Hugo In Tokyo Pt II – Hiking

Posted on July 2, 2010 by tokyofox

Without a guidebook and pretty much no knowledge of what was in Tokyo, Hugo came with very few ideas other than going to a zoo, a beach and a water-park! Of course these things are all probably a bit different here but they don’t exactly give a real impression of the capital city do they?

However, one thing he did want to do was climb Mount Fuji. Sadly he was around just before the official climbing season (July and August) but I said before his arrival that, depending on the weather, we might still climb it and from the very bottom too rather than the 5th station which almost everyone (including myself in 2007) starts from. I soon realised it wouldn’t be possible due to a mxiture of laziness, slight injuries (Hugo’s back and my calf), weather (rainy season and wind chill factor) and Hugo basically struggling with the long days and climate of this country.

On Friday 25th June I got up early to see Japan’s surprising win over Denmark and once the match was over we went to Shinjuku to take an early bus to Kawaguchiko Lake which is in the foreground of Mount Fuji. Once we had boarded the bus I told Hugo to keep his ticket but he ignored me and ripped it up which caused great embarassment for me on our arrival as the driver asked for the tickets and made us piece together his ticket (all parts) while shouting at him. Of course he was stupid but the driver was a bit over-the-top given that we had shown the tickets to get on the bus but this is Japan where rules are rules.

We took the ropeway up to Mount Kachi-Kachi which supposedly offers the best views of Fuji. The view of the symbolic mountain was OK when viewed the old-fashioned way (through one’s eyes!) though a bit cloudy whereas the view through a lens was not so great. We walked around about half of the lake amid glorious sunshine and ended up at a batting centre which was something I had wanted to show Hugo though I never expected it at this scenic location.

After that we walked about a bit more where I had to endure a very stubborn guy from Sweden thinking he coud climb the mountain there and then despite being more suitably dressed to go a club! Despite having on only a shirt and trainers he seemd to think he could walk to the 5th station five hours away and then climb Fuji-san with no torch, oxygen supllies or Japanese ability! The guy hadn’t done any research about climbing it but seemed to think that he knew better than anyone else. The Japanese all stick to the rules and while I believe that you can probably climb it fairly easily you still need to be more prepared than Hugo was. Luckily, the woman at the tourist information managed to get through to him more than I could.

     

Two days prior to that we had gone up Mount Takao which is a short mountain right on the western edge of Tokyo prefecture. Only 599m tall and most of that is ascended via chairlift. We hadn’t planned to go to Takao on that day but when we got to our intended destination of Tama Zoo we found it closed which was annoying as their website said nothing about such a thing. While we were quite near(ish) Takao I made a quick decision to do a late afternoon summit of a mountain which I must have been up about half a dozen times now.

 

On the day in-between these two mountains we went to Kamakura which involved a fair bit of hiking between Jochi-ji temple and the giant Daibutsu. Even though it was very hot the previous days rain meant the hiking course was very muddy in places and slippy in my trainers which I hadn’t expected. It took quite a while to complete the course through the woods before we reached the Great Buddha and the dump of a beach that is Yuigahama. Hugo was impressed though!

 
Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel | 6 Comments

Hugo In Tokyo Pt I – The World Cup

Posted on July 1, 2010 by tokyofox

My friend Hugo arrived from Sweden on June 19th with a promise of spending my week off with him sightseeing, drinking and watching the World Cup. The former part can be seen in more detail in the next couple of posts and the drinking only really happened once or twice. The latter didn’t exactly go to plan either as he was always tired by the time the matches came on and so slept his way through most of the games leaving me to go it alone.

We went out for the Japan v Holland game within minutes of being re-united and my girlfriend joined us so we didn’t see too much of that for all the chat taking place. Apart from that game we didn’t watch any games in bars which has as much to do with the games being on at a time here which isn’t convenient for the last train home. He managed to watch most of the England v Germany game with me before either calling it a night or just giving up on our boys who were sadly beaten by the better team.

On Hugo’s first proper day we started off in Shinjuku and went up to the 45th floor of the Metropolitan government building for views of the concrete jungle for as far as the eye could see. Yoyogi park, Harajuku and Shibuya all followed on foot and it was while in Yoyogi that we stumbled upon the Samurai Blue Park which had been specially set up for the World Cup for as long as Japan were in the tournament which turned out to be one game longer than most people though, including the Japanese themselves!. It was basically just a huge tent/marquee with some sponsor stalls and big TV screens as well as some exhibits of old Japan shirts.

The controversial ‘jabulani’ World Cup ball from Adidas was also on show and outside was a mini pitch for kids to have a kick around on. I saw an advertisement inviting people to watch the Japan v Holland game there the night before but I have no idea if alcohol was available while watching it.

       

A week after that I took Hugo to the Japan World Cup Museum in Ochanomizu which I visited four years ago and is a nice museum featuring many exhibits from the World Cup jointly hosted by Japan in 2002 as well as some other stuff from Japan’s football history.

 
Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel, Sport | Tagged | 1 Comment

Review: Films Set In Japan – Rain Fall (2009)

Posted on June 18, 2010 by tokyofox

In April last year I wrote an entry about the release of ‘Rain Fall‘ (2009); a film I wanted to see in Japanese but couldn’t due to the language barrier. The boot was well and truly on the other foot for once given that it’s usually Japanese who suffer because of the time it seemingly takes to put subtitles on films or American TV shows here.

Anyway, thanks to my friend Ethan (who sent me a link) I was able to watch it recently and how disappointed I was. I have only just finished reading the sixth Barry Eisler book to follow the life of anti-hero John Rain (a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin) and really enjoyed that as well as the previous two which I read back-to-back over the last couple of months. All gripping stuff but, as is often the case, the film version was not up to scratch in my opinion.

It starts off OK and is very Bourne-esque in the filming and story-line but it went downhill completely in the second half of the movie with plot holes and unconvincing fight scenes which just didn’t live up to what was described by Barry Eisler in the book.

Gary Oldman is in the film and put in a good performance and while the Japanese actors gave it their best, I found it to be a bit wooden especially when they had to speak English which is not too often as the movie is predominantly in Japanese.

By the time ‘Rain Fall‘ reached it’s cliché ending I was quite despondent that an exciting novel about a hit man with issues had been transformed into a fairly dull and boring movie.

Tokyo Fox Rating 5/10

Posted in Books, Films, Review: Films Set In Japan | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Tokyo Daytripper: Yoshimi Hyakuana WWII Cliff Tombs

Posted on June 12, 2010 by tokyofox

Having finally found the place I willingly gave up just 300 yen (about two pounds fifty) to enter Hyakuana which translates as 100 holes. A good name and that’s all it is as there are actually more than double that amount! This Saitama-based location is not in any guide books and I only found out about it while looking at “haikyo” (abandoned ruins) websites. For that reason and the fact that it wasn’t a weekend meant I was the only visitor there to start with (a few couples arrived sporadically later on). My first port of call was the tunnels which were made bigger during WWII to protect the Japanese from the Allied bombing raids. According to this fascinating military museums website they were enlarged in 1945 through the efforts of 3,500 Korean forced labourers.

     

Most students have asked me if I was scared to which I say no and thats not just me being all macho. Its just that I often went cycling along an old train track to some tunnels in my hometown when I was a teenager. Those tunnels were completely dark but the ones in Yoshimi were very well lit and were used as storage for weapons in WWII. Only 10% of the tunnels are actually open to visitors with portcullis’ blocking the end of each path.

After I exited the tunnels I explored the caves which are actually over 1300 years old with differing opinions on their history whether it be be aboriginal homes from the end of the 19th century or a WWII ammunition factory. Specially constructed staircases lead tourists to a fair few caves which as the photos show are tiny and inside there is nothing but a bit of graffiti (artefacts recovered in 1888 are on display in a small on-site museum) and barely enough room to stand up or lie down.

     

Before heading home I went into one of the souvenir shops which featured some very interesting photos on the wall. I didn’t know whether they were for sale or just on show so with that in mind I was not so sure about taking photos of the pictures. There was one showing the tombs appearance before they became a tourist attraction and a couple featuring local people and soldiers standing in front of the tombs which kind of reminded me of the (far more picturesque) Ksours which I visited at Ksar Ouled Soltane in Tunisia last August.

 

Click here to read ‘Gan Kutsu Cliff Face Hotel’

Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel, Tokyo Daytripper: | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Tokyo Daytripper: Gan Kutsu Cliff Face Hotel

Posted on June 7, 2010 by tokyofox

On Friday I took a train an hour away from where I live to Higashi Matsuyama as I wanted to see some WWII caves and tunnels which I found out about recently on a couple of excellent sites that can be seen here and here.

It was a lovely day and I didn’t really have a great idea of their whereabouts but sometimes you’ve just gotta go for it and hope that you get lucky. I knew they were a 30 minute walk away from the station and so I thought best to head in the direction of greenery and rocks in the distance.

After about 25 minutes walking down a main street I saw a sign for the Hyakuana cliff tombs which was what I wanted. After taking a right turn I came across the abandoned ruins of the Gan Kutsu cliff face hotel as featured on Michael John Grist’s website. I can certainly understand the excitement of infiltrating these closed-off areas but I had no intention of doing anything like that at this site which was carved out as a cave hotel by one man and his chisel between 1904 and 1925 when he sadly died before it was opened. According to the aforementioned website it did open after his death but eventually closed due to cave-ins and obviously fell in to the disrepair that can now be seen today through the iron bars which surround the place.

   

Just a stones throw away from that was a tiny temple which I had all to myself and featured a fair few buddha statues. This had steps so I thought I might as well climb them and see what was up there – beams of carvings and writings in kanji.

 
      

Beyond the temple was a mossy climb up a muddy waterfall/stream which was far steeper and more challenging than the picture maybe shows. I had no idea what was at the top but was looking for a bit of adventure. Not much really was the answer apart from a stone monument marking the location of the remains of Matsuyama Castle which was built in 1399 and destroyed 200 years later. Descending was a bit more tricky than going up but once I’d got down to ground level I ended up seeing quite a lot of the Yoshimi countryside as I took an hour return journey in the wrong direction which was exactly what this guy did on his journey and even though I read his account beforehand I still made the same mistake!

I did get to see a shrine though with steps going on forever which would be good for doing some Rocky-like training on them. Luckily time was on my side and just round the corner from the former hotel and temple which I originally visited was my destination that can be read in the next part; Yoshimi Hyakuana WWII Cliff Tombs.

Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel, Tokyo Daytripper: | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Lost In Translation?!!

Posted on June 2, 2010 by tokyofox

Here are two amusing shop signs which are located close to a couple of the schools that I work at each week.

 

I have no doubt that the owners were very unaware that what they thought was good English would be interpreted completely different by us Brits!

Posted in Japan Life, Quirky Japan | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Sign Of (Slight) Power!

Posted on May 28, 2010 by tokyofox

Where I work in Shibuya has a short walkway area leading to the lift which takes people up to the school on the fourth floor. This area is undercover and protected from the wind and rain. With the majority of Japanese males seemingly smokers it was quite an ordeal to get to the lift through all the smoke created by the salarymen standing around there. As an anti-smoker I hated this and it certainly wasn’t good for the students, particularly the young kids, who had to walk through the thick blanket of smoke.

 

However, that all changed with a little bit of help from yours truly. Sometime last year I put up a small, but bright yellow, no-smoking sign on the wall to see what happened. Perhaps surprisingly it was still in tact a few days later when I returned to the school and its still there now many months later. Its only stuck to the wall by a small bit of blu-tac and would undoubtedly have been taken down by someone in most other countries but amazingly that hasn’t happened in Shibuya where it has actually been obeyed by the smokers. Obviously, it would be false to say that I played a major part in this (the building manager leaving the sign up and moving the smoking ash-try bin thing outside was a far major role) but a part I did play and its nice to know that I got the ball rolling…….maybe!

Posted in English Teaching, Japan Life | 2 Comments

Please Do It Again – The Tokyo Metro Poster Campaign

Posted on May 23, 2010 by tokyofox

Back in October 2008 I reported on the ‘Do it at home’ poster campaign by Tokyo Metro basically telling people to mind their manners on the trains. This included things like not applying make-up in public, noise-pollution from earphones, using mobile phones, drinking beer, taking up too much room and so on. All fairly petty little things but ultimately ones that can easily annoy us. Since April this year the slogan has changed to ‘Please do it again’ which I guess is kind of reverse psychology!

  
Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel, Quirky Japan | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Empire Strikes Back 30th Anniversary

Posted on May 21, 2010 by tokyofox

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back which for many, many years was my favourite film of the saga. That changed last year though to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope following my visit to some of the filming locations used in that movie. The battle scenes of Hoth in Empire were filmed in Finse in Norway and even though I have the guidebook I can’t really see myself going to the trouble to just see a bit of ice but never say never I guess!

Anyway, I recently made (thanks to a link on the official Star Wars website) a rather rushed one minute Empire parody video featuring me as both Luke Sywalker and Han Solo with m’lady as Princess Leia which can be seen here. Check it out! It’s funny even if I do say so myself!

I remember being stunned to discover that Vader was Luke’s father which is a classic movie moment and one that is difficult for the younger generation of Star Wars fans to discover the way I did. Empire is great for the following reasons:

* The “I am your father” revelation

* John Williams’ foreboding “Imperial March” music

* The introduction of Yoda, Lando Calrissian and Boba Fett

* Han Solo uses a lighsaber for the only time

* The gigantic AT-AT’s (All terrain armoured transports)

* Han Solo gets heroically frozen in carbonite

* Darth Vader slices off Luke Skywalkers hand

* We see Vader briefly appear out of his helmet in a meditation chamber

* Lando trying to use his charm on Princess Leah

* erm , that incestuous kiss between Luke and Leia!

Posted in Films, Star Wars | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Tokyo Daytripper: Shinrin Koen Park

Posted on May 16, 2010 by tokyofox

My girlfriend and I used the recent Golden Week holiday to finally spend a couple of days together which is a rarity in such a workaholic country. On May 1st we went to Shinrin Koen which is a huge park about an hour away from our apartments by train followed by a short bus ride from there. Entrance was only 400 yen (about £2.50) but we were unable to rent a cheap bicycle there as they had all been rented out earlier that morning. Gotta say that this didn’t bother me too much as I have done a fair bit of riding recenly as regular readers (are there such people out there?!) may have noticed.

It was such a glorious day of sunshine so it was quite nice to walk around the vast park and its many features including the likes of a wading pool, an adventure course, streams, lakes, bridges, restaurants, a dog run, cycle tracks, lookout points, flowering tree, swamp land, hedge, herb and conifer gardens as well as sculpture and memorial squares. All in all we spent a relaxing four hours strolling leisurely around the fine lanscape and all that it has to offer which even includes a kind of squat-style toilet for dogs and a shop selling cakes for them too. Ridiculous really!

On leaving the park just before closing time we were shocked to discover that the last bus back to the station had already gone so the only option was the far more expensive taxi but luckily we found a man, wife and child to share one with.

                
Posted in Japan Life, Japan Travel, Tokyo Daytripper: | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments