraizumi Station, by about half a kilometre, but I kinda perhaps needed to return the bike. And go back to the stop I skipped. It was a good half-hour ride back, downhill almost all the way, as the sun started to wander down towards the horizon. Ocurred to me halfway back that there was another Michi no Eki at Genbikei that I clean forgot to visit. Humbug. Decided to go straight back to the bike rental place, and the guy seemed kind of unimpressed at my timing – because of the way the prices are quoted, I was under the impression that you pay a base rate, then pay for any extra hours when you get back, but apparently you need to make a guess upfront how long you expect to take. Ah well. I paid for the extra hours all the same.

Bike returned, I walked (so slow!) back to the temple I skipped: Motsu-ji. The temple was possibly first founded in 850 by Ennin (as with Choson-ji), but for sure it was founded as Enryu-ji in the mid-12th century by Fujiwara no Motohira, the second Fujiwara lord (the son of Kiyohira). Once Enryu-ji was built, he ordered an identical copy to be built next to it, named Kasho-ji, though he did not live to see its completion, which was done by his son. They were surrounded by a huge garden representing the Pure Land of Buddhist tradition. Buuut… both of these temples, and all of the associated buildings, were destroyed after the fall of the Fujiwara clan. Today only the foundations remain. The current temple, Motsu-ji, was built in the 18th century, and is a temple in the Tendai sect.

I arrived here only shortly before sunset, though the sun had already fallen below the trees, so commenced a brisk walk around the central lake so I could see everything before it got too dark to see. It was quite nice, though. Very pure. Much land. I left my shuincho to be inscribed at the office as I entered, and the woman told me to come back later, but then the priest walked in, and offered to do it then – which is good, because despite the woman bookmarking the exact page it needed to be on, the priest seemed quite unsure.

Heading out of there, I decided to  visit the Hiraizumi Onsen, just up the road. I quite liked the big entrance hall, and the tatami-mat room off to the side. According to the sign, it’d cost 1000 yen when entering after 5pm, but the woman only asked for 300 yen – apparently there’s a special campaign of some description – though of course I also needed to buy a towel. There was just the one big bath inside. I relaxed in there for a little while, then came out to use the massage chairs – much cheaper than the ones in Chichibu, and also left me feeling much more relaxed afterwards. Then I bought a bottle of milk and relaxed in the tatami mat room. (They had milk with fruit juice as an option. Ew?)

Then it was time to find some dinner. The onsen has an attached dining hall, but tragically it closes at 4pm, so I headed out to find something on the main street and… I complained back in Nikko that it’s basically dead after dark, but the main street of Hiraizumi doesn’t even have street lights, much less anywhere to eat. I eventually found a Korean barbecue restaurant. Ordered a plate of kalbi, a plate of gyutan, and a plate of vegetables (cause vegetables). The kalbi was much more peppery than I would have liked, I really had no idea how to cook the vegetables without just burning them, but the gyutan was absolutely scrumptious.

Once I was done, it was time to scuttle off to the train station – I’d set an alarm to make sure I finished dinner in time, because the next train wouldn’t be by for another hour, but I was on the platform with minutes to spare. Plenty of time to take some nice photos.

Back at Ichinoseki, I bought a hot can of “onion gratin style soup” from the vending machine, which sounds… weird. It… wasn’t terrible.

Today’s photo count: eight hundred and eighty six

Today’s pedometer count: 23,241 steps – 16.7 kilometres – 62 flights of stairs. Honestly… that’s a lot more than I expected. Perhaps some of the biking counted as steps – according to Google maps, I rode about 20 kilometres by bike. (One wonders how it counts flights of stairs – Googling suggests it counts one flight when you gain three metres of altitude in the space of sixteen steps. With that in mind, climbing Mount Kanzan may have counted for stairs.)

Today’s goshuin count: Nine – I honestly thought I stood a chance at beating the record from day four, because every subordinate hall at Chuson-ji seemed to have one. Not all of them, though. So, from the right as usual, Benkei-do, Jizo-do, Doso-jin (Jizo’s Shinto equivalent, I think), Yakushi-do (pasted in), Chuson-ji main hall, Konjiki-do, Hakusan Shrine (all at Chuson-ji), Bishamon-do, Benten-do, Himemachi Fudo Myo-o (all at Takkoku-no-Iwaya), Motsu-ji. And, abruptly, there’s only six pages left in my shuincho – time to start keeping an eye out for a new one that I like.

Today’s stamp count: Eight – two stamps at Hiraizumi Station, both badly over-inked (and that filled my second stamp book), two lovely golden ones from the Hiraizumi Michi no Eki, one from Takkoku-no-Iwaya, one from Motsu-ji, and two teensy ones as part of a regional stamp rally – if you get all nine, you get a special prize, but (if I read it correctly) you can get a minor prize with three, and conveniently three were at places I visited… except I clean forgot to look for the stamp that should have been at Chuson-ji).

(For a quick note from the future, which is to say, the present day. I mean, the time when I’m writing this – Thursday evening. Bualoi, aka Typhoon 21, is due to pass some distance off the coast tomorrow, being Friday, before puttering out altogether. It’s going to bring rain with it, and some strongish winds are forecast for the afternoon, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad, and very hopefully it shouldn’t affect my plans. Touch wood with fingers crossed.

Close parenthetical note.)

Today’s October 22nd, the day of the Jidai Festival in Kyoto, one of Kyoto’s three biggest festivals, which commemorates the city being appointed the capital of Japan by Emperor Kanmu in the year 794, except the festival itself was only instituted in 1868, when Kyoto stopped being the capital during the Meiji Restoration (I guess, to help the people feel better about not being the capital?). Well, ordinarily that’d be the case anyway – this year it’s been postponed to the 26th, because instead, the enthronement ceremony of Emperor Naruhito was today. The new era name is Reiwa, which doesn’t really roll off the tongue in English or Japanese – according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, this should be translated into English as “beautiful harmony”, although in modern Japanese, the most common definition of the “rei” is not “harmony” but rather “order” or “command”.

Started with breakfast, which included mochi (a rice cake made from pounded whole rice grains – it’s the thing in the little bowl covered in green paste), apparently a local specialty; Ichinoseki is supposedly sometimes called “the hometown of mochi”… or possibly that’s just what the Ichinoseki tourism board is trying to promote. No curry this time – perhaps curry at breakfast is a Kanto thing. Though there was rice-with-things-in as well as the plain rice.

Considering the late night I’d had last night, I decided to take things easy today with a quick visit to a nearby location. Take the train, spend a few hours, then take the train back and have an early night. That, and Accuweather was predicting rain in the afternoon. Though with it already raining in the morning, I checked Accuweather again, and it now says rain all day, heavy rain in the afternoon.

But yeah, time to break out the umbrella again. I headed for the station, and hopped on the Ofunato Line – the same line that hosts the Pokémon With You train, though not today, sadly. Instead, I was on a cute little two-car diesel train. Unfortunately, I’d entered the station with my Suica, but realised pretty quickly after the train pulled out of the station that the train’s ticket machine was on, meaning there was no Suica available at my destination, so I should have bought at ticket with cash rather than using the Suica.

Well, it was a nice little trip through the countryside anyway. I took a few photos, but before too long, the windows started fogging up from all the rain and the people breathing, so photos stopped. Hopped off at Geibikei Station, a cute little single-platform station with a teeny tiny waiting room. Paid cash as I got off. There’s Pokémon images all over the platform.

After a short walk from the station, I arrived at my destination for today – the Geibikei boat ride. “Kei” means “gorge”, and “geibi” means “lion’s nose”, the name of a rock formation near the upstream end of the gorge. Boats poled in the traditional style take tourists from the town to the rock and back again, a trip of about ninety minutes. It’s apparently quite nice with autumn leaves, but I’d been unable to determine exactly when the leaves here change, so I decided to just come and hope. Let’s just say, an attempt was made. The gorge is regarded as one of Japan’s 100 Landscapes (Lake Chuzenji, the Nagatoro Gorge near Chichibu and Mount Takao are also on the list, from the places I’ve visited).

Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be getting the full trip today – according to a sign in the window of the ticket office, the river was running too high – so we also got a corresponding discount (there’s a nominal price listed on their website, but it’s adjusted on the day as conditions require). The boats are fairly broad and flat, and you sit on the floor (or rather, you sit on cushions that also function as lifejackets in an emergency). To keep the rain off, there was a plastic roof – unfortunately, it reduced my view across the boat to little more than my handspan at arm’s length (on the nearside, it was closer to my forearm’s length), and I wasn’t lucky enough to get a seat at the open front or back. The boat’s pilot stood on the back, and had to crouch down if she wanted to speak with us (also, I’m fairly sure she was the only female boat pilot employed by the company – not certain on that).

Women also came aboard with baskets selling drinks and snacks – I bought some dango covered with a paste made from mashed green soybeans called zunda (a local specialty; I think the mochi at breakfast might have been covered with the same stuff). You could also buy pellets to feed the ducks en route, though I elected not to. But, soon we were off.

It was quite a nice and relaxing voyage, even with the constant patter of rain on the roof, and the rather reduced view. As we headed upriver, the ducks all followed along behind, knowing they’d be getting fed. And here and there was a tree changing colours. At one point, there was a shrine on the shore which we could try throwing coins into the collection box – I threw twice, and landed too low both times.

Then we reached the point where we’d have to turn around… and there was an excavator just sitting in the middle of the river making sandcastles. Not sure what that was about the water level being too high. On the way back, our pilot sang us the traditional song of the Geibi boat pilots… but since it includes the line “Take the Ofunato Line, it’s not far from Ichinoseki”, I’m not entirely sure how traditional it is.

Well, it was a nice enough ride, and the weather made it kind of ethereal, which was nice. Only forty-give minutes long. Might have to come back again in clearer weather, though. After we’d disembarked, I poked through the nearby paper museum – paper being a specialty of the town of Geibikei, then headed for the nearby Geibi Resthouse for some lunch: Geibi Udon, cold udon noodles with a raw egg and various assorted sides. Tasty enough.

I went for a quick wander around town (among other things, I saw a line halfway up a wall in the middle of town with a label saying “Typhoon 6 high water mark, July 11th 2002”, which was… concerning), but soon headed back to the station – I needed to get the next train, or I’d have to spend another two hours wandering to fill the time to the one after. Had to ask the station attendant to cancel the active ticket on my Suica card when I arrived back at Ichinoseki, and as I did so, I somehow completely forgot how to phrase the request. Bought a bottle of fuji apple juice from the vending machine on the way out of the station. I’d also bought some sauce-mayo-flavoured “monja snacks” from the 7-11 in Geibikei for afternoon tea. Quite tasty, but not completely sure what they’re made of (or what they have to do with monja = kinda Tokyo-style okonimiyaki).

I was back in my hotel room by 2pm, fortunately not too damp. Plenty of time to get caught up on blogging… or just take a nap, which is what actually happened. I did get two blog posts written, though. No particular sign of the prophesied heavy rain in the afternoon.

Headed out at dinner time for some dinner. I decided to wander down the road away from the station to see what I could find, but there were just more izakayas and such (including one that seemed quite popular). Then I found one tiny place that I almost walked past because it seemed to be a B&B, but it turned out that B&B was its name, and it was a restaurant. Cute little place – three tables and a counter, except one of the tables was actually an old-style table-style arcade game (mahjong, specifically, though it was off). There was one other customer, and everyone was watching baseball on the TV. I decided to sit at the counter, and as I’d feared yesterday, the woman behind the counter tried to make conversation. I think I managed to convey information, but I’m sure I misunderstood everything she asked me.

I had oyako-don (chicken and egg on rice), which was most tasty. One weird thing, the other customer lit a cigarette almost right next to me, and I couldn’t smell a thing – but at the restaurant in Omiya the other night, the a customer three tables away started smoking, and all I could smell was cigarette smoke. Anyway, as I left, I noticed the cook came out to bring in the “open” sign – not sure if they were staying open just for me, or if they’d just decided it wasn’t worth bothering with staying open any more. Bought a bottle of blueberry-flavoured Irohas drink on the way home. Trust me, it’s blueberry.

Back to the hotel to wrap up the blogging and get to bed.

Today’s photo count: three hundred and sixty-six

Today’s pedometer count: 7264 steps – 5.3 kilometres – 7 flights of stairs. Pah, not even trying.

Today’s stamp count: Four – found two non-Pokémon-related stamps at Ichinoseki Station (one celebrating the proximity of Geibikei, one about “the hometown of mochi”, which I accidentally shifted while putting it down on the page), one badly under-inked one at the Geibikei boat terminal, and one rather nice one at the paper museum.