Climbing Mt Fuji – The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done.

Posted on July 11, 2015 by borysSNORC

When we first started planning our Japan trip, before we knew more than it would start with a flight to Tokyo and feature a cruise around Japan, I knew I wanted to do one thing…. Climb mount Fuji. Those who have read Robyn’s other posts will know Fuji features in my favourite piece of art, looming large of a frantic sea that is the “Great Wave” and as far as I was concerned – Fuji IS Japan! I spent months researching and preparing. I enlisted two willing travel companions, trained with practice walks, did my research on the best ascent routes, learnt how to tackle the mountain and what to expect and gathered the necessary gear for what to expect on the mountain. Wary that i was tied to two specific climbing days and needed to bring all the gear with us we travelled as light as possible. In hindsight, I am now aware that I had too little and that all the information I found in my research on the internet was out of date and did not fully prepare me for the full adventure we were undertaking.

This epic journey to the summit of mount Fuji started out with what I expected to be the easiest part, little did I appreciate the arduous task of just getting to the start of our walk. We began at the largest train station in the world – Shinjuku Station. 3.5 million people go through there every day, that is the entire population of Australia by the end of the week!

I erred by assuming that there would be a clear sign taking us to the bus station, we followed the only bus signs at the train station. These signs eventually emptied us out at the exact opposite end of the bus station that we needed. With only thirty minutes to go before our bus left and no idea of where to go I asked a nearby police officer for directions. Thankfully even with his limited English he offered clear directions and informed us that our bus was only 10 min walk – under the train station and around a shopping area. After some searching we eventually made it to the right spot which was nestled off the street and behind some buildings in a back alley not visible as a bus station until you are right on top of it. We made it with barely a few minutes to spare and having not yet purchased our water supplies, any snacks and had NO TIME to find an ATM.

SaucyMary went looking for water, while I stood in line to collect our prepaid tickets. She picked up 4 x 2L bottles, which while a bit big too fit in our packs, we ended up really needing. I had no luck finding an ATM, but I assumed there would be places where I could obtain cash amongst the shops and restaurants at Step 5 – the Fujiyama line, beginning of our chosen climbing route up the mountain (and the largest). The bus ride was filled with nervous excitement as all thirty travellers chatted in groups. It had been raining all week and while the weather had not cleared, no one was certain on what we would expect on the mountain which added to our collective nerves. The two and a half hour bus ride was uneventful enough taking us south of Tokyo through some rural areas and small towns towards the mountain.

We had a great view of life outside of Tokyo city… Amongst the signs of normal life were increasing numbers of rural plots, beautiful scenery with steep forested hills before a road tunnel would remove this view and the landscape on the other side would magically give way to small cities where hydroelectric pipes forge down the sides of the steepest hills and across train lines into small scale civilisation. The passing scenery was lovely but we were all seeking out the windows for the first sight of Fuji.

The transport worker in me marvelled at the bus route itself and noted the five different locations we pulling over on the elevated highway to pick up more passengers – unheard of at home, buses on highways do not stop, and what puzzled me was how these people ended up at these bus stops, stops where there didn’t appear to be any pedestrian access?!

The first sign marking our arrival near the national park was not a glimpse of the mountain, rather the sight of the giant Fujiyama Theme Park. The theme park has five of the largest rollercoasters in the world and at one time had THE largest and fastest rollercoaster in the world and it sits proudly at the base heralding our arrival. There was no activity in the park and as we couldn’t see anything for the fog, mist and clouds the bus full of passengers chatted away in hushed tones announcing our arrival to their travel companions. The bus entered the National Park/World Heritage Park and started ascending the mountain – starting at Step 1, the bus travelled slowly to Step 5 which is at 2,300m elevation. This part of the mountain is covered in thick forest and heavy vegetation and the mist added an other worldly air to the surrounds. The view removed any wonder at how this site had become sacred to the Jaapanese. It had finally stopped raining at this point, but the humidity was 100% so actual visibility into the forest areas was limited – about 40m in front of you at best meaning no sign of the top of the mountain

The bus parking leading into Step 5 surprised me at how massive it was – starting more than 500m away from the actual Step 5 Station unused this early in the climbing season. There was evidently enough parking for hundreds of buses which would make for a ridiculous climb with that many people. We got off our bus right near the Station and found four shops and a national parks information stand. It was ¥1000 per visitor to enter the park, and there was easily 500 people milling around this area. Most of them appeared to be Chinese and they were busying buying souvenirs and sending postcards. We bought the traditional pilgrims pole (walking stick) that is used to collect brands/stamps of the various stations as you progress up the mountain and placed some spare clothes in a locker for our return.

It was at this point that I discovered there were NO ATMS on the mountain. Fuck. No one takes credit up the mountain and we had limited cash. Which was quite the dilemma as we needed cash to pay for toilets at ¥200-¥300 each time you wanted to pee (that’s $3.30 per person to empty your bladder!), stamps for our walking sticks, food, water and any other needs. I had to borrow money back from the Small Child once I realised how little cash I had, but thankfully SaucyMary had some cash on her too… turned out to be barely enough to get us through. I highly recommend that anyone doing this hike, calculate how much cash you think you need to take – and then double it! I negotiated with one of the shops to accept my Visa to buy some lunch for all of us, and we all carb-loaded on curry rice and dumplings.

Having spent two hours attempting to find a way to acquire cash and have lunch, we had well acclimated to the elevation of Step 5 as we set off. Interesting to note – the first kilometre of the trek is fucking downhill! How bloody counterintuitive is that?! Thankfully SaucyMary had read the signs and was able to assure us that, yes, we were still on the right walking track and heading in the correct direction.

Mt Fuji Map We started off at 2pm, much later than planned, and while we had full tummies we were walking through a cold, fine mist of fog. At some point the track splits out for different hikes, and we saw the first sign to the Fuji summit and began climbing back up. We were still in a semi-forested area, where new trees were growing out of the ground and then appeared to be growing straight sideways. There was lots of water on the ground, so the track was wet, as it had been raining for weeks apparently.

It was around this point that we met our first hikers heading back down. We said our ‘hellos’ but were unable to get any useful information from them. :/ Not long after them, we encountered a group of crazy bastards – they were running. There was about fifteen of them all up and they were running down the mountain. What’s with that? Did they run up too? We have no idea.

The walk so far had been fairly easy. The tracks were wide and graded, and we reached Step 6 really quickly. There is a little information hut at Step 6 where they told us, if we wanted a stamp on our poles, we actually had to go down the mountain on another track (there is an alternate route to this point) – and even though we’d had it pretty easy going at this point, no one wanted to be backtracking. So much for collecting all the stamps on our poles. Visibility was still quite low, and we were unable to see more than 100m in any direction. We were comfortable, but we had no idea where we were going – you could not see the mountain stretching some way up beside us but we could not see Step 7 or step 8 where we would spend the night. The terrain had changed immediately after step 6 from vegetation to mostly volcanic rock… small crumbly red rocks that was compacted like crusher dust, so it was effectively like walking on concrete with the paths protected by large landslide barriers to keep the path intact. It was not far out of Step 6, about the tenth zigzag in the trail, that we started to need to take short breaks to regain our breath (elevation approx: XXX). Given that we live at sea level and were unused to the lighter oxygen it was getting more difficult to breath.

At one of these break stops, the weather started to clear and we could finally see Step 7 ahead of us, which had all these little huts all the way up to Step 7 and beyond. We could see there was snow still on the mountain, and importantly, we could see large rocks that we were going to have to clamber over. So it wasn’t until this point in our hike that we could feel that we were climbing the mountain – prior to this it just felt like we just walking to no where. Up. Just up.

We started to strike up some conversations with some of our fellow hikers – we met a group of about ten Americans who had been up the mountain before, but only to Step 7, but they had to come back down to catch their bus back on their previous climb and this time had worked out the logistics to make it all the way to the top. They were staying at the same lodge/mountain hut that we were – Fujisan Hotel at Step 8.

We reached the first of the Step 7 huts, and each was a tiny little shop where they would burn a brand into your pole, and they provided mats on the floor if you wanted to take a break out of the weather. Most had toilets… all of which was available to for a CASH fee (goddamn our lack of forethought on the cash front). We collected a few brands here and they cost ¥300 each (again about AU$3.30). At this point we pooled resources, after paying for expensive toilets and a locker at Step 5 (to hold some clean dry clothes for the ride home), I had only ¥2000 left and SaucyMary only about ¥4000. Grrr.

It was at this point that we and our American counterparts discovered that we had wrongly assumed that what we could see in front of us stretched up the mountain were the Step 8 huts, including the Fujisan Hotel. From where we were – as the huts seemed to stretch out in front of us… unfortunately all the ones we could see were still Step 7, and our Step 8 hotel was much further and more difficult to reach than we anticipated.

We collected some more stamps along the way, though perhaps not as many as we would have if we had brought more cash! The weather started to turn bad as we passed the third of the Step 7 huts. Rain, and proper rain this time. And the terrain between the huts was becoming more vertical – we were clambering over wet rocks and navigating through tour groups of school children and many elderly climbers waving their sticks around. We had to stop and readjust out clothing to cater for the rain… which is where I accidentally left my favourite purple polo shirt when I changed into something dry and warmer. A lot of the school kids were staying at Step 7 so the traffic thinned out after this – which was about 3000m elevation. We encountered our first signs for step eight indicating that there was an another hour and a half climbing and so we had to keep on going.

Weather Changed

From this point on, it would change between wide paths that we zigzagged up the mountain on about an 8-10° incline, and then straight up scrambling over rocks. The altitude was starting to really effect me at this point – SaucyMary was going on ahead and the Small Child seemed to be holding up well… so far. We could finally see Step 8 which still seemed a daunting distance away given it was such arduous terrain to cover, especially in the wet. One of the Americans was coming back down towards us about 15 mins shy of Step 8. He was heading back to Step 7, one of their party had injured her ankle and he was turning back to help her before dark – I can’t imagine how he felt, I was exhausted and was just about ready to turn around and go back… I didn’t have the energy to keep going beyond the next fifteen minutes and was unsure if I was going to be able to make it at all – and here he was, going back to help his friend.

Eventually we made it to our Fujisan Hotel at Step 8, at about 8pm – six hours after we left Step 5 (a 3 hour walk). We discovered it definitely wasn’t the Waldorf! LOL. Not that we were expecting luxury, but this was really rudimentary. There was six tables and benches for people to use. Fifteen of us there all taking off our wet clothes, that the owners were forcing us to put in plastic bags – when what we really wanted to do was hang them out in the hope they would dry a bit overnight. We ate our really simple meal, that was included with our ¥8500 per person accommodation – a bit of vegetarian curry rice with a rissole thing on the side and two cheerio sausages, of all things! So there we are, exhausted, soaking wet, worried about whether we can get our clothes dry, and encountering severe language difficulties to pay for our booking as the hut owners spoke no English whatsoever. No English – but they’re the only damn people on the mountain who take credit cards. Like many of these types of things the world over – there was one old guy there whose job it was to take everyone’s money, while the rest of six staff were run off their feet cooking and settling everyone in.

We were rushed through our meals, and then for reasons unknown, we were being pushed upstairs to go to bed? No idea why, the staff all appeared to be awake all night anyway, so it’s not like their shifts were ending. Once we had eaten, we were escorted upstairs with our plastic bags full of wet clothes and shown to our bunks (NB: generous to call it a bunk). It was a sleeping bag and blanket of dubious cleanliness, a mat each of about 70cm in width, crammed in with our neighbours, and a hook above each ‘bunk’ to hang your bag. We were literally laying shoulder to shoulder, with sleeping space for about 120 and it was full.

I didn’t sleep more than about an hour and a half to two hours over the six we were there- there was a lot of noise, lights were left on, some bloody loud snorers, the Small Child was complaining of a sore tummy, the bedding was sandy (the sleeping sheet that I had read would be provided never materialised) and it was hot and stuffy and due to the elevation, very hard to breathe. In hindsight, it is possible this room full of weary hikers was not very well ventilated and we may well have been breathing in a lot of carbon dioxide all night… not optimal for hitting the trail again in the morning. I spent the night labouring with my breathing and listening to the Small Child breathing hard too… and I was feeling anxious about the hour of hard climb we had left to do to get to the summit.

I got up twice to go to the toilet and was supposed to pay ¥200 each time but stuffed if I was going to pay ¥8500 per person to stay there for the night and then shell out more to use the loo. There was actually a coin operated turnstile to go to the toilet… screw that, I jumped it, and with some encouraging, so did the Small Child – though he felt bad about ‘doing the wrong thing’ but bugger this for a joke, I didn’t! After a fitful six hours, people started to be woken around 2am, even though our wake up time was scheduled for 2:30am, it was impossible to ignore everyone getting ready to leave the hut for the final hour of the hike. I was very thankful we had climbed so far the day before and that we hadn’t stayed at a lower hut and were not faced with a harder climb to be done.

We all put on our wet clothes, and plastic bags over our socks to keep our feet dry under our wet shoes and it was still lightly raining outside. It looked threatening and like it would start raining heavily again at any moment. The Small Child was still complaining of a sore stomach and I was muscle sore from the day before and both of us having trouble breathing, and we sat in silence for about five minutes – I was internally debating if we should even go onwards or wait for sunrise and see what the weather was doing… the whole idea of this overnight endeavour was to see the sunrise, so…? We looked outside and could see the lights going up the trail, and we had markers to indicate how much further it was, but they didn’t seem to be a good indicator prior to this point. We could still not see the summit or beyond another three hundred meters up the mountain.

The final decision was made – we were going to head out and try to see the sunrise. We made our way for Step 8.5. Which was listed as 30 minutes climb and by the looks of the lights ahead of us, was almost straight up. It didn’t look good, and given our sea level fitness, I decided to buy a small bottle of oxygen largely because I was worried about how our already laboured breathing sounded.

Going through this 30 minutes was almost as difficult as the last hour of the previous days climb. We would move forward a dozen steps and need to rest. I could feel the heaviness of the altitude on my chest, and the Small Child was stopping, to sit, his head in his hands, with a sore stomach and breathing with difficulty. I couldn’t convince him to eat anything as he was worried about throwing it up, so no doubt he was low on blood sugar too – not ideal. So much for the 30 mins, it took us a full hour to complete this section because of our constant need to rest.

it was as we left step 8.5 that I noticed a woman travelling near us who was clearly suffering from altitude sickness, she was alone, she was well equipped, but was throwing up, sweating and dishevelled. We were all showing some symptoms of the effects of the altitude, but none of us were suffering as badly as she was. Luckily for her other travellers regularly stopped to help her and offer assistance. Both the small child and I felt terrible but were clearly not suffering as badly as others on the climb.

After Step 8.5, we had only another 30 minutes to the Summit. But again, it was straight up and over rocky terrain. This final section took well over an hour. The sun rise occurred as we were about 150m from the summit. We did not miss our sunrise moment as even if we were at the summit, rain and mist had given way to cloud and patchy light making it a moot point.

You would think that only 150m could be covered quickly but not on that track and not at that altitude. We saw a red sliver in the east and the gloom lifted somewhat so we were able to turn off our head lamps. Saucy Mary went on ahead, as the Small Child and I were going quite slow to accommodate his feeling unwell. He was really struggling. We must have stopped every five steps. I gave him little goals, ‘Let’s make it to where those people are and we can have some oxygen’… It was around this point that Angel had what I guess was a panic attack. He felt he couldn’t’ breathe, he was agitated, and lacking in oxygen, he was so desperate, he went DOWN about five meters back to a rock he had been sitting on before as he knew it was a comfortable place to stop. We rested there for about ten minutes, and he had some oxygen. I managed to get him to have some Kit Kat at this point, which was much needed and thankfully he managed to keep it down. He felt a little bit better and we continued our climb.

Five meters. Stopping. Five meters. Stopping. Until we were about 75m from the top. Throughout this last section, we could hear people cheering upon reaching the Summit… and at this point, the clouds seemed to lift and we could finally see the Summit. The goal was finally in view. Up until this point, we were trudging, seemingly endlessly towards an ethereal unseen goal. With only 50m to go, the rocky unforgiving terrain changed to civilized stairs. With the promise of hot chocolate at the Summit, the Small Child rallied considerably and started to bound ahead with renewed vigour. I myself was struggling really badly still. Angel was nice enough to wait for me though, and we passed under the torii gate, signalling the end of our climb, arm in arm.

Both smiling knowing that the ascent was over, knowing that we had made it, when both of us were really not sure that we would… in fact at various points, convinced that we wouldn’t – we felt victorious. We had some breakfast at the top consisting of the bento boxes that were supplied from the hut. It was rice and a squishy plastic packet of some unknown kind of meat that you squeezed out onto the rice. It looked terrible, tasted like cat food, and was completely awful, but we ate the lot.

Many photos later and a final stamp on our poles from the Shrine at the Mt Fuji Summit, we went to explore the Mt Fuji crater… which it turns out we just had to assume was there. The weather had changed yet again, and visibility reduced to about 50m, so we saw none of the crater. I had timed the descent to meet our pre-arranged return bus, and due to the extra time taken to reach the Summit, we had little spare time to soak in our surroundings.

Knowing how hard the climb was on our return journey, the time had come to start going down whether we liked it or not. So we started down, and about ten minutes down from the top, the weather shifted again and completely cleared. Ten minutes too late for us to see the crater and the view, but now we had clear view of our descent and the beating sun suddenly to contend with.

For the next two hours of the downward descent, SaucyMary cursed that she had not waited the extra ten minutes at the top to see the crater and some of the view. The descent route takes a completely different path. Still very steep and rocky, but a more zigzagged route on moving loose gravel that shifted underfoot. For the next four hours, we zigzagged down the mountain, sun blaring down on us with no trees or shade. We had been watching the weather all week, and were completely unprepared for sunshine – no hats, no sunscreen, no protection. We stopped at the top of Step 7 to recover (it took us one hour to get there, a distance which had taken us close to four hours on the way up), use the bathroom with the last of our yen, and remove the heaviest of our cold and wet weather clothes. We were forced to pay for the pay toilets at this stop – there was turnstile on it AND a security camera… a security camera to stop people using the loo for free!

The entire descent is supposed to take four hours for slow walkers – it took us four hours and ten minutes, winding our way down the volcanic landscape on both sides of us. We could see people on the other trail, making their way up the mountain and in that heat, exhausted after more than ten hours of climbing, we were very pleased we were on our way down.

From here, the remainder of the trek was fairly uneventful. We were able to breathe easier, even though we were going downhill, the walking was still difficult and we were feeling the full affects of what was effectively 24 hours of travel. I had to keep changing my knee brace from knee to knee, having only brought one with me, but both of my knees were really feeling this hard downwards section. Each zigzag section was numbered, and fifty zigzags later we reached the bottom of Step 7, (on the way up, Step 7 lasts about an two hours of climbing, thankfully it seemed much shorter on the way down). By now we were sunburnt, hot and walking around in soggy, and for some of us, disintegrating, shoes.

Finally, Step 5 and our bus back to civilisation and an enormous sense of relief and accomplishment. It was funny – when we got to Step 5 we hadn’t seen anyone who had come through and been up the mountain, but knowing what we had done, we entered into the little shopping precinct where there were bus loads of day trippers who come up for the day to see the view from Step 5, milling around the souvenir shops and then they go back. It was funny because they were clean and fresh off their air conditioned coaches, and here we were bedraggled, unkempt and dead on our feet, but no one seemed to notice. We changed into the fresh dry clothes that we left in a locker and returned to Tokyo.

On the bus on the way back, I was completely exhausted, I hadn’t thought much on what we had done, and pretty much slept all the way back on the bus, given we hadn’t slept much the night before. It wasn’t until we got off the bus, safely back in Tokyo that the three of us celebrated our achievement. It was one of the most arduous experiences of my life, but I am glad we stuck it out and we did it.

If anyone is contemplating this climb here are my tips:

Bring cash, lots of cash. notes are fine as you can get change but bring cash…
Climbing poles were a godsend in traversing some difficult terrain but essential on the return down the mountain. buy a pole for stamps but bring a normal climbing pole as well.
Don’t set a day to climb, set a time period and stay in the local area, there is a lot to do but if you are less tied to a specific date you can chose around the weather.
Climb in a group.
And last but not least… don’t plan to take your teenage son to Akihabara Electric Town mere hours after putting yourself through all this! Big mistake! 😛

Another Great Wave of Disappointment

Posted on July 10, 2015 by borysSNORC

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura?, “In the well of a wave off Kanagawa”), also known as The Great Wave or simply The Wave, is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. It was published sometime between 1830 and 1833[1] in the late Edo period as the first print in Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku sanjūrokkei?). It is Hokusai’s most famous work, and one of the best recognized works of Japanese art in the world. It depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the prefecture of Kanagawa. While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is, as the picture’s title suggests, more likely to be a large rogue wave or okinami (“wave of the open sea”).[2] As in all the prints in the series, it depicts the area around Mount Fuji under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the background.

Copies of the print are in many Western collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne,[3] and in Claude Monet’s house in Giverny, France, amongst many other collections.

This is Mr K’s favourite piece of art. Which is by way of saying, it’s the only piece of art he has ever been interested in or appears to enjoy, because well… as loathe as I am to admit he – the poor sod has no genuine appreciation for art in general, whatsoever. Such a sad miserable artless life Mr K does live. 😉 Anyway, onto my story. Mr K’s enjoyment of this piece goes way back – his iPhone 3 had a Great Wave gelaskin back in the day and now his iPhone 6+ sports it as a screen background, as does his PC at home these many years… yes, it’s this level of die hard dedication and appreciation we are talking about here *tongue firmly in cheek*.So back up a few years to Mr K’s first trip to the MET in New York… he was excited to think he was going to be able to see The Great Wave on display. Wandered the galleries, wandered some more galleries – but alas, no Great Wave. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, he eventually resorted to asking for directions to the piece, but was told that it was a very delicate object and is not currently on display. Naturally Mr K was disappointed to miss out..

After that trip, he came home and researched and found out that the National Gallery of Victoria has a copy of this magnificent woodblock print, and he felt this would be an excellent thing as his work takes him to Melbourne semi-regularly. However, each and every time he has found himself in Melbourne for work, ‘We are sorry, sir, but that item is not on display.’ and he has missed out again. Shit and bugger, Mr K has been repeatedly thwarted and disappointed in his efforts to see it in Melbourne.

Last year in March 2014 – off to NYC again, this time with me! And I drag him all over all the MET galleries, at some point he abandons me for the New York Transport museum which is way downtown and I’m still wandering the MET. We are pretty sure it’s not out, but ask around anyway, and yet again – no, the Great Wave is not on display at this time either, however we are happy to keep flogging merchandise featuring the image of the Great Wave on tote bags, pencil cases, coffee mugs and umbrellas, in the gift shop! 😉 More piss and vinegar from Mr K as he misses it, yet again.

A couple of weeks later we are at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and I stumble on some notepaper featuring the Great Wave in the MFA gift shop and ask the staff why they have items featuring the Great Wave… the response, “Well, the MFA has a copy of that woodblock print so we have stuff with the Great Wave all over it, but it’s not on display at the moment because it’s really old and fragile.” The look on Mr K’s face is priceless… waves, waves, everywhere, but nary an original to be seen. He’s getting seriously annoyed by this time, well as seriously annoyed as your average Canadian gets!

At some point in amongst all this Mr K reads a news article detailing how there was a large set of Hokusai’s original prints from the ‘Views of Mt Fuji’ series, in the Wellness Spa of the Costa Concordia, which some drunken cruise liner captain sailed aground on January 13th, 2012 in an ill conceived game of high stakes chicken with an island off Italy. The tragedy of it all… Mr K is lamenting his poor decision to not have been born sole heir to an enormous coal mining fortune; for if he had, he claims he would have purchased a copy of it himself by now, and have it on loan to the modest Queensland Art Gallery so he could enjoy it whenever he wanted. Such determination to see this one piece of art!

So here we are, 2014 and the planning begins for a trip to Japan. Mr K is convinced he will finally see a copy of his beloved Great Wave off Kanagawa somewhere in Japan. So he starts doing his research on every art museum he can find in all the cities and towns we are going to be visiting. Without fail, every single one of them comes up empty… not a single copy of this artwork can be found listed as on display in any of the major art museums of Japan! Mr K is very disappointed – yet again. Which brings us up to date – when two days ago, we were shopping in Kagurazaka and I see the now ubiquitous, Great Wave on a fan…
Naturally, I decide that I really should buy one, (which gains me a growl of indignation from Mr K) and just on spec while the sales assistant is ringing up my purchase and wrapping up my new fan, I decide to ask him 1) does he speak English, and upon affirmation that yes he does a little, 2) does he know where we can go to see this piece of art? Well, off the top of his head, he doesn’t know… but he turns to his computer and starts searching the internet for us. On all the Japanese websites that we can’t read and English Google doesn’t deal with so well. In a few moments, he turns back to us and starts writing down an address for the Ota Memorial Museum of Art, and tells us that it looks like they have a copy on display. Mr K is watching this exchange with increasing interest until eventually he walks out of the store with a huge grin and a piece of paper that will lead him to the promised Great Wave.

We head off to the war museum and shrine as planned, stop for some lunch and then head to the Ota Memorial Museum of Art. A bit of a walk, a couple of trains and subway stops later and we arrive at the museum… only to discover this:
For those of us who don’t speak Japanese, myself included, this poster tells us that the piece in question will be on display from the 1st of August until the 27th of September 2015. Well, as luck would have it, we are back from our cruise on Monday the 3rd of August and have the whole day free before we fly out for China at stupid o’clock on Tuesday the 4th of August… those of you who ‘museum’ a lot, can probably feel what is coming next. Yes, that is right. The Ota Memorial Museum is CLOSED ON MONDAYS is the great tradition of museums the world over. At this point all decorum is lost and Mr K is pouting like a small child who has just been told he can ride the pony and see the clowns, but at the last moment is sent to bed. Oh, the complete lack of comprehension at such bad luck expressed by someone normally in possession of a Parking Fairy, it’d be hilarious if it weren’t so ridiculous by now.

So poor Mr K is thwarted yet again… and to absolutely and finally rub salt into the wound, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is holding celebrations to commemorate the centennial of their Asian Collections later this year, and I am going to be there to see it, but Mr K will not be with me.

After all the chasing and research that has gone into finding a copy of this woodblock print on display, I would actually like to see the piece as well… but there is a little part of me, thinking – perhaps I should avoid it at the MET in September, so that we can continue to hunt for it together. 🙂

Dynamic Tokyo Highlights

Posted on July 9, 2015 by borysSNORC

While the others had decided to go hiking up Mt Fuji, in the freezing cold, and with massive amounts of rainfall predicted, I decided to take a more sensible approach to my sightseeing activities today and had a great schedule lined up.

First stop was the Tokyo Tower. Tokyo Tower was built in the post war era when Japan was trying to re-create itself and it’s international identity. It is loosely modelled on the Eiffel Tower but is apparently 13m taller – thems was some pretty important 13m at the time I am sure. Apparently the bright orange colour is due to aviation requirements and given the foggy and hazy weather we have been having since we got here, I can well understand why that particular regulation is in place. It is an unapologetic tourist trap – complete with super fast lift with flashing whizz bang lights in the ceiling (The Rock anyone?) and an observation deck at 150m that gives some great views over Tokyo. At the bottom, there is a huge selection of rip off souvenir shops, an aquarium and a small wax museum. Worth it for the views, but I just skipped out on the rest. 🙂 One of those things that you enjoy if you just accept it for what it is, I think.

The view from the observation deck is quite interesting, even on this day of pretty crappy weather. This shrine has a famous cemetery where six of the last Shogun samurai were interred… cemeteries here seem to be less accessible and definitely not photo friendly from what we have seen so far – quite the opposite of New Orleans and Arlington on our last trip where you paid an admission fee and got the guided tour. The tower also has some of those freaky glass bottom floor sections so you can see just how far down it is. To be honest, looking over the railing in our apartment building is more stomach lurching than this was… perhaps something to do with the repetition, but it looks like the floors go down indefinitely.

Our next stop was to the famous Hama-rikyu Gardens, favourite spot for Shinto weddings apparently – we were greeted by a policeman sitting in a police box. According to Atsushi, our host and tour guide extraordinare, Japan has an extremely low crime rate of 1.5% (percent of what I want to know?!) and the police in his box, well, he is ‘waiting for crime’. The gardens are lovely. Well manicured and lovingly kept, there are beautiful little tea houses where we go to meet a master of the tea ceremony who is called Sensai (teacher). The Sensai was not what I was expecting, a mature woman of delicate features whose movements were well practiced and elegantly executed.

Authentic powdered green tea used by samurai warriors ‘for the dizzies’, which turns out meant they used it as a hangover cure because of its high caffeine content. The sensai makes us tea according to the rituals, and we in our turn execute our part of the ritual. A cup is placed before us, we pick it up with our right hand, cupping it underneath with the left, and then using our right hand rotate it clockwise to move the pictured side of the cup away from where we will drink from. Your first sip is deep, and followed by more smaller sips… until the last sip which must be taken with an audible slurp noise. We then wipe the edge of the cup with the index finger and thumb before turning the cup counter clockwise so the picture faces ourselves again and we may then put the cup down. The tea Sensai will then ask, ‘How was your tea?’ to which we are required to bow, and answer ‘kekodesu’, meaning excellent. It is apparently part of the ceremony to respond ‘excellent’ even if you dislike the bitter taste so as not to offend the sensai and her years of training. 🙂

After leaving the teahouse, we have some time to explore the famous gardens, absolutely beautiful and so peaceful. You would never know you are in the middle of one of the world’s biggest cities. There were koi about 30-40cm long in a beautiful pond, and a row of bonsai trees, the oldest of which was 520 years old. Even though it was raining today, the gardens had a beautiful fresh and rainforest like look about them, or perhaps it was because it was raining today that it felt like that…

Next we moved onto a Japanese BBQ lunch at the Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo, which is also set in some amazing gardens. The Japanese BBQ here is cooked on a flat piece of rock cut from lava up at Mt Fuji, and is heated using a gas system and cooked at the table for us. I had lunch with a lovely lady named Melody (not her real name, Anglicised version of a name she didn’t bother telling me because none of her English friends could pronounce it anyway!) who came from a ‘small town’ in Southern China called Spring City… her ‘small town’ by the way which has a population of ‘only 20 million people’. Jesus, that’s almost the population of Australia.

Lunch was a lovely combination of pork, wagu beef, eggplant, onion, carrot, potato, all cooked on the lava stone, and rice, salad and topped off with green tea gelato/ice cream (not sure which, not creamy enough to be ice cream, not icy enough to be gelato!). And a lovely stroll through the gardens on the way out to our pick up, Atsushi, who said to us ‘Thank you for being puncture’ on our return. Love quirks of language… we know what he meant.
We ran into these lovely ladies dressed in their kimono as we were leaving the gardens, I said hello and said they looked lovely, and a compliment goes a long way as they were happy to allow us to take some photos. Atsushi tells us that formal kimono for a young lady’s ‘coming out’ could cost upwards of USD$10,000 by the time the inner and outer robes, and inner and outer belts (obi), undergarments, shoes, hair ornaments etc were all added in. Which is why most families have these lovely kimono that are passed down from generation to generation. The other interesting thing I learned about kimono today is that both men and women wear them wrapped left over right – if you wear it right wrapped over left, you are probably dead. As in, that is the only time they dress someone that way, for burial.

After lunch we head off to the Imperial Palace which is right in the middle of Chiyoda-ku and some absolutely enormous grounds (you have to check that out on Google Maps – it’s huge). Most of the gardens are closed to the public except on January 2nd to welcome in the New Year and December 23rd to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. The Imperial Palace is not open to visitors either but wandering the East Gardens of the was worth a look-see. Apparently the Palace houses only two members of the Imperial family – the Emperor and the Empress, the rest of their family live in a different palace not far away. There is a staff of 500 body guards to look after the 2 of them, and they are very carefully selected and trained. They must first pass a national exam, then train for 1 year in English, law, both Japanese marital arts – kendo and judo – as well as poetry, calligraphy, dancing, skiing, horse riding “everything they need to guard the Emperor and Empress. Very busy.”

This is the imposing gravel pathway leading up to the lookout for the Imperial Palace in the middle of the East Gardens, and over the other side of the Uchibori-dori Ave is Shinjuku, which was largely bought up by Mitsubishi a few decades ago and now sells for USD$270,000 per square meter. That’s right – over there real estate is worth a small fortune, the seemingly unused gravel parade ground? Driveway? Mall-that-looks-like-th-Washington-Mall-without-any-monuments? is just laying around doing nothing but providing an impressive walk way for tourists on real estate worth the equivalent of some medium sized African nation’s GDP! Wow… but I did find the guy who has Tokyo’s worst job ever. This dude appears to be raking all these acres of gravel by himself, and the inconsiderate tourists who were running all through it to get the right spots for their photos didn’t even seem to notice this poor guy coming along after them smoothing out their footprints. Crazy. 🙂

We then took a drive past the fish markets; have to go back there for breakfast apparently – it seems highly improbable that I’ll make it at 4:30am one morning to see the tuna auctioned though! This year, the first auction of the year on January 2nd saw the first blue fin tuna sell for $1.5million dollars which comes with, well, tune, bragging rights and a shitload of advertising. So it is always highly sought after. Much like our first tray of mangoes for the season auction, I think. Past the fish markets and onto a Tokyo Harbour boat cruise to see a bit of the city from the water. Unfortunately much of the commentary for the boat trip was drowned out by groups of noisy school children who were having a ball (and wearing the most adorable sailors girls uniforms – they actually do that, I thought it was just an anime thing!), so I can’t remember half of what we were told or what the bridges etc were named.

Unfortunately, this was not our boat and we were on a modern city cat type thing… but a very cool looking ship the purpose of which completely evades me. 🙂

I did manage to find out what these weird buildings were – they were designed to celebrate the centenary of Asahi Beer… the building on the left is designed to look like a frothing glass of beer, and of course it does – once it is pointed out to you. The sperm looking thing is supposed to represent passion for what they do, but all anyone sees is obscure sperm thing and no one wants to think about beer and passion and sperm in the same sentence, so moving right along!

Next stop was Asakusa, which is an amazing little shopping district smooshed in around an important Buddhist temple called the Asakusa Kannon Temple and a well known Shinto Shrine. We wandered the shops for a while, there were lots of Japanese type ‘stuff’ for sale – kimono, swords, fans, chopsticks, mobile phone dangly bits, cats with waving arms, umbrellas, sandals, sushi, pastries, lantern flower pots (these are pretty cool, the lantern flowers are supposed to be planted by your front door so that your ancestor deities can find you when they come down from heaven), Hello Kitty stuff, things with the Great Wave on them, more kimono, more chopsticks… you get the idea. Lovely winding little streets with a permanent market feel.
By this time it was pouring down rain and heading towards 6pm. So off back to Tokyo Station to head off in our separate directions. Can’t believe the train system which seemed quite daunting on Tuesday is now quite happily navigated on Thursday. Had no trouble finding my way back to Hamamatsucho Station, found a bento box full of all good things and am having an early night. All up it’s been a great day and I hope the weather clears for the guys up Fuji, but if they are getting anywhere near the rain we have had here today – that’s seriously gotta suck. :/

Running amok in Tokyo.

Posted on July 9, 2015 by borysSNORC

We were planning on a pottering sort of quiet day getting to know Tokyo a bit better after yesterday’s hectic transit day and then wandering around a bit dazed through Shinjuku. So much for that!

We head off in the morning for the Kagurazaka neighbourhood, which is an old district full of tiny little alleyways and bars and tea houses. This older area of Tokyo is also a district for geisha though running into them first thing in the morning is unlikely. We took the JR line train to get here and then a wander up the street led us to the Daijingu shrine. It is known to be a lucky place for those seeking romance and observers come here to make offerings, prayers and donations and leave behind cards and knotted paper wishes on special days of observance – like yesterday the 7th of the 7th.

Inside the temple – yes, I know, no photos allowed, but how can I describe this without writing a thousand words? Outside every Shinto shrine is a place where observers can purify themselves before making their offerings. Water is poured on one hand, then the other than to the mouth (usually symbolically these days of micro organism awareness), then water is drawn again and allowed to run over the ladle to clean it for the next person.The back alleys of the Kagurazaka district looks exactly like you would expect it to, tiny buildings with little doorways causing entrants to bow deeply upon entering that has been built on over the years. It feels like buildings are not knocked down here to make way for the new, they seem to build by squeezing in among existing buildings or keeping old facades and building upwards behind. It’s very quaint and picturesque. We are planning on coming back here at night to see all the street lanterns lit up and when the bars are overflowing with guests. Saw these massive posts of very messy electrical wiring everywhere in the twisty tiny alleys – I’ve seen much, much worse in places like Romania and Pakistan, but it always makes you worry a little. 🙂 How could they? *twitch twitch*The doorways to all the little bars are just my size, at 5’5″ now though, even Angel would have to duck his head to enter places like these. There are also loads of Italian and French restaurants in the area boasting they’ve been in business for 20 years or more. I never would have expected to see so many restaurants serving European cuisine tucked into one traditionally Japanese tiny neighbourhood – no big chain fast food outlets though, which is kinda cool. Also lots of French patisserie style bakeries selling all the usual croissants and pasteries.Never seen such enormous pork buns – these were larger than a grapefruit and about three times the size of what we buy at home – even just one would easily be very filing for lunch. All sorts of flavours and wrapped in plastic… no idea if they were consumed hot or cold, but was just amused at the sheer size of them. We wandered down the street a little, went into a paper shop selling loads of packets of origami paper, another store selling coloured cut glass that looked almost Venetian, and fans galore as well as pairs of highly decorated chopsticks…. and a shoe shop. After wandering around Kagurazaka for a couple of hours, we head over towards the Yasukuni shrine and the Yushukan War Museum. The war memorial is quite controversial apparently – it clearly celebrates Japan’s lost soldiers, and I don’t use the word ‘celebrate’ lightly… the museum endorses and bolsters the Japanese involvement in WWI and WWII and appears to staunchly support and celebrate the acts of soldiers performed for the good of the Emperor and Empire. Bit hard to explain, but the museum is completely unapologetic for Japan’s involvement in the war. The memorial even honours those hanged for war crimes, go figure. Even the Japanese people themselves disagree with how the government/powers that be are representing these war criminals at the musuem… you see, 80% of Japanese are Shintoist and 70% are Buddhist, which of course adds up to 150% of religiously flexible people. Shinto is all about living a good life, but has no concept of an afterlife, whereas Buddhism is very much interested in living a good life to make it to the next life. So many Japanese ‘Live as a Shintoist and die as a Buddhist’ so they can have the paradise afterlife.

Shino is a philosophy that embraces nature, ancestor worship and hero worship… and according to Shinto principles, those who live a good life can go one to become gods or dieties after death – hence the Japanese peoples’ strong reaction to those hung as war criminals being honoured as gods or dieties at this musuem and its memorial festivals.As we made our way down the imposing boulevard – the arch shows the way to the ‘pure’ side of the shrine, leaving the unpure behind – leading up to the Yasukuni shrine which was built in 1882 to honour the now over 2.5 million people Japan has lost in various wars, we saw thousands of lanterns being hung up by a crew of about 20 men, for a festival that starts next week…I have discovered that the writing on these lanterns is not as I had expected – names of the honourable dead, but rather they are names of families, companies, restaurants, organizations etc, who have sponsored the festival. So, kinda advertising… which is not as romantic or lofty as what I had originally thought.
Festival poster – You never realise just how much easier it is to travel around in English speaking countries, until you head ‘somewhere else’ and are confronted with the inability to read. Anything. The lanterns closer to the shrine are in numbered panels laid out among cherry blossom tress (not currently in bloom) and flocks of white doves live in the park to out number the war hawks; maps display which group are on what panel… each of these little yellow boxes has a light in it and once the festival starts up will look spectacular all lit up. Spectacularly lit up names of companies and sponsors that is. The Kasukuni shrine was built in 1882 and is one of Tokyo’s grandest shrines, attracting lots of visitors. All observers would purify their hands first, then come to the front of the shrine, place an offering in the box (cash offerings even very small coins), bow twice, clap loudly twice to draw the attention of the ancestral dieties, stand with their hands together in silence and make a wish, bow once more time and walk away backwards. As tourists who wanted to get a closer look, without fully knowing the local customs, we walked to the front of the shrine, placed an offering in the box, had a good look around, staring thoughtfully at the building itself wishing we could go inside, before backing out. So, I’ve found a hole in my research – I know the conduct expected when visiting mosques but hadn’t thought to look into the proper etiquette when visiting shrines and temples in Japan. 🙂 I am sure we will figure it out – last thing you want to do is offend by not following customs. (NB: Have been reliably informed that the procedure outlined above is correct and all are welcome to make offerings and wishes at Shinto shrines – it is more a philosphy than a formal religion so the Japanese are not offended by heathen Christians participating which makes a nice change from visiting mosques).Gorgeous sea monster statuary outside the war memorial, there were also statues commemorating war horses and dogs involvement in wars.In the main lobby to the war museum is the train which operated on the Taimen Railway between Burma and Thailand during the Greater East Asia War. After the war, the train was used by the Thai before being recovered and returned to Japan (it was domestically made here originally) for the museum.There are many fascinating armaments and objects on display, armour from 900 years ago worn by various famous warrior generalsnlike Minamoto no Yoshiie – it is hard to see in the photograph, but they are decorated with plum blossoms and butterflies and denote a person of high rank. Below is a picture of a Kaitan one man submarine torpedo that was piloted to hit an enemy ship. It contained 1.5 tonnes of high explosives in its bow and would instantaneously sink a ship – over a hundred people committed suicide in one of these Kaiten torpedos. I never heard of these before… the nautical equivalent of suicide airforce pilots.The main Shrine of the Yaskuni shrine being built in 1882 had large scale repairs during he Showa era and the original roof was kept here for display. Below is a rising sun flag signed by prisoners of war during WWII who were all considered class A war criminals…
This plaque sums up the entire evolvement of the Japanese in Papua New Guinea… and that’s it. No mention of Milne Bay and the first major setback the Japanese army experienced in the Pacific, nothing. Also notably absent was ANY MENTION OF PEARL HARBOUR! It’s like it never happened. No shit – all the info leading up to Japan entering WWII is mind numbingly boring information of how Japan was relying on the US for natural resources like oil, copper etc., and how the US was pressuring Japan over their involvement in Indochina. By this read – Japan engaged in WWII because of trade sanctions that the US had unfairly imposed. That’s it. Further on there was an entire exhibition room full of these bridal dolls. The dolls were made by the bereaving families of unmarried nobles whose ‘spirits had died in battle’. The dolls were made by the mothers of soldiers and offered to the shrine, this one was the first, which appeared after a solder was killed in action in Okinawa.

The War Muesum was very interesting and I would highly recommend people go check it out when in Tokyo – it is supposed to take about 90 minutes to complete the museum tour, but is much much quicker if you can’t read Japanese. 😛

After the war museum and memorial we went chasing an art gallery, but had been sent on a wild goose chase looking for some art at the Ota Memorial Museum of Art, which has turned into such a saga as to be worthy of a post all of its own – so I will get to that later as I do not have time to do it justice now.

We then made our way to Shibuya which has the enormous scramble crossing from hell. It was raining and there were umbrellas going everywhere, it was complete and total chaos and noisy and singing lamp posts and trucks with music playing and just mad house. Fun in a crazy kinda way. We went looking for a quiet bar to spend some time to recuperate. 🙂

We dropped Aunty Mary and Angel off and then headed to Shimbashi station to meet up with some friends from Mr K’s work. I was expecting a lovely night of talking taxi and limousine reform ahead… boy was I wrong! We went bar hopping in the Ginza district, stopping here for a glass of red, stopping there for a G&T, found an interesting restaurant we have no idea the name of but we called it ‘Dumpling City’ as there were hundreds of dumpling pictures outside the restaurant. Lots of amazing conversation… it turns out Mr K’s work counterpart from taxi and limousine in Victoria is married to the Minister for Education from the Victorian Government, so we had a wonderful evening of politics, travel, and Japanese absurdity.
Many of these high rise buildings house tiny stair cases leading up and down to ‘mistress bars’ – these are bars set up for the cast off mistresses by their former lovers once they’ve had enough of their affairs! Bit of a weird custom if you ask me, but it’s quite the done thing. You have a mistress, as you do… and when you are sick of her, you no longer pay for her apartment and her lifestyle, so you set her up keeping her own little bar in which she can make a livelihood. It’s absurd and awesome.All round a great day but somewhat exhausting…. I’d like to say tomorrow is going to be lighter on and a bit easier – but there is so much to do!

Toyko, we made it!

Posted on July 7, 2015 by borysSNORC

Whoa. Long flight is long. And for some reason even longer when there are strange people near you who insist on doing annoying things – like the guy who kept turning his light on to check the time on his watch about every half hour? And the woman who was wearing a face mask, but who kept lifting it up to pick her nose? And the young guy across the aisle beside us who insisted on working or doing his taxes or filling out a college application or something for about two hours after everyone else on the plane had decided it was lights out… seriously? What’s with that?

I love to travel, but bloody hell I hate the long haul flights. This one was particularly bad – the air con was ridiculously drying and seemed to by spraying a superfine dust over everything drying out your eyes, nose, sinuses, and leaving a film of crap on surfaces… bit of a worry that. Maybe it was because it’s an older plane (you can always tell – the entertainment system was operated by a remote in the arm rest and options were pretty limited compared to the touch screen ones) with less than ‘fresh’ and springy padding in the seats. None of us slept… so at least it wasn’t just me for a change. Need to change it up on the drug combo for the flight home. 😛

Anyway, we arrived at Narita, a lot of which appears to be under construction… even though we were all feeling pretty trashed, Mr Public Transport Expert came to the rescue and found us shuttle tickets and not long before we were on our way. Unfortunately the weather is really shit here today and expected to stay that way until the weekend (hopefully it improves, the guys are planning on climbing Fuji, but there is no real point if the weather is shit and there’s nothing to see but cloud), so we didn’t see a lot of the country side on the way into Tokyo Station. The airport shuttle took about an hour and a half – traffic is as crap as Brisbane but seems more polite – and then we switched to a JR line train to get to our accommodation which is in Shimbashi, in the Ginza District. We ginned about a bit getting our key to the apartment we are staying in and finally got here around 10am? about 18 hrs after leaving home. So stupid flying out Sydney couple of hours the wrong way, then nearly a three hour lay over in Sydney, before heading north. Thankfully we’ll be going direct on the way home as new routes start on Aug 1, Brisbane to Narita. Woot, that will seriously cut down the transit time.

We settled in here a bit, laughed at the toilet, went ‘Hmmm, futons, didn’t think of that’ and all laid down for a nap. Two hours later and we thought we had better make something of the day. Quick freshen up and out the door to the Shinjuku area for a look around and to find an early dinner. Trains and I don’t mix. We especially don’t mix when I’m overtired and in a lot of pain… but it’s the only sensible choice and Mr K, being well versed in all things public transport, managed to get us there without too much incident.

Lovely area of town, lots of little back full of restaurants and shops screaming duty free at tourists. It is a weird blend of what we expect old Japanese back alleys to look like, mixed with ‘da-da-da-da-da Hollywood, big fuck off room, neon signs’, Yeah! We went into a noodle bar and ordered noodle surprise meals – literally, none of us had any idea what we were ordering, and then were handed enormous bowls of who knows what that we went ‘okay, that could be what I asked for’… delicious! Huge serves of veggies and noodly goodness. Score.

We wandered around a bit, took in some sight, Mr K and Angel are fascinated with all the vending machines – they are everywhere and full of all sort of mysterious things. We went into some gaming fun zone type places, some anime stores, department stores and later stumbled into a Bavarian Beer Hall – yeah I know. Weirdest beer hall ever – about three stories underground, gothic arches in the architecture, but art deco mock stained glass windows and really dodgy attempts at 15thC Flemish peasants painted as wall frescos, and Japanese food?! Go figure.

After that it was back to the Hamamatsucho train station and the grocers for some wine, snacks and ready for an early night. Lots of weirdness in the grocery store – love it and wine! Yay. (oh, and more Japanese curry than you can poke a stick at yaleman).

Check out the view from our balcony! 🙂

First impressions of Japan so far:

Everyone is so nice and polite. A random lady offered to help us with the menu when she heard us speaking in English, and yet we all still ended up with dinner surprise. 🙂
Everything seems really clean and tidy – even the train stations and surrounds. I wonder if that is just because I am comparing it to the be-bubblegummed and homeless beggars of the New York subway!
All the old buildings around the place don’t seem derelict – everything looks well looked after, there is very little graffiti and even the obviously older buildings are well kept.
It’s an interesting clash of old culture and new and I am sure that is only going to become even more apparent as we move around the country over the next four weeks.
Oh and my last, first impression (gotta love a good oxymoron) – the men here must be supremely confident… they all have the most fabulous man bags and sport them proudly. 🙂