Japan Extravaganza Part 2: Inari, Hakone, Harajuku

Part 1: Kyoto

Day four, we decided to head out to a Arashiyama to have a look at the bamboo grove there. While the grove itself proved to be somewhat underwhelming, the trip there took on all kinds of unexpected qualities. When we got to Saga Arashiyama, it turned out that we had to buy separate tickets for a “Romantic Train”, the Sagano Scenic Railway, to get to Torokko Arashiyama, which was where the grove was. We tried to say we were just going to Torokko Arashiyama, but the lady explained to us that there was no point in taking the train just for that, and that we’d be much better served taking the train to the end station and then hopping off at Torokko Arashiyama on the return. We had nothing better to do, so we did just that. We had half an hour to kill before the train, however, so we went into a building next to the station where there was stuff.

Stuff turned out to be a really cool train set, and there was a man selling tickets for something in another room. There was a discount for people with tickets for the Romantic Train, so we got tickets and went in.

It turned out to be an even bigger train set. It was modelled, in part, after Kyoto, and it had temples, streets, houses, gardens and most importantly, trains. Morten was like a kid at Christmas. And then, after a while, the room went dark, and all the street lights and lanterns were lit, and the stars came out on the domed ceiling. It was amazingly well done.

The scenic railway is probably more scenic in summer and autumn. As it was, many of the trees had yet to sprout leaves, and the most scenic thing we saw was probably the family of Tanuki at one of the stations. But it was fun none the less. A man in a demon mask came through our car at one time. He told apparently funny stories in Japanese and stopped to ask where we were from in stilted English.

The bamboo grove was very pretty, but turned out to be much smaller than we had anticipated. At the end of it, however, we came across a temple called, if I remember correctly, Tenryu-ji. We paid admission and took a stroll through its garden, and found another exit, through which we left and found ourselves in a town. We walked through the town, and I found the most adorable tote bag with a cat on it that says, “I love your shoes. The right one is my bed, the left one is my toy.”

After some more walking, we found ourselves back at Saga Arashiyama station, and got a train back to Kyoto.

After lunching on udon at Kyoto station, we got on another train to go to Fushimi Inari Taisha. This is a place with basically thousands of orange Torii gates that you can walk through along a path up the mountain, occasionally giving way to lots and lots of Shinto shrines protected by foxes called inari. It can be a challenging trek if you’re not in very good shape, and I’m not, but in spite of that we did make it all the way up to the top. It took us a good couple of hours, though it was totally worth it for the view, which was amazing.

Afterwards, we were exhausted and our feet were aching, so rather than find somewhere interesting in town to eat dinner, we went to another restaurant at the station. We ended up choosing an Italian restaurant, and the food there was really, really good. I ate a pasta dish with mushrooms and meat in a tomato ragu. The pasta was perfectly al dente and the sauce was excellent. The half bottle of Chianti we ordered, however, was ice cold, as per usual in Japan.

We even stayed for dessert, but even though everything was lovely, something I ate must not have agreed with me because later that evening I started feeling really sick. I got up again after going to bed and spent some time reading and writing up the day’s events. Around midnight I was finally able to get some sleep as I’d stopped feeling queasy.

We caught a bit of the musical fountain show at Kyoto station on our way home. They were playing Mozart:

Our fifth day in Japan was mostly spent travelling. We got up reasonably early and shipped off our suitcases to the hotel we were going to stay at in Tokyo. This was done, of all places, at the local liquor store. The lady there chattered animatedly at us in Japanese and got our address tags mixed up, but both suitcases were going to the same place, so that was okay. After that, we handed in our key to our chatty landlady and got on our way to the train station.

We bought bento boxes to have for breakfast, and got on the Kodama Shinkansen train toward Tokyo. We had some scenic views of Fuji-sama on the way, but other than that it was a fairly boring train ride.

We got off the train in Odawara, where we met up with KayKay (who passed her placement test and her interview with flying colours and is now in class 1, yay! *confetti and cake*). From there, we caught a train to Hakone-Yumoto, and then a bus to Lake Ashi. There we caught the so-called pirate ship (which really looks more like a very garishly painted 18^th century galleon) across the lake and changed to the ropeway. We stopped and got out at Owakudani, an active volcano where they have a sulphur mine and are famous for their disgusting “black eggs” that are meant to add 7 years to your life. However, since those are the drooling, bed-ridden years, we determined that life is too short to waste ten minutes of it eating a rotten egg, and so we passed on that particular pleasure.

Hakone is still riddled with references to Neon Genesis Evangelion:

We got the ropeway down the mountain on the other side, and changed to a stair-shaped cable car that took us to Gora, where it turned out that we had missed our last bus. This led to yet another train adventure, where we had to go back down and change to a different bus at a station the name of which I am currently failing to remember.

We did make it to our hotel, though, or hostel if you will, the Sengokuhara Youth Hostel, also known as the Fuji-Hakone Guest House. We stayed in the ninja room and had a nice hot bath in their indoor onsen (with water from Owakudani, which meant it smelled slightly sulphurous, but was probably immensely good for something or other) before bedtime. Before that, though, we went out and found a tiny local restaurant where we were served excellent food, beer, sake and yuzu and plum wine.

The following morning, we got up and had breakfast, and went off to climb Mt. Kintoki. The mountain is named after a little boy who lived with a witch and who grew into a very big kid who had a nasty habit of throwing boulders off the mountain.

It’s a fairly tough hike. We probably got about halfway before my body failed me and I had to admit defeat. My knees were shaky, my head was hot, my body was cold and I felt like I might lose my breakfast if we kept climbing. I really wanted to make it to the top, but alas willpower wasn’t enough to defeat my lack of condition.

I did get some lovely photos along the way, though.

View of the mountain:

Rosetta stone?

A big broken boulder that Kintaro threw off the mountain:

KayKay in a tree:

Victors victorious:

A shrine on top of a boulder, with Kintaro’s axe:

Morten on the same boulder:

Upon our descent, we caught a bus to Hakone-Yumoto and a train from there to Odawara, where we changed trains to get to Tokyo.

We started in Harajuku, where KayKay and I meant to locate a piercing studio that was recommended to her by Pinpoint Piercing in Oslo. After a couple of trips up and down the street, however, we gave up. Our visit to Harajuku wasn’t a complete loss, though. We had a fantastic lunch at a burger joint, of all things, and had a look around a shopping centre where I was convinced by the staff of a very fashionable shop indeed to try on two dresses, none of which really suited me, though I loved the look of the fabrics, the stitching and the patchwork feel of them. They were, I learned, designed by a polish painter who had never designed clothes before.

I didn’t buy anything, but I’m filled with ideas on clothes that I could make for myself out of used materials and with fabric dyes. I shall experiment when I get home.

After Harajuku, we went to find our ryokan. It is located close to Ueno and is called Homeikan Daimachi Bekkan. It’s lovely here.

After getting settled, we went out to find some dinner. We were told by the staff at the ryokan that we should poke our head into restaurants and ask how much for a set meal. So we went off down the street towards Kasuga subway station, and soon passed a small restaurant with a hand written menu outside in all Japanese. We were about to move on when a lady poked her head out. She had a raspy voice and was very insistent that we come inside and have sashimi. So we did.

The lady seemed very amused to have foreigners in her restaurant, and was oblivious to the fact that KayKay is nearly fluent in Japanese. “They don’t speak Japanese,” she said to the two regulars who sat smoking at the counter. “They ordered pints of beer!”

The sashimi was lovely, though. Morten, who isn’t too fond of raw fish, had fried fish cheeks instead. With our food, we got rice, miso soup, a sort of stir-fried, hot pork salad-ish thing, pickled veg and it was all very tasty. We got tuna and octopus sashimi.

After we had finished, we went and had a drink at a small pub-ish place across the road, where they sold European ales and I got a glass of red wine that was almost not too cold.

We got back to the ryokan a bit after ten, I think, and went to sleep almost immediately.

We’ve done a bunch of stuff today; more on that later, probably not until I get home on Monday night. Until then, stay happy, and if you’re not happy, get happy! Sayonara!

Part 3: Tokyo Fun and Nosebleeds