Mt. Fuji, Part 1

It's been a while since I've updated this, and Mt. Fuji might be long, so I'm going to attempt to do this in parts.

It was a Saturday.  I took a long hard look at the list of my things to do in Japan and it looked something like this:

Ghibli Museum
Tsukiji Tuna Auction
See a baseball game
Eat fugu
Climb Mt Fuji
Go to a maid cafe

It was too long since I had touched that list.  I wanted to be able to cross something off, so I naturally went for the easiest one: climbing Mt. Fuji.

That afternoon I headed to the train station and hopped on a bus with a bunch of people who coincidentally decided the same thing.  But seriously, no, I planned this two weeks or so in advance.  Earlier that week I did my Fuji-san (which is Mt. Fuji in Japanese) shopping.  I'm a frugal man and decided to do my shopping on the cheap too, so I headed over to good ol' Ameyoko, a market by Ueno and Okachimachi, and close to where I currently live.

I bought gloves at the 100 yen Lawson, pants and a shirt for 216 yen, a sweatshirt, hoodie, and hat for 300 yen each, and the big splurge, shoes for 2500 yen.  They were bright white, so I decided to take a picture to see how white they'd be after the climb.

Look how they glow pale in the bright light of my flash!  Pristine!

Ready with gear, the day came and on the way to the train station I bought more food than I could eat (five bags of rice crackers, two fake baguettes), more water than I could drink (two and a half liters of water along with a half liter or so of Vitamin Water.  Not that American crappy Vitamin Water - the Japanese one that tastes like lemonade.), and more weight than I could carry.  But I didn't let that stop me and I headed to the meetup area and hopped on the bus.

It was 7PM or so when we arrived at the 5th station.  There are four trails up Mt Fuji, and they all begin at a separate 5th station (confusing, right).  We decided to take the subashiri trail because it's a bit less popular (read: crowded), and if you're a bit slow you can still see the sunrise without being at the top of the mountain.

At the 5th station everyone changed, and some people bought walking sticks.  The way these walking sticks work is that at every station along the way to the peak of the mountain, they sell imprints.  As you climb, you get your stick branded, and then at the end, you have a badass souvenir.  In addition, they sold flags you could attach to the stick.  I was pretty much sold by the imprints alone, but the idea of representing America as some sort of Fuji ass-kicking machine had me 1000 yen down with a walking stick in my hand.

Half an hour or so passed and it was time to walk.  The beginning was nice and easy (though still uphill), and everyone chatted with each other as if it we were on our way to a nice picnic.  In maybe 45 minutes we made it to the 6th Station.  Never one to shy away from the camera, I got a picture of America taking on Fuji, featuring me.

You'll notice that I'm now down to just my badass yellow t-shirt.  Though it started to get a little chillier, the heat caused by walking and the enormous weight of my backpack was more than enough to counteract what little wind there was at the time.  The first station means the first stamp too.

200 yen a piece; I'd be a sucker not to do it!

We had a snack, got excited, and hit the road again.   It got a bit steeper.  People started going in smaller groups, instead of as one big trail, and we weren't talking as much.  But there was no way the slope could be this steep the whole way up, right?

Well before we knew it we were at the next station!  7th station already?  Man, we must be pros!

It's not easy to see, but if you look in the bottom right of the picture you'll see where we really were.  Original 6th Station.  What the hell? You can't just add in stations.  I was at the 5th station, then the 6th station, I should be at the 7th now.  "No", says Mt. Fuji.  Fine, I knew that jerk wouldn't let me win that easily anyway.

Another little break then we were back on our way.  The climb started smoothly but started to slow, as usual.  20 minutes farther up I saw this random shrine-looking thing.

What is it?  Why are there lots of bells?  They gave me a bell with my walking stick and the sound was driving me crazy by now, so I figured that must be what was going on.  Still, I wasn't ready to toss mine by the wayside just yet.  Instead it was time to keep climbing.  But it got difficult.  I'm no physically fit person, so it was getting tiring.  And I was wishing I was home.  And thinking about being in my bed, or even just in the bus, anywhere else... but then we reached the 7th station!

7th station!  Man, forget what I just said.  I could climb the mountain in 30 minutes from there, that's how much energy I have now!...is the thought that prevailed pretty much every time I took a break.  But still, 7th station is pretty awesome.  Still warm, too.  I didn't know what I was in for.

As soon as I began climbing, I wanted to stop again.  Whenever you think that it won't get any steeper, it does.  And whenever you think that maybe it'll be slightly flat for a minute, it isn't.  45 minutes longer of pain brought me to...

The Original 7th Station.  Those jerks did it again.  Getting a bit chillier, too.  Now the sweet yellow shirt is covered by my 300 yen flannel fleece.  Once again, can't go wrong with Ameyoko.  After another self-motivating confidence-booster (i.e., onigiri), I was off to the next station.

By this point, my pace was so uneven with everyone else that I was pretty much going it alone.  I'd start with the fast group, then they'd leave me behind, but I'd still end up passing the slow groups.  As long as I made it by sunrise, though, I didn't really care how long it took me.  Another hour later got me to the 8th Station.  Sadly, I could not find an official 8th Station sign, but by the time I stopped to take a picture anyway, it became cold.  Like, real cold.

Every time the wind blew, a bunch of people shivered, a bunch of people froze, and a bunch of people screamed expletives.  Being tired, cold, and too fast for our own good, we took shelter behind the station, where it provided a slight protection from the wind.  We probably sat here for a good hour or so, trying to figure out the best time to keep moving, since it wasn't getting any warmer going up.

...and I think that's a good point to wrap up part one.  I reward your courage and patience with this blurry picture of the city lights from the freezing 8th Station.

Ramen Roll!

It's been a while since I posted...I have no real good excuse.  Right after I started telling everyone about my blog, too!  Well, in order to get myself started again, I'll go with a nice easy post: ramen!

This past weekend was really gross out, so I didn't feel like exploring as much as usual.  But to make myself do something productive, I hunted down some ramen I'd been meaning to try.  Below are the results!

Saturday:
Had some time to kill before my plans at night, so I looked up one of the more out-of-the-way ones that's highly chattered about in the ramen blog-o-sphere: Ivan Ramen.  It seemed expensive and far to get there, but after deciding to walk to Shinjuku before taking the train, it was only 170Y or so and about 20 minutes.  Finding it was surprisingly easy, too!

 

Here's the place!  It says "Ivan Ramen" for those of you who can't read katakana.  And the dish:

Looks delicious, right?  Well that's 'cause it was!  A bit fishier tasting then most ramen I'm used to, but great.

Sunday:

Ganko Ramen!  A friend and I decided to eat at delicious ramen places, and this one is conveniently close to where I live.  After 45 minutes of communication failure (or The Curse of Trying to Meet at a Tokyo Train Station, as I call it), we met up and headed to the restaurant.  I realized halfway there that I didn't really know where it was.  We asked the local con-bini man, and he surprisingly not only knew what it was, but exactly how to get there.  Good going, con-bini man!

We got there and...closed on weekends.  So we hit up a nearby Ippudo.  If you live in NY, you should go to the one there, at least once if you haven't already.

Yum!  Surprisingly similar to the one in New York.  Pizza can never be done right anywhere outside of New York, but I guess ramen can be done just as well outside of Japan.  Who knew?

You can barely see it in this photo, but there's a side of dumplings on the right.  They are good alone, with mystery tangy sauce, gyoza tare, and when deliberately dropped in the ramen.

Monday:

Makeup test!  That is, time to hit up Ganko, for real!  I dragged some additional people with me this time, for to spread the enjoyment of ramen of course.  We already knew where it was, so it made that part easier...

See what I mean about being hard to find?  You can tell that it's open because there's a light over that bone!  Duh!

Hey look, it's the dude who makes it!  Glad he was cool enough to let me take a picture.  Also glad enough my friend asked because I was too lame to.

The ramen!  Stupid blogger rotated it for me!  Thanks for doing that for no reason, blogger! (If someone knows how to change that please let me know).

But anyway, delicious.  Possibly the best of the three; I don't usually get shio ramen but this was crazy flavorful.  There were bowls full of mysterious spicy stuff and fried onions on the side, which may have been kind of a bad idea on the owner's part because we tore through those fried onions.  The meat was really good, and when they were soaked long enough, even the menma tasted pretty good.  Unfortunately, my blood pressure skyrocketed from that meal...

Well, there's my recent ramen runs.  Don't think this will stop; I must eat more.  Why I like ramen is for many reasons the same as why I like beer.  There's a lot of good stuff, they're all different, local, and even the best stuff is cheap!

Until next time!

-Benjamin

Yatai Ramen

I was hungry today and didn't feel like eating the same old stuff from Sukiya or Matsuya (though don't get me wrong, those places are delicious). I wanted to hit up some place that was supposed to be known for having good food. After a few minutes of browsing the internet, I came to the realization that this wasn't going to be quite as easy as it was in New York or San Francisco. So for the time being I decided to stick with something that I know is cheap, close, and there are plenty of websites for: ramen.

I was feeling lazy as usual, so I did a search on some of the ol' ramen blogs for one near me. I found one called Yatai Ramen in Takadanobaba, which is a pretty cool place and not too far from where I live. With that, I was off.

Takadanobaba is a pretty cool place with a lot of people, lights and restaurants (or did I just describe several districts in Tokyo?). I didn't take any pictures this time, but I'm sure I'll be back. I found the shop a lot more easily than I expected, and here I did take pictures.
Lots of flags and stuff! Sweet; all I have to do is go in and order some ramen. There was a ticket vending machine, as is standard in a lot of these places. I wasn't exactly sure which was the one I wanted to get (hint: it's written on some of the stuff outside) so I picked the one on the machine written in red. Here it is:
Delicious noodles, chicken, and vegetables, all in a clear broth. Even with a side dish of green onions and something else I didn't recognize! It wasn't as heavy as a lot of the other ramen I've eaten recently, which was nice. It was delicious.

On the way back, I randomly heard some music. Not just any music, but the Atma Weapon battle music from Final Fantasy VI. Why did I recognize that? But more importantly, who was playing that? I crossed the street to find out.

I approached the source; it was a speaker located somewhere between an Indian restaurant and an upstairs DVD store. I stood around trying to figure out when I was approached by a dude from the Indian restaurant. Taking my cautious-as-usual approach, I ran away, and into the DVD store. It was empty aside from the clerk, so I did a quick walk-around as if I actually might be looking to buy something. As I approached the clerk, I heard the music coming from where he was. Never figured out why, but at least now I know where I can find another Final Fantasy fan, I guess...

And with that I headed back, of course stopping at a con-bini for some delicious pre-packaged ice cream.

-Benjamin

Ikebukuro + Cat + Statue

Holy craps! That describes two things:
1) How Japanese people felt when they saw a cat sitting on top of some statue thing in Ikebukuro station
2) How I felt when I saw Japanese people all huddling around, taking pictures with their phones.

I couldn't get close enough to take a picture of the actual cat, so you'll have to enjoy this amusing picture of the crowd.

Kagurazaka

Another Sunday, another exciting journey in Tokyo. But where to this time? I woke up at 1PM, so I decided to save any outside-of-Tokyo trips for another day. I busted out my handy Lonely Planet book and accidentally flipped to a page with a walking tour of Tokyo. Where? Why, none other than Kagurazaka. I had never heard of it, but the book said a few things were there, so why not?

Kagurazaka is conveniently directly east of where I live, even if it is 35-50 minutes away. So, in standard fashion, I started walking.

I passed this mediocre-looking park and decided that I must take pictures.

I also passed this cool-looking place, but I had no idea what it was. If anyone has an idea, let me know.

The rest of the walk was kind of uninteresting. Before I knew it, I arrived at Kawameguro. The main area is a pedestrian-only roadway filled with food shops, boutiques, and even some game/pachinko places.

Very soon I passed some food-on-a-stick place (yakitori? kushiage? I dunno...). The guy was cooking fish and onion on a stick right there on the sidewalk! I'm only human, so I bought two.


The guy selling them and the random old ladies around were happy I got some, and after making some small talk with them I kept on my way. As I continued down the pedestrian road, there was even more food, including this crazy selection of fried-everything!

According the Lonely Planet book, I needed to get to the Kagurazaka train station, and then my first destination, Akagi-Jinja would be right nearby. I got to the train station alright, but I didn't see where the shrine was; it wasn't even on the maps outside. I was very confused and after five or ten minutes standing around awkwardly comparing my book to various maps, I just followed my best guess and got going.

That's when the wandering began. The whole area around Kagurazaka is filled with quiet, small residental streets, with a boutique or cafe every three blocks or so. I must have gone in some sort of crazy circle or spiral or something; I kept coming up with new ideas of where Akagi-Jinja was, and of course they were all wrong. You heard it here, people: never trust my sense of direction.

I asked some French cafe clerk (the pastries smelled and looked really good, but they were expensive...) where the shrine was, and he busted out a map and gave me directions. How does everyone have maps here? It's kind of ridiculous. I guess the address system makes it difficult to find places. I followed his instructions and made it out of the first set of confusing residential streets. This led me to a new area map (area maps are all over the place on random streets here, which is really helpful for navigation), which advertised Akagi-Jinja, Tsukudo Hachiman-Jinja and Zenkoku-ji, all of which were on my itinerary. However, it only showed Tsukudo Hachiman-Jinja on the map, so I decided I would go there first.

After more wandering and map-checking, I ended up at the block that I decided definitely contained Tsukudo Hachiman-Jinja. But where was it? I always thought shrines were big. Maybe not huge, but at least big enough to see when you're standing within 100 feet of them. I was wrong. After circling the block once or twice, I found an old stairway that led up to what's just a small piece of the block, containing Tsukudo Hachiman-Jinja.

The place itself was kind of empty, but I still got some sweet pictures.

Also, right next to the stairs was a playground area.

Yes, those things on the bottom (top of the photo) are Shinkansen-shaped bouncy ridey things, and yes, I played on them, and yes, it was totally awesome.

With one of the three things I needed to see done, I felt slightly more accomplished but still yearning to see more. I checked the book again and found out that Zenkoku-ji was in part of the rest of the pedestrian road I was at before, so I headed there, post-haste.

That picture took me so long to take, since bikers and people kept coming by.

As I reached the south end of the pedestrian road, I saw a giant line of students going into the JR station. Where were they all coming from? I followed them backwards to see where they were leaving.

In just a few minutes the train of kids ended, and I hadn't figured out where they came from. But I had been lead onto a walkway next to the river, so I took some pictures.


I now had seen two of the three places I wanted to, in addition to the cool pedestrian road. But where was Akagi-Jinja? I decided to start from square one: I headed back to the Kagurazaka train station. Checking the maps once more gave me a little bit of a better idea where it was. Just as with the other shrine, I managed to find the block it was supposed to be in, but I could not see it at all. I followed my same strategy of circling the block, but all I found was some set of stairs that looked like they might even be part of someone's property. Not letting that stop me, I climbed them, and lo and behold!

What? Just a single torii and a tiny house? I knew this was supposed to be a small shrine, but, are you serious? I still don't know why this was all I could find. There was a lot of construction around the shrine, and according to wikipedia, they're turning part of the grounds into a residential area, but is this really all that's left?

I left satisfied, and with that decided to head back.








But wait, bonus park! Before I left, I saw on the map that there was a park right nearby, so I decided to check it out. "It's a park", I thought "it can't be that hard to find". Thankfully, this time I was right. Although the entrances still are squeezed into alleyways.

I'm pretty sure it's called Shiroganechou-Kouen (kouen means park in Japanese). I couldn't help myself but play a little bit on some of the things they had there. Also, what the hell is this thing? It doesn't look fun or safe.

After messing around in the park for a few minutes, I decided I was gonna head back, for reals. The walk back was cold.

-Benjamin

Toystore Break in Ueno

I had to go to class today, and as part of it we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum. It was pretty cool, but when we finished most people went back to their dorm. One classmate and I instead decided to go somewhere. After some deliberation, she mentioned a huge toystore she knew of in Ueno - and with that I knew where we were going.

She hadn't been to the place in two years, so we didn't know if it still existed, but we decided to just hope for the best. We arrived in Ueno, and looked for a big bridge she remembered. After finding it, we made our way to a crowded intersection, with lo and behold - the store!
Yamashiroya is the name of it; you can see it there on the right.

We went through all six or so floors, and I took a bunch of pictures of some of the crazy things I saw.

Panda-ball!

For those dedicated Shinkansen fans, pick up a Shinkansen-shaped mouse or USB key.

And don't forget all the rest of your Shinkansen-themed goods.

SAW toys! What could be more fitting for children to play with?

Look, the Japanese finally invented Lite Brite for themselves!

Until the next toy store.
-Benjamin

Yasukuni Jinja and the Yushukan

So I don't know a lot about Japanese history, but one thing we learned about in Japanese class is Yasukuni Jinja. It's a shinto shrine dedicated to war dead. Here's the kicker: most (or all?) of those war dead are from the era of imperial Japan. Like, 1900s through World War II. I'm pretty sure that this is a time for Japan that people generally don't view favorably. Especially in China. Like this gets as bad as Nazi Germany's cartoonish super-villainy.

A couple controversies surround Yasukuni Jinja in particular. One, is that the prime minister of Japan always insists on visiting it. What this boils down to is that the Japanese prime minister goes to pray for kamikaze pilots and torturers every year. Neighboring countries, who bared the brunt of Imperial Japan see this as a negation to some degree of what Japan did during that time. So they don't like this.

The other is the Yushukan. A museum dedicated the the military history of Japan, it focuses on World War II. But it kind of glosses over some facts, and presents others...in such a way to put Japan in a not-so-bad-light.

My friend Mark and I visited the shrine during our trip to Japan, but we neglected to check out the Yushukan. So now that I'm back I got to!

I started out by walking down to Shinjuku and heading east around Shinjuku-dori.
I love walking past all the crowds; it's so exciting and is what makes cities great.

Shinjuku-dori starts to look a whole lot different after you get east enough; it was quite a sudden change.

After a bit more walking and a stop to get some milk tea (gotta love those con-binis), I made it to Yasukuni Jinja.

Even if it is controversial, it still looks pretty cool.

I took a quick walk around, but soon headed to my main goal: the hopefully hilarious Yushukan.


The lobby was filled with vehicles used during WWII and other eras in Japan, including a creepy kamikaze torpedo called Kaiten. It's hard to say that a human-guided torpedo won't be effective. I bought my admission into the museum (cheers to still having my student ID on me!). The first thing they lead you to is the movie room.

There was a movie playing called みたまを継ぐもの which means something to the effect of succeeding the spirit (of someone dead). The movie was about some dude and his dilemma in getting a job. His dad wants him to get some business-y job making money and all, but a trip to the Yasukuni Jinja with his girlfriend gets him thinking. He speaks with his girlfriend's grandfather, a World War II veteran, and is inspired by the tales of the honorable soldiers. After all, he decides that he doesn't want to be a stuck-up suit, and that he'd rather work for his girlfriend's relatives making coffee. I'm not exactly sure why that's better, but then again, what the hell do I know?

So his dad gets pissed at him and all and blames the girl. A fight breaks out! He challenges his dad, claiming that he's greedy, and doesn't have the honor of the kamikazes, who were willing to sacrifice their lives for their nation without the slightest amount of remorse. The dude's grandma comes in and accepts him, and after some time of cooling off they're a relatively-happy family again.

Now this creeps me out at least a little bit. He gets inspiration from these Japanese soldiers who fought in WWII, and from going to Yasukuni Jinja. Is that like the Asian equivalent of a modern-day German being inspired by the stick-to-itive-ness of the Nazis? Because that would definitely be scary. I don't really know how to feel about it, but I'm curious about what others think.

After that, I headed around the rest of the museum. Again, I don't know a lot about Japanese history, so it was hard for me to pinpoint to a good degree where details were off or missing. Until World War II.

There was pretty much no mention of any atrocities against Korea, China, or...anyone. According to the museum, Japan had set a good example for the rest of eastern Asia by being the first major power there, and that their independence led to other Asian countries rising up and pushing out expansionist Europe/America.

It claimed that Japan was expanding and that due to embargoes, it was forced into World War II, with America. Well, that's probably partially true, but it kind of missed some of what Japan was doing earlier... It went on to describe the battles against America, in a slightly pro-Japan fashion, and ended with the bombs. There was little to no decoration around the fact that the bombs were dropped; no mention of the number of civilians killed, just "yeaah...they came and then a couple days later Japan surrendered". Coming from a culture where people never stop mentioning how badly they were screwed (and I don't mean that in a negative way), it surprised me that Japan would try to hide the fact that America massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians. I guess it's their way of saving face that they lost.

The first major defeat of Japan, said the signs there. According to the signs, the emperor decided that, for the sake of the Japanese people, he would allow the war to end. Kind of a weird way to put it.

The final room was filled with pictures of deceased Japanese soldiers, and some of their mementos. This disturbed me the most because, again, it's hard for me to completely relate since my knowledge of history is so poor, but I tried to imagine what it would feel like to walk through a similar room filled with deceased Germans' pictures from WWII. I daresay it would make me uncomfortable, at least.

I left the museum, but with enough time to grab another snapshot or two of parts of the shrine.

And, of course, what would any visit to a Japanese shrine be without the requisite delicious food stands?

Mmm...takoyaki... But still not as good as in Osaka...

-Benjamin