8th and 9th of August. Day 2 and 3 of the tour.

Internet availability is haphazard now that we are on the gap tour. The crowd we are with are really a nice bunch of people from the states, Portugal, Germany and the UK. Mostly in their twenties, Sharon and I are certainly the oldies on the train.

8th August
Our second day of the Gap tour but really our first as day one was just us poking about in Tokyo.
We met in the lobby of the Shinagawa Prince and caught a train to, of all places, Harajuku in search of that most elusive beast, the cosplay girl.

Spoilt for choice.

It was blisteringly hot when we arrived and the bridge which we expected to be crowded with teenagers was deserted. Our guide Kit suggested that it might have just been too hot for anyone to show and I could believe him). Next up we walked from the empty bridge to Meiji shrine, a shinto shrine set deep inside a wonderful forest, planted by hand after the Americans fire bombed the town in WW2. At the shrine we purified our selves with a brief water ceremony and entered the main shrine plaza.

Ashley needing to purify himself badly. If anything it was a slight relief from the heat.

There, we saw two weddings unfolding which we were told cost $20,000 US just to hold the ceremony at the shrine.

The Meiji shrine.

You could purchase these wooden tablets, write a wish on them and hang them outside the shrine. Each month they are collected and burned carrying your wish.

The happy couple. It all looked very serious.

We stayed a while and Sharon bought some good luck charms before we headed out in search of a drink vending machine. The shade was cool but the sun had a real bite.

Next we went to You yogi park to see more teens proclaiming their individuality by dressing up as clones of Elvis and dancing in the park... Or we would have if it wasn't so damn hot. All we saw was a sprinkler and a hot Chihuahua We turned back and it was time for the tour to visit Kiddyland on Takeshita Dori, ( a really leafy street) and the kooky girly shopping street, both which we had visited the day before. We asked what else we might do till our bullet train at three from Shinagawa and Kit our guide recommended the black market.. er.. market in Ueno.

So, we split from the group (which is the great thing about these GAP tours) and caught the Yamanote line 20 minutes out to Ueno. There we found ourselves in a wonderful park peppered with museums, but having only a few hours, ate a rich curry lunch and hunted for the market. We asked a woman for directions and she very kindly led us all the way there with her small daughter in tow. Very typical of how we have found of the Japanese hospitality here.

The market was exactly what you would imagine a Japanese market would be like. Crowded, smelly, colorful and all in all very exciting.

There was all sorts of stuff from hello kitty to model handguns to fish as hard as wood that was shaved for Miso and other broths.

Mmm. Fish as hard as wood. Nice.

We would have liked longer there, Pegz, you should visit it. It is called Ameyoko in Ueno.We hurried back to the Shinigawa Prince and re-connected with the tour.

With a quick stop for danishes and pear jelly.

A billboard for Brad's favourite television commercial. It cracks him up!

 From there, we got our snazzy new rail passes and caught the bullet train (Or Shinkansen) to Hakone, 100k out of Tokyo. Were were a little sad to say goodbye to Tokyo as we had a ball there.

On the Shinkansen. There is no way to impress on you just how fast they are.

Typical Hakone view. Lush, green and misty.

 From the Hakone station, we caught an ant procession of shiny black taxis up the emerald hills to the Shunkoso Onsen. An onsen is a hot spring resort and the place was very traditional.

Shunkoso Onsen.

Seeing the rice paper walls and tatami matting bought back a flood of memories from my first visit to Japan as a kid. Sharon, the boys and I all enjoyed the hot springs, wearing Yukata (like a kimono) and shuffling about in slippers. Our beds were futons on the floor and our rooms were sparse and stylish. Everything was safe and inviting.

Our room. Wow.

The spa was a great experience, scrubbing down in the nude on a small stool before dipping into the hot waters with a little white towel on your heads.

After relaxing in the springs we donned our Yukata again and headed into a tatami matted banquet room where a Japanese feast awaited us. Our chicken and mushroom dish cooked before us on private burners and the seafood and beer flowed (I passed on the fish of course_Blach!)

Dinner on the floor. Some of the other tour members are in the background.

After chatting with the tour group over Miso, we went to bed. The cold beer and hot spring water proved and overpowering force and I quickly fell asleep.

9th August.

Green tea in your room. Nice.

Sharon and Brad in the morning.

We woke early in our soft but somehow hard futons, bathed dressed in our Yukata and made our way to the banquet room for breakfast. As well as western food like scrambled eggs and bread rolls, there was a huge variety of traditional Japanese breakfast food. Tart beans, rubbery things on sticks, mostly appealing and strangely savory or sour. They also had butterflied fish that you took to your table (low on the floor) and cooked over a wire racked cooker. Brad and Chris cooked their fish and everyone tried something they had never eaten before.

Grilled fish at your table.

A dazzling array of new tastes.

The rain had closed in overnight, the first weather other than blistering heat since our arrival, and as the heat had kept the Elvis's away, it was on the cards that the shroud of cloud around the mountains here would render Mt Fuji invisible.
We dressed, packed, assembled in the tiny Mr. Miyagi style foyer and left our bags for a day of adventure.
First stop was a bus ride down to the station. We stood in the drizzle which I didn't mind after all the heat, and I was reminded of the bus stop scene from Totoro on my wall at work. It was identical. Wow. The forest in these parts was really spellbinding.

The bus took us to the station and we caught a little train that zigzagged back and forth up the steep mountainside to Gora. There we alighted and took a funicular. It's like a train that climbs uphill on a very steep incline, pulled by a system of steel cables. At each stop the carriage bounced forward and back unnervingly on the cable.

Sharon on the train up the mountain.

The driver's view of the Funicular's ascent.

At the top, after all that climbing, there was still more to go. The next mode of transport was the Hakone ropeway, a cable car like you see in the Swiss alps. Naturally, I was wary of it and watched each car arrive, studying it for defects or hairline stress fractures. The car swept out of the station and glided into the low lying mist. We should have been greeted by a sweeping vista of volcanic sulfur deposits framed by Mt Fuji beyond, but instead, we saw only cloud. White all around, below us, above, behind and in front. The cables disappeared into the mist and the ride was soundless, surreal.

Eeek!

My somewhat unconvincing "brave face".

Eventually, the fog cleared to afford us a view of the sulphide rivers far below and eventually, the cable car terminal appeared. We had arrived at the top of an active volcano, Soun-zen. We walked to an area of mountain where sulfurous stem issued from the ground and joined the low mist and cloud and the whole place smelled of rotten eggs. The boys were amused till the smell persisted.

The top, just a little further to go. Fuji was meant to be here somewhere right?

A conga line of Hello Kitty umbrellas.

This guy spends his days in the stink, lowering baskets of eggs into the sulfur where they boil black. I made a joke about the guy putting all his eggs in one basket but Chris didn't rate it.

If they had Kodak moments in the Jurassic era, this would be what they looked like.

The same rock but now with a Kip in front.

We climbed a path to a place on the crater where eggs are boiled in the hot sulfurous waters, When cooked, they are matte black and when eaten, are supposed to add a year to you life expectancy. There was a kind of pilgrimage to the place, with the path up and back a snake of umbrellas. We purchased a pack of hot boiled black eggs and ate them. They tasted just like regular egg to be honest.

HOT!

We all got drenched by the mist. The king of soaking that creeps up on you.

We walked down the hill and stopped for a refreshing Wasabi ice-cream before catching another cable car (again, called a ropeway which sounded sketchy to me) down into the crater of the volcano to a massive lake called Ashino-ko lake.

There, incongruously, were two garish galleons moored at port. Steel hulled tour boats decorated to look like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean in gold and red.

What the? Japanese crater lake pirates?

Arrrrr-igato!

We took a trip on the ships across the caldera to the other side (a trip of about 20 minutes) and ate lunch at at place that worked on a vending machine system.You paid for what you wanted at at machine, it gave you a ticket which you passed to the lady in the kitchen, soon, your food arrived and, again, it was delicious. I had a beef and rice dish, some Asahi and a bowl of really nice donuts.

From there we caught a bus up the winding hills of the crater, through the dense forest and back to the Shunkoso Onsen where we collected our bags and made for another bullet train bound for Kyoto.

On the way back to the spa.

These things scream by with a speed and regularity which dazzles.

Here is where I now sit, writing this on the two hour journey. A baby is shrieking behind us as the scenery screams past. These trains are unbelievably fast (did I say that already?). While waiting at the station, and express bullet train rocketed past scaring all of us. It was amazing.

Me blogging this.

 *UPDATE*

Well, we made it to Kyoto and booked into the hotel Keihan. Nice and clean as usual with a neat little self contained bathroom, one step up from a capsule hotel. :) I like it.
We dumped our bags and follow Kit across town and through a lane way famous for it's food and Geishas.
He said he has seen a few in his time and told us a little about the custom which was very interesting.

The differences between Tokyo and Kyoto are immediately visible, even though we arrived at dusk and saw none of it by day. Kyoto seems more laid back, and more traditional than Tokyo which seems to never tire of it's own nervous energy. 

Kit led us by subway to a really fun Japanese restaurant where, not only do they have a sushi train that carries all sorts of food on a meandering journey thorgh the room, but each table has a touch screen where you can order a plate and in no time, a light flashes and a bullet train arrives at your table carrying the dish, A buzzer sounds and you push the button to send the train back to the kitchen. Very cool indeed. We ate a stack and the price was much cheaper had we eaten our fill in Australia.

A stack of plates and we were still going!.

You have to check this out...




Anyway, it's past midnight once more and my blogging is up to date. let's see what Kyoto looks like by day.
~Glenn