Western Tokyo Metro

Today was the day to brave Meiji Jingu and Ikebukuro. After a morning run that culminated in observing the morning service at Sensouji, which includes drumming, chanting, and more incense than anyone should inhale in a week, we hopped on the Yamanote line to the other side of town.

Tokyo is in full swing gearing up for the 2020 olympics. There is more building construction going on than we have ever seen. I remember the road construction in Ueno took the better part of 5 years to complete. It looks like they are adding train platforms, building huge new structures all over the city, and throwing a lot of manpower at it. There are already souvenir shops in all of the major shopping areas (Sumi has a T-shirt, of course). There is no way we will visit Tokyo next summer. You could not pay us enough to deal with that circus.

First up today was Meiji Jingu shrine. We love coming back here every year just to walk around, people watch, and see the shrine and whatever exhibit it currently has. One of their permanent exhibits is a collection of bonsai (not banzai! Go back and watch the original The Karate Kid), some over 300 years old.

Beautiful trees on a tiny scale

The grounds of Meiji are still under renovation, but the main area is open

After Meiji, we jumped back on the Yamanote and took it up to Ikebukuro so we could visit Sunshine City. Another of Sumi's favorite stores, Tokyu Hands, was first up. Nothing remarkable to mention about it, really, but someone had a neat idea

Numbered stairs

There are eight floors in Tokyu Hands. For those of us who prefer to climb stairs over elevators, some very smart person knew that stair counting is a thing, and helpfully numbered many of the stairs to assist us in our journey. Don't look at me like that, I *know* you've stair-counted too.

We took a look around the basement shops that house all the "cute" stuff, then went up to the main Pokémon store for a look around to feed Sumi's addiction.

Did you know the company numbers all of their Pokémon chronologically? I didn't. They have a promotion going on where they have small stuffed versions of the first 251 (yes, 251) Pokémon. At ¥1100 a pop, I am not wondering *if* but *how many* Pokémon otaku have "invested" $2761 in collecting all of them.

We somehow made it out of there without a single one. I consider that a win.

The last order of business was a visit to Yellow Submarine, one of the more complete board game stores in Tokyo. I picked up two Hisashi Hayashi games that are not available in the U.S., Sail to India, which has been out of print for years, and Shobai, a brand new game without an American publisher yet. With that, we headed back to Asakusa. Sumi took another trip to Sensouji while I worked on this here blog, then we walked over to Ichiran for one last hakata ramen meal

What makes ramen awesome? 3 cloves of garlic, 1 cup of green onions, and 2 Tbsp of hot chili sauce, that's what!

After that...flavorful meal, we needed to cleanse our palate and finish up the night with a light dessert.

Did I say light? I meant calorific

Check out the last few crepe options above. Tuna, pizza, lettuce, and cream cheese crepe? Who DOES that? How can that POSSIBLY sound like a good idea? The chocolate, banana, and custard crepe, however, was delicious.

Food, Plastic and Otherwise, in Tokyo

Today was mostly about food. After two straight weeks of living on convenience store food for most of our meals, it was good to be in a place that has some amazing restaurants. After a nice run along the Sumidagawa, we walked over to Ueno Station for breakfast. Along the way, we took a short detour down Kappabashi, a shopping street with lots of food industry shops, include Sumi's favorites: The plastic food shops. Japanese plastic food models are really quite something.

These are real. Anderson Bakery has wonderful fresh rolls.

After breakfast, we began walking down towards Akihabara, making a few stops along the way. The first, Yamashiroya, is a store full of typical Japanese toys, trinkets, figures, stuffed animals: basically Sumi's dream store. At the front of the store, they had some very cool tiny scale vintage video games. By tiny, I mean 8 inch tall, fully functional Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Galaxian, and Mappy.

Notice the 4 inch tall one on the left? Fully playable!

We both had to tell ourselves repeatedly we did NOT need them, and used all of our adult superpowers to walk out of the store without them. And only a little regret.

Our next stop was to the Toho Cinema in Okachimachi to see Detective Pikachu. Sumi really wanted to see it, and it is mostly gone from theaters out here. So we paid our ¥3100 (Wednesday is Ladies Day, so Sumi got a discount. Yeah, movies are expensive in Japan) and watched CGI Pokémon for a few hours. I have zero attachment to Pokémon, so it was pretty OK for me, but Sumi really liked it.

After the movie, we took a walk down to Akiba and looked around. It was filled with tourists even more than usual, which is odd for a Wednesday. We didn't spend a lot of time there. I picked up a used book at Book Off and the new Minna no Golf VR (silly game, but well-reviewed as a VR experience) and attempted to browse a bit, but way too many tourists. I know, I know, what are we, right? Well, there are visitors to a country and there are tourists. We decided an early exit was a good plan.

Lunch up next, we tried a new (to us) Thai restaurant, Little Bangkok, in the Okachimachi area.

Good Thai food. Not as spicy as I would like it, but good flavors.

Next up on the food excursion is our old haunt, The Wired Cafe. Each year they have new desserts. Each year it is our duty to sample them all. Sumi had a traditional parfait: Berries and chocolate. I tried a new creation: Banana and Nutella Nachos. Bananas, Nutella, berries, ice cream, waffles, and the surprise ingredient that sounded awful and tastes just amazing, potatoes. Thin sliced, slightly baked white potatoes with chocolate, bananas, and ice cream is really, really good. Who knew?

Now for a bit of sad news. In the last year not one, but two of some of our most nostalgic locations in Tokyo have shut down. First, and truly the most devastating for me, is Rasoi, the Indian restaurant in Meguro. I have said several times that it may have been my favorite restaurant in the world, and that is not hyperbole. We were shocked when we looked it up on Google Maps for their hours and found it was "Permanently Closed". To say I was looking forward to their lunch special for weeks would have been a severe understatement. The other business to shut down was the sentou (public bath house) in Asakusa that had been in existence in that location for over one hundred years. Now, we never actually used it as a bath (we have our own at the hotel), but they had a coin laundry attached where customers could wash their clothes while bathing. It is sad to see something with such a long history shut down, but I guess public baths are more or less a thing of the past in urban Japan.

Anyway, the end result was we had to do our laundry elsewhere and got to end our "eating day" with  Turkish food for dinner

My spicy chicken pita was quite good. The hummus and bread were very good. Sumi's meal was less satisfying. I think the phrase "Big Mac Sauce" was uttered when describing it. The rice pudding (not pictured) was also quite good.

We ingested more calories in the last 12 hours than we did in the previous three days. I am OK with this.

Travel Day

Not much exciting today. Bus to Kumamoto, train to Shin-Osaka, train to Tokyo, train to Ueno, train to Asakusa, 10 hours of travel and we're finally checked into Toukaisou, our usual digs in Asakusa. Good to be back. I'll leave you with some pictures of Kumamon. He really is everywhere in Kyuushuu

Walking around Aso

Today is the last day we will have our bikes, so after a nice morning run for one of us (the mountain scenery was beautiful) and a nice lazy morning for the other, we made good use of them and rode down to Aso Station where we could catch a bus that would take us up to the base of the volcano crater. Aso is a collection of five peaks in the center of the large caldera that Aso city is located in. A caldera is the result of a volcano erupting and imploding in on itself. A large crater-like area is created when the magma under the surface leaves. Aso is one of the largest calderas in the world, at about 25km in diameter. It is also still very active, it's last eruption being in 2016. Not the smartest place to build a city, one would think. Or a tourist industry centered around climbing the volcano and looking inside. I mean honestly, who'd be dumb enough to climb an active volcano just for a peek inside?

So, as I said, we rode our bikes down to the station to catch the bus up to the base of the volcano. The train at Aso station is themed, which is not uncommon in Japan. This one was themed with the city mascot, Asoboi (yes, Asoboi)

And of course Kumamon was there (Aso is just a few miles east of Kumamoto)

At the station

At one souvenir shop

And at the other shop, as well

At the crater base, there are lights and warnings all over the place. Since Aso is active, if there is a lot of volcanic activity, they don't let people climb. Also, one of Aso's favorite things to do is spew poisonous sulphur gas in the air. If it is actively doing that, they don't let people climb. If it is actively doing that and the wind is strong in the wrong direction, they evacuate the base.

Welp, no crater hike for us. When the wind was right you could smell the sulphur pretty strongly. So we made the best of it and hiked down

to the next station, Kusasenrigahama, a grassy plain with some interesting topography. Before hiking around, we stopped for lunch at a Nepalese restaurant, of all things, located at the rest station.

If you have ever played either Final Fantasy X or X-2, the Calm Lands appear to be patterned after this area. Large fissures cut into the plains with large rises overlooking ponds created by the rains. You can see in the picture below how smooth some of the peaks look. This is a result of them "bubbling" up during the eruptions.

Taken from atop one of the rises. The fissures are hard to see here

Notice all the dead area around the volcano due to the poison gas. Also, notice one of the fissures in the center.

All in all, a nice day of hiking despite not being able to climb the crater. We headed back to the station, then to the hotel and finally broke down and packed the bikes, signaling the end of another cycling trip. We have just a few days in Tokyo before we head back home, but no regrets. This was a great trip with some wonderful biking. We're already talking about coming back to Kyuushuu without bikes to visit many places we didn't have time/energy to see this trip.

I'll leave you with a few signs we happened upon. The first was in a bathroom at Kusasenrigahama, the second a list of prohibited items to take on the highway bus we'll be taking to Kumamoto tomorrow. Both of them....well, see for yourself

Usually, I get what they were trying to say., but this...

What gets me is to be on this list, at one point someone had to try to bring it on...

Long climb into Aso

The forecast of possible thunderstorms in the late morning were completely wrong. It was sunny and bright the entire day, and we spent much of the morning in the rolling foothills of Aso, a complex of five mountain peaks all formed by the same volcanic activity, and still an active volcano today.

After a quick stop at Family Mart for juice and yogurt, we began our climb into Aso. I say climb because there is a 970m mountain between us and the city. Most of the day will be spent uphill, with just enough downhill to make us wish it weren't there, because every time we go down, we just have to go back up again until we get close to the city.

The roads were not very busy on a Sunday morning, so the riding was easy, except fo the whole uphill thing. There were a number of small towns along the way. One of them, Kashima, I think it was called, had some large paper-mache figures outside of their elementary school that were instantly recognizable.

As we got higher up into the mountains, we started seeing mountain shrines along the way. Or at least entrances to shrines

There's a sign saying up another 2km...

And a bike trip in the mountains would not be complete without a tunnel, our first one of the trip.

Tunnels always mean we avoided going up even higher

When we finally crested the mountain, we had a long, three mile descent into the valley where Aso City resides. It was absolutely beautiful, with long clear vistas of the peaks as we glided down the mountain. The road was narrow, and there were very few places to pull over, so not many pictures, but it was a great way to end a tough day of biking.

Because of the light traffic, we ended up arriving about three hours early for check-in. We wasted about an hour in the Family Mart cafe eating a light lunch and trying to find coin laundry and edible food. We are staying on the outskirts of town, so nothing is very close, and many places were closed Sundays. This is partially because we are out of season, and partially because the area is still recovering from the earthquake and later rains that did so much damage to Kumamoto. Aso, as we discovered because we apparently could not properly read a map before, is about 26 miles from Kumamoto. The train line from Aso to Kumamoto is still shut down, three years later, and is not set to open until next spring.

What this meant was, our options were slim. We found a coin laundry a few miles away, and figured we could get something done while waiting. The roads were very much major arteries and not designed for bikes, so it wasn't going to be a fun ride. But the god of lazy cyclists must have had some free time, because as we began our trek to the laundromat, we had gotten about 500 meters before this appeared on our right

It was run down. There were only two light bulbs in the six fixtures and they didn't work. Half the dryers were out of order, as was the change machine. But it was two miles closer to our hotel. And it had two benches to sleep on. It wasn't on any of our maps, very likely because the owner didn't even have enough money to fix the broken units, let alone advertise. Needless to say, laundry and a nap were both taken care of, and we could finally check in to our hotel, which turned out to be a nice onsen ryoukan, Minshuku Asogen.

Nice, traditional tatami room with futons

We were also reunited with our suitcases and other luggage that we had sent ahead. This is our final cycling stop, so we'll be packing the bikes up tomorrow and sending them to the airport while we frolic* in Tokyo for a few days. A nice trip to the ofuro and we were ready to tackle the last challenge: eating. It wasn't us being picky. There just wasn't much open around us. We settled on the local greasy spoon diner (well, the Japanese equivalent) a few blocks away. It served Ramen, Chanpon(a mix of whatever they felt like throwing in, usually some meat, seafood and vegetables), and Itame. I ordered the Vegetable Itame and Sumi ordered ramen. We both ordered some gyoza, which turned out to be a good thing.

When you advertise something as "Vegetable <something>", that would imply that it has, well, vegetables in it, right? And if you were to put in, say, pork AND squid AND octopus AND fish, you would want to advertise it as something other than VEGETABLE something, right? How is that vegetable anything? So, I very carefully ate the vegetables (which were very good) and some stuff that looked and tasted like pork, and left the whole baby squid, strips of octopus and god knows what else on the plate. Sumi had some very greasy ramen with fatty pork slices, which, after all the amazing ramen we've had this trip, was quite a letdown. We left not completely full and wholly unsatisfied. This was really the first food fail of the trip, so we can't complain too much.

Back to Family Mart (they are going to know our names by the time we leave) for some supplemental food and juice, then to our room. Tomorrow we'll head up to the volcano and take a look.

*take trains everywhere, eat way too much, sleep way too much

Takachiho

One good thing about leaving at 6am on a Saturday is that, well, no one in their right mind is on the road. We were able to get ourselves out of the city in about 20 minutes and onward (and eventually upward) to Takachiho. We decided to ignore Navi, Google, and Apple Maps and simply follow the Kogase river, which ends (or starts, actually) in Takachiho Gorge, a large fissure between cliffs. The river is fed by several waterfalls as it cuts its way east through the mountains to the ocean. So, off we went, and it turned out to be a great choice.

A typical Kogase river vista

Nothing much. Just a 100 foot waterfall on the side of the road.

My favorite road sign of the trip

  It was a beautiful ride with beautiful weather. We followed the river for almost 30 miles, and it looked pretty much like the pictures above the whole time. We did have one problem, though, and that is that Takachiho is at an elevation of 334m. We started at 6 (on the coast) and didn't really climb at all. That meant that at some point, we were in for a world of hurt. But we enjoyed it while it lasted.

We were about 10km from the city when we ran into a bit of a problem. Google Maps and Navi both had us riding down a road that both said simply ended. When we got to that road, this was what we saw

The last time we saw a road like this and went down it, we ended up having to turn around and found a bear in the process. The problem was, the alternative road was not on either of the maps we were using, and was at a 7-8% incline, so we weren't going to just give it a shot unless we knew it was the correct road. In a moment of supreme irony, Pokémon Go, Sumi's mobile app addiction, DID have the other road and showed it connecting with the main road again. So, Google was out-mapped by Pokémon Go. Just to make sure, I checked with Apple Maps, and sure enough, it showed up there, as well. Google fail.

So, we started the climb. All 300m of it. In about a quarter mile. We were on a road that was anywhere from a 5-11% grade constantly, with a few switchbacks that were NOT on the map. About 90% of the way up, we finally crested the worst of it and came upon some farmland with a very nice, low stone wall that seemed to be made solely for us to sit on. So we did.

Apple juice, bananas, and granola bars. The lunch of desperate champions.

One problem, though, was that none of the maps actually showed HOW to get back to the main road. We went UNDER it, then OVER it, but we couldn't see how to get ON it. Some Google Maps-fu brought us to a small road that connected where we were with the main road. Only it looked like this

and was just as steep as what we had just climbed up. If we were wrong, we were looking at biking walking back up this glorified horse trail. One of the problems with maps in Japan (other than a severe lack of street names and highway numbers that make no sense, disappear, and reappear without warning, and often have two of the same number right next to each other) is that they treat all roads 100% equal. Is it a national highway? Is it a tiny access road between rice paddies? (not joking) Is it a narrow gap between two buildings that a car should never fit through but does anyway? (again, not kidding)? In Japan, it is just a michi, a road. So we never know if the maps are serious about these and often miss a turn because our minds don't connect these paths with roads that people would actually drive on.

Well, we rolled the dice and took the road, and it did, indeed, bring us down to the main road, and we rolled into Takachiho a little after noon. Check in wasn't until 3, so we decided to check out the gorge, which, as it turns out, is quite a tourist spot. There are nature walks, shrines, and rowboat rentals that let you go out into the head of the river in the gorge. So naturally we did.

You get a number and wait for a free  boat, then have 30 minutes.

A small area with 15 boats filled with tourists who have never been in a rowboat before. What could possibly go wrong?

Wait, you didn't think SUMI was going to row, did you?

These guys followed us everywhere. Someone feeds them.

These pillar-like rock formations are natural

Holy rock?

It really was comical watching people clearly rowing for the first time and having no idea what they were doing. It also meant it was much more like very slow motion bumper cars than rowing. I managed to get us out of the herd and towards the back of the area that we were allowed in. it was pretty fun, all in all.

The rest of the gorge area was a nature walk (and some souvenir shops)

The souvenir shop had a few resident cats that decided to nap in the middle of the road

After getting our fill of other tourists, we headed back to the hotel to check in. Did I say hotel? Well, that's what we were thinking, but this place is called Kashi Besso Takachiho, which translates to Rental Summer Home Takachiho, and that's what it was: a home.

Full kitchen, dinette, dart board

Living room complete with DVD player and ancient computer and printer

Second bedroom that sleeps four

Not pictured: a full balcony with grill. This place is amazing. Comfortable, obviously spacious, great location, $86. The house is the size of about three apartments in Tokyo. We cleaned up and headed into town to try and find some food. We struck gold again with a cafe called Gokoku, which had an Indian theme (not an Indian restaurant) and served a total of three dishes per day. We chose the Spicy Chicken Curry and Eggplant and Potato Curry

Oh yeah, bottled Coke, too.

Both sauces were light and flavorful. Not nearly as heavy as Japanese curry.

Gochisousama deshita!

Legend has it that this is the location of the myth of Ama-no-Iwato, and there are many statues and displays around the city regarding it

Entrance to the Ama-no-Iwato shrine

Every night at 8pm, there is an hour long performance of an abbreviated version of the tale for tourists at the Ama-no-iwato shrine in the center of town. As it turns out, it's a pretty big deal. We walked down to the shrine, arriving about 15 minutes before the performance, and there was already close to two hundred people already in the hall. It was a traditional Japanese performance room, with a raised stage for the performers and tatami mats for the audience. We were expected to bring our own pillows to sit on. Everyone else seemed to know this already, likely because their hotel/tour guides told them to do so. Sumi and I enjoyed a hard floor, instead.

The show was broken up into four parts, one where a god looks for where Amaterasu is hidden, one where Uzume-no-mikami dances, one where Tajikarao opens the cave, and a fourth, unrelated one about getting drunk and offering sake to the gods.

Now, I will fully admit that I do not know the intricacies of Kagura (the ritual dance they were performing). I am sure I do not appreciate how when he shook that stick with the red paper with his left hand it was a metaphor for the existential crisis all humans have when confronting stories of gods acting like children and when he shook the stick with the white paper it was...

Uzume was supposed to take her clothes off and perform a lewd dance. That did not happen.

His dance was supposed to be energetic with lots of waving of his long hair. That did not happen.

Drunk people are supposed to be funny. They weren't

I don't care, it was boring as all hell. Each segment was a performer in a different costume walking in a circle for fifteen minutes waving stuff around, occasionally tilting their head, and very occasionally NOT walking in a circle, but standing still. The music was the EXACT same four measures played endlessly, with a 2/4 bar after each four measures. The drums being played were not quite in time with the dancer or each other. Or the flute which played random octaves of the same melody, often within the same phrase, so it was not likely on purpose. It is said there are 33 of these dances and that they have a festival where people stay up all night and watch performances of them all. I can't imagine staying awake for more than the four I just saw. I am surely not the appropriate audience for this, and I know it. I can't handle western dance for more than five minutes without being bored. And the crowd seemed to be utterly inept with the usage of their phones as cameras. Being in Japan, the uber-technological country that it is with such a long history with cell phones, I was surprised at how many of them had trouble turning off their flash. And then when they did, they couldn't figure out how to turn off the fake clicking of a photo being taken during a performance with live instruments. By the lack of talking and selfie sticks, I knew they were not the Chinese tourists we saw earlier at the gorge, so I have no good explanation.

Anyway, I found the mythology interesting, and the costumes were pretty cool. And walking home across a bridge that spanned hundreds of feet over the gorge with no streetlights or sidewalk was an exciting addition to the evening.