Day 159: City of Samurais

I'm staying in Tokyo again until I fly out later this week, but today instead of staying in the city I hopped on a train for the short ride south to the much smaller city of Kamakura. While Kamakura is a somewhat quiet getaway these days, it was once the center of politics and culture, as well as the capital of the island back in the Kamakura shogunate era 800 years ago.

Kamakura is famous for its temples and shrines, as well as being popular for its sandy beach along the coast. Of all the temples and shrines, the most distinct icon of the city is the Great Buddha of Kotokuin Temple, so I went there early to make sure I found it.

I hiked along a back trail that links many of the sites, and checked out a handful of other places, some which were more interesting than others. One of the temples, the Hasedera Temple, had lovely gardens and was full of hundreds of small statues.

Another cool place was a shrine hidden in a small clearing through a tunnel in the hill. The unique thing about this shrine was it's mystical spring that by legend makes any money washed in it lucky, so that whatever is bought with it will bring back even more wealth.

After all the temples and shrines I wandered a bit and checked out the city beach. It was another hot, sunny day so the beach was quite busy, but it was a nice walk through the surf in the afternoon.

Day 157: Lakes and Waterfalls

I started the day taking the bus from Nikko to Yutaki Falls, over an hour away. The sign by the waterfall explained, in typical bizarre Japanese fashion, how the waterfall was admired for its feminine attributes. I'm not entirely sure what attributes it was talking about, loud and violent?

I hiked up the path to the top of the falls and did a circuit around Lake Yunoko. It's a small lake with an onsen on the far bank. There were quite a few people out fishing on the lake, which was a regular theme throughout the day. The trails in general were all pretty easy and maintained wonderfully, and the scenery was lovely.

Not sure what the fish are, maybe Mike can tell from the pictures. The story of fishing in the area is a bit interesting. Around 100 years ago a Scottish man built a cottage in the area because the landscape reminded him of his native Scotland. He introduced trout into the lakes, which did very well, and later his cottage was converted to an angling and country club that attracted foreign dignitaries and celebrities and really transformed the area into a recreational area.

After completing the walk around the lake I returned to the Yutaki falls and followed the river downstream to another waterfall. The area around here changed back and forth between forest and marshland.

After a bit more hiking I got to the Senjo-ga-hara Plateau and the woods opened up into expansive grasslands.

After the grass I hit forest again, and followed it until I hit yet another waterfall - Ryuzu Falls. Ryuzu is a very long, drawn out waterfall that follows a channel of volcanic rock down into Lake Chuzenji.

A walked for a couple more hours along the bank of Lake Chuzenji, but the scenery wasn't as nice and there weren't any other hikers. Mostly the trail just followed along between the road and lake, but for the most part the lake was obscured by trees so the view was rarely all that interesting.

By the time I got to the town on the shore of the lake it was getting pretty overcast, so I decided to take the bus back to Nikko. Before the bus I stopped for some dinner of local rainbow trout ramen from a small shop. The evening back in Nikko has been relaxing, as all the days have been. The hostel is almost deserted (only me and one other tonight) and there's tons of room - a nice change from Tokyo. Tomorrow I'm heading back to Tokyo for the last few days I'm in Japan - although I plan to do at least one day trip out to another city before I leave.

Day 156: Never say 'kekko' until you've seen Nikko!

With the sprawl of Tokyo behind me, I'm spending a few days relaxing in Nikko. Nikko is a town nestled in a river valley a few hours by train north of Tokyo. It's famous for its temples and shrines, but its also surrounded by beautiful nature and excellent hiking. The word 'kekko' in the Japanese saying (see title) means beautiful, so you know it has a pretty good reputation.

Today I mostly focused on the temples and shrines, but did a bit of hiking in the afternoon. The main group of temples surround the mausoleum of shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, and a lot of them are very decorative, covered in elaborate carvings and gilding, which is a bit unusual for Buddhist temples.

Perhaps the most famous thing from the entire group of buildings, however, is a fairly simple carved wooden panel on a small stable.

Those are the three wise monkeys, Mizaru, Kikizaru and Iwazaru who together represent the principle of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". The monkeys/principle are pretty common in modern culture (Google's "do no evil" derives from it), and the panel in Nikku is thought to be where the entire concept originates from.

There's lots of other things to see around Nikko. Steep forested hills plus lots of rivers tend to lead to some pretty nice scenery.

Tomorrow I'm planning another ambitious hike. I'm going to take a bus out to Lake Yunoko in the morning, then walk the 15-20km back to town. My feet felt fine today, but if I have any problems there are lots of opportunities to get back to the main road and take the bus home again. On the plus side, this time it's mostly relatively level ground.

Days 153-154: One For The Otakus

Yesterday I was still recovering a bit from Mt. Fuji. I actually felt pretty good, but I had a blister on one foot and didn't want to do anything too active for the day. I decided to go back to Akihabara and check out some of the side streets in more detail. Akihabara is one of the weird few places that seems to get more respectable the smaller the side alley you walk down. The main streets are full of big towers of manga and toys generally tailored to men, and most have sizeable adult sections that are very open and prominent. The side streets have some of that as well, but in general they are more little restaurants, electronics shops and random vendors.

The second of those pictures is a shop entirely of vending machines for toys. You know the sort you see where you put in money and a random little plastic bubble with something comes out. I decided to give one a go, since I thought a little Japanese keychain would be an easy souvenir that I could just clip to my bag. I ended up getting a Prince of Tennis (manga/anime) keychain.

I also finally found a Sukiya restaurant, which was my favourite Japanese fast food restaurant when I was here before. They still had my favourite - a bowl of rice with beef and a few onions on top covered in 3 cheeses that melt to make it all one gooey delicious mess.

Today I headed out with somebody else from the hostel with a specific goal in mind, and we ran into two others from the hostel at the train station who had the same idea in mind. We went to Shimbashi station and took one of the private train lines - the same one I used last time I was here to get to the science center. This time we headed to Odaiba, which is a large constructed island that is a mix of shopping and entertainment. A lot of the attractions cost money, but our specific target was free and out in the open.

That would be the full scale Gundam model on Odaiba. The significance of this will mean different things to different people, but the post title really says it all.

That gives a rough idea of scale.

We checked out a few other things on the island (including a brilliant dance performance by the always entertaining Rockabillies), but it was really hot and most things cost money so we didn't linger too long. Instead we headed back to Shimbashi to explore some random events and activities set up by a TV station.

Days 151-152: Between Heaven and Earth

So I climbed Mount Fuji. That doesn't necessarily sound like that much of an accomplishment since it is the most climbed mountain in the world, with 300,000 climbing up each year, mostly during the summer. When more than 99% of those people say they climbed Mt. Fuji though, they mean they took a bus up to one of the 5th stations then climbed from there to the summit. When I say I climbed Mt. Fuji, I mean I climbed Mt. Fuji.

While I was considering options for ascent from Kawakuchiko, I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to do the old, traditional route all the way from the Fujiyoshida Sengen Shrine in town at the base of the mountain and following the Yoshida trail all the way to the 5th station where all the other climbers would join on for the rest of the climb. This adds about 15km and 5 hours onto the hike, but I did it for a few reasons. Partly I just wanted to do something a bit different and really challenge myself and partly I just thought it would be a more interesting climb; Up until the 5th/6th station the trails go through woods and beyond it's just climbing up volcanic rock. I did, however, decide to do the top section of the climb at night, which is one of the most common ways of doing it, but I'll get to details on that later.

Because the supplies sold at stations on the way up are so expensive I carried everything I needed up with me. For food and water I had 2L of water, a bag of octopus jerky, some unsalted peanuts, 3 squeeze packs of special energy gel, and half a bag of taco-flavoured potato chips I had left over. I also had both my hoodie and jacket, a rain poncho, a small $2 flashlight which was all I could find, some sunblock and a hat. I originally packed my warm snowboarding pants as well, but removed them before I left to try to cut down on weight.

I started from the Mt. Fuji train stop, and it was a few kilometers from there to the Fujiyoshida Sengen Shrine.

For the first big chunk of the walk, long before even the 1st station, it was just walking through woods along a gravel path near the road. This forest (although I'm not if I was exactly the right spot of it) is called Aokigahara, and is full of legends about Japanese mythological creatures, as well as being famous for people committing suicide. Along the way the trail passes Nakanochaya, which is a tea house and an area supposedly with a lot of wildlife (I only saw birds, but the area is a national park and contains a lot of deer, bears and wild boar, among other things) and Umagaeshi, which is the entrance to the sacred part of the mountain. Originally you couldn't take horses past this point, so it's a bit sad that now they have road access to points much higher up the mountain. There are a lot of little shrines and carved stones in this part.

I took a short break at Umagaeshi to have tea with 3 older ladies just sitting there asking travellers to have tea with them. I think it's the first conversation I've ever had in Japan where my knowledge of Japanese was more helpful than their knowledge of English, but they were very sweet. A short hike later and I reached the 1st station. From here it became a bit more steep, but it was still going through forest. The "stations" from 1-4 were buildings that were abandoned and falling apart. It was all very quiet. For the first 6 hours, from the shrine to the 6th station I only saw 6 other hikers, all Japanese. From the 3rd station to somewhere past the 4th I was hiking through clouds, so the humidity was pretty brutal.

The trail I was on skipped the 5th station (it's off to the side a bit) so I met up with all the hikers at the 6th station just around sunset. This was also my first time above the treeline and the first chance I had to look down at the way I'd come.

I took less pictures for the rest of the climb, as it was dark out and there wasn't a lot to see. It was a clear night, and you could see the lights from all the surrounding towns spidering out (although hard to take a picture of) and the trail of lights above and below from other climbers. The trail is very steep, sometimes just zig-zagging back and forth but fairly smooth, and sometimes being piles of volcanic rock you just have to scramble up over.

About halfway between the 7th and 8th stations my cheap flashlight broke. At first I just thought it was the battery, but a fresh battery didn't fix it. I guess that's why $2 flashlights are $2. I did a few sections in the dark with a little ambient lighting from the stars, stations along the way and lights below, but eventually I latched onto a large group going up with a guide that provided enough light for me to see fairly well. It was getting quite cold by this point, and I had both jackets on. I found the temperature fine if I was moving, but it got cold pretty quickly when I sat still to rest. I was 2 or 3 hours ahead of schedule, mostly because I had started a bit early, not being sure how long it would take with the extra bit at the start. I tried to stretch out my breaks at each station and rest cabin, both to kill time and to adjust to the elevation. I never had any trouble with altitude sickness, but I saw others throwing up or using oxygen packs, so I didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. I got to the summit around 2:45am, with sunrise not until around 4:30am. The time between was absolutely miserable. I basically just found a niche out of the worst of the wind and curled up in a ball shivering, wishing I'd brought those winter pants along.

Finally the sky started to brighten on the horizon, and orange started to creep up into the deep blue of night. Progress was agonizingly slow, but eventually the sun finally peeked into view.

That wasn't the end though! The rising sun made things much warmer, and I decided to spend another hour hiking the path around the crater. I didn't want to come all this way and miss the highest point of the mountain (and thus of Japan), but getting up that last steep slope was a bit of a struggle for my weary legs. Moving to the other side of the summit also meant that I got to see Fuji's twin Kage Fuji (Fuji's shadow), which is apparently somewhat uncommon of an event.

It was finally time to start heading down, and the descent was pretty harsh. It was long slopes of volcanic gravel, and coming down was a half walk, half slide for 4 hours. The rock through up clouds of red and brown dust that covered everything, and people kept slipping and falling. The fact that many of the people hadn't slept probably didn't help.

Finally I got down to the 5th station and a few buses later was back in Tokyo where I'll spend a few more days before heading to another place in Japan that I couldn't fit in last time I was here.