Tokyo Daytripper: Big Weekender Pt II – Mount Takao

Posted on September 20, 2007 by tokyofox

When a colleague asked me a fortnight ago if I wanted to go up Mount Takao for a nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) session I didn’t think too much of it but as the morning of the event neared last Saturday I began to think that it was a mental suggestion. The idea of climbing a mountain in 30+ degrees and reaching the top sweating, dehydrated and hungry and embarking on two hours of alcohol excess didn’t sound like the most sensible idea.

What he didn’t mention was that we wouldn’t be acsending the 599m high mountain on foot and that a buffet was also included. Furthermore I didn’t know that there was gonna be a big group of us which made just getting there a task in itself what with all the waiting for people and stopping off along the way to meet others.

A choice of cable-car or chairlift took us up about half-way with most of us opting for the more exciting latter option as we’d have to come down via the former for sure. After we disembarked we popped into the monkey park for a very short visit just before closing time and then it was the fairly short walk to the peak to see the lush green forest views and take a few photographs.

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Then it was time for the real business of drinking though most of us were more in need of food than anything else! Mind you we had to wait nearly an hour for that privilege as the garden party area was too full but we could get free beer while we waited. Eventually we had an amazing buffet available to us and proceeded to neck a fair few beers in what was a different but very nice setting.

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Tokyo Daytripper: Big Weekender Pt I – Tokyo Summerland

Posted on September 18, 2007 by tokyofox

My days off are Friday and Sunday but last weekend I also had the Saturday off resulting in a busy few days of activity. Starting very early on Friday morning myself and Ethan made our way to Tokyo Summerland which is a big water amusement park in north-west Tokyo.

I first visited this place two years ago and the indoor swimming pool was a sight that had to be seen to be believed when the wave machine came into operation every hour. If you imagine a packed football terrace but in water then you will hopefully get an idea how busy the pool was. Complete pandimonium and without an inflatable ring (a Japanese obsession in these places) I got very scratched each time someone flowed into me. The man-made waves were fun and a good size too and thankfully it was nowhere near as packed though it did seem that without the crowds something was lost or is that a little weird to think that way?!

TokyoSummerland 001  TokyoSummerland 002  TokyoSummerland 004  TokyoSummerland 006

Unfortunately the huge dipping freefall and speed slides outside were closed and the tunnel-type slides which were new to me weren’t that exciting. The assault course (very unstable stepping stones/floats/logs with a net to grab on to hanging above) was interesting but physically tough at times and the highlight of the day was starting a quite long chain link as we floated around the outdoor lagoon on our rubber rings.

We wandered over to the amusement park area after which was a bit cr*p really. The first ride was the free fall roller coaster type thing seen in one of the pictures below. A near vertical drop where you’re sitting horizontally facing down to ground as you speed down into a kind of ‘L’ shape. That proved to be the high as the rollercoaster, pirate ship and the intriguingly named ‘Love Express’ all proved very disappointing before we sweated it out on the big wheel which gave us some great views over the whole complex and the surrounding river and series of bridges.

TokyoSummerland 005  TokyoSummerland 012  TokyoSummerland 015  TokyoSummerland 007
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Ooh Aah Kashi-wa!!

Posted on September 13, 2007 by tokyofox

Witnessing the spectacle of an Aussie Rules game in Melbourne last month made me realise how much I miss watching live sport. Apart from last years baseball game, a sumo tournament, a couple of Rugby games (Ireland v Japan, Newcastle Falcons v NEC Green Rockets) and a few Kashiwa Reysol games I’ve not seen much in the flesh during my time in Japan.

I wanted to support Nagoya Grampus Eight when I came here because of the Gary Lineker connection but living near Kashiwa in my first year in Japan I ended up going to see them four times. Three defeats and a draw so I wasn’t much of a lucky omen. The fact that they didn’t win at home all season in 2004 perhaps indicates that it wasn’t totally my fault!

Reysol v Marinos 005  Reysol v Marinos 011

Seeing that Reysol were playing in Tokyo for some reason on Sunday the 2nd of September I jumped at the chance of seeing them play at the National Stadium against Yokohama F. Marinos. Sadly I couldn’t get a ticket in the atmospheric end behind the goal as it was sold out so I had to settle for a 3000 yen seat in the corner.

An explosive start to the game saw Reysol go ahead inside the first minute via an own goal which stunned both sets of supporters and after that the game descended into a fairly dull game with Marinos dominating possession but apart from one effort never looking like scoring. Anyway, it’s only taken four seasons but I have now finally seen Kashiwa win.

Reysol v Marinos 015  Reysol v Marinos 031

The strange thing about Reysol games is that all the singing on the terraces (and there is lots) seems to have no reflection on whats going on on the pitch and never seems to change and seems to resemble a karaoke session in some ways rather than football chants. All of this is a far cry from the English Premier League and indeed the second, third and probably even the fourth tiers!

Reysol v Marinos 014  Reysol v Marinos 018  Reysol v Marinos 022  Reysol v Marinos 023
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Tokyo Daytripper: The Old-Fashioned Amusement Park In Northern Tokyo

Posted on September 4, 2007 by tokyofox

On Friday the 24th of August I went to Toshimaen Amusement Park which is a 15 minute train ride away from where I live. Sadly we didn’t have so long there as we only got there at 2pm and it was also quite mild for a day in the ridiculously hot and humid August.

Swimming pools in Japan seem to have very little to do with swimming. These areas are full of inflatables and people just lying around drinking and eating and then theres also the J-girls doing their make-up and acting cute in maybe the only country in the world where they can wear heels with their swimsuits and not be considered tarty!

The highlights are (apart from the many many cute girlies!) of course the slides and due to the queues in this place I only bothered to go on two. The first was your twisty type descending from up-high and was quite painful as my feet got smacked round against the side and the second was a speed one which I didn’t see to much of as there was so much water sprayed in my face along the way down a big dip. A good adrenalin rush though!

Most people drifted away between 5pm and 6pm and after that it was time for the rides. We didn’t have a pass for all the rides but could pay for them individually which means that you don’t go on anywhere near as many rides. Being very choosy we only did the one and that was the 500 yen Cyclone. It was really good and maybe this was heightened by the fact that there was just a simple waist seatbelt for protection while we were seated on velvety seats in a log looking rollercoaster with a few dips and a long dark tunnel part.

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Australia 2007 Pt VII – Melbourne Again

Posted on September 2, 2007 by tokyofox

The 4.45am airport shuttle took me to Hobart Airport for my 6am flight back to Melbourne and I was surprised to bump into colleague Mark in the waiting lounge who i climbed Mount Fuji with. After a slight delay I was back in Melbourne at 7.30am and took a tram to the Royal Melbourne Zoo as I felt I should tick the ‘see kangaroos and koalas’ box on my imaginary checklist.

I didn’t visit this zoo six years ago as I did something similar in Sydney but this was quite a good one with the chances of getting up quite close to some animals without a huge fence or glass window in the way. The kangaroos were fairly free and the Emu’s were roaming around too making me feel a little paranoid as I posed for a photo or two in front of them.

Emu's  Australia Aug '07 093  These Gorilla's must have had an argument!  Giraffe meets Zebra  finally the koala looks in my direction!  Peccaries

After exchanging yet more money at a good exchange rate I bought plenty of tacky souvenirs for my students and headed back to Ruth’s to spend a final afternoon with her and baby Eifion which we did with a simple walk down to the cafe by the local beach and then I even experienced the excitement of changing a nappy for the first time but will it be the last time?!!

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Australia was really the place that kickstarted the travel-bug in me all those years ago and had became forgotten in some ways but this little trip certainly made me remember what I had liked about the country and why I had gone ‘down under’ in the first place.

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Australia 2007 Pt VI – Tasmania, Port Arthur

Posted on August 31, 2007 by tokyofox

I’m not usually a fan of tours but without a car in Tasmania its quite difficult to do without them. Consequently I went on an ‘Under Down Under’ day trip to Port Arthur which was very much my second choice but there wasn’t a trip to see Wineglass Bay on the east coast on the only day I had available to me.

Port Arthur though is Tasmania’s most popular attraction and is the penal colony used during the time of first convict settlement in Australia and it has a very dark history. As I said I don’t really like tours as they do tend to just pad out an itinerary which could probably be done a lot quicker and this one was no exception but having said that I did enjoy it!

When I boarded the bus at the ridculously early time of 7:30 am I already knew two of the girls (one from Hong Kong and one from Japan) from the previous day at Mount Wellington and after a lot of fannying around we got to the small town of Richmond which is a British style village famous for Australia’s oldest bridge in use dating back to 1823. Just a photo stop there basically and then it was off to see Waterfall Bay which offered the usual splendid coastal views and rock formations which becomes a bit same-same after a while.

Richmond Bridge Remarkable Cave at Waterfall Bay Australia Aug '07 305

Following that walk we drove through a small town called Doo where all the houses had hilarious (?) doo pun names such as ‘Much A-Doo About Nothing’, ‘Just Doo It’, ‘Love Me Doo’, ‘Doo Me’ and inevitably ‘Doo F*ck All’!!

After a basic lunch at the Remarkable Cave we entered Port Arthur and hopped straight on to a half hour cruise of Carnarvon Bay taking us around the Isle of the Dead where over a thousand people were buried in a ‘secure and undisturbed resting place’. We didn’t disembark there but some people did. Instead, we had two and a half hours to tour the site at our leisure with an optional walking tour which I didn’t do for fear of information overload. I was happy to just wander around reading some of the information on show which i did in the company of an English girl called Cath and to be honest it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.

Australia Aug '07 026 Australia Aug '07 034 Australia Aug '07 035 Penitentiary at Port Arthur The Hospital Guard Tower
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Australia 2007 Pt V – Tasmania, Hobart

Posted on August 28, 2007 by tokyofox

I was up early out of habit and had to wait around to take the 9.30am bus to Hobart where I checked in to Central City Backpackers which was surprisingly quite nice. I had to make some pretty quick decisions once at reception regarding what I’d do that that afternoon and the following day. Mount Wellington summit eventually won over the Cadbury’s chocolate Factory for much the same reasons that I never went to the Boags brewery in Launceston or the Cascade brewery in Hobart because as much as I like these things I don’t know if I really care so much how they’re made.

The afternoon tour up the mountain was ruined by a lot of cloud and a complete ar*e of a bus driver who I had an argument with on the descend. As we were ascending the mountain it was obviously very cloudy and he said we would stop on the way back down to get some photos.

It was absolutely freezing at the peak and myself and the three asian girls on the bus wandered around for a bit and waited patiently for the cloud to clear which it eventually did a few times for a matter of seconds. Given that we had paid A$25 for that two hour trip (starting late and finishing early on top of that!) I was certainly expecting a quick photo stop at a clearer point on the way down but when I asked about that he gave me some b*llocks about it clearing up wonderfully from where he was sat in the van which it so didn’t.

Australia Aug '07 056 Australia Aug '07 025 The pinnacle of Mt Wellington Australia Aug '07 072

Back in Hobart city I walked around Salamanca Place and Battery Point still fuming about the idiot driver. They were fairly pleasant areas of sandstone restaurants, shops, galleries, craft shops and offices but nothing too special in my mind. I later ended up in the wharf area where I had fresh fish and chips on one of the many seafood barges.

Fish and chip barges Hobart Harbour Australia Aug '07 266 Mount Wellington at sunset
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Australia 2007 Pt IV – Tasmania, Cradle Mountain

Posted on August 26, 2007 by tokyofox

I know its Winter and out of season in Tasmania but I never expected to be the only one on the Gray Line day tour to Cradle Mountain. Thats what I was though as driver Dave and I made our way west of Launceston to cradle county. I didn’t know until I left Tasmania but it appears that I was very lucky with the weather there as its supposedly only nice for about 20 days a year. The upside of being the only tourist was that I had more control over what we did and this included such cheesy tourist photos of the wombat and kangaroo road signs.

Once at Dove Lake I could see the beauty of Cradle Mountain standing before me. The only decision I then had to make was whether to walk around the lake or climb up to the Marina Lookout. Thankfully I took the latter option and chose the ‘easy’ track which wasn’t so easy for the fact that the middle of the path was very icy plus it was also very boggy in places and my foot went in a couple of times which wasn’t too pleasant.

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Unlike Mount Fuji a couple of weeks before this mountain hardly had anyone on it. I must have only seen about a dozen people on the whole climb and descend which took about two and a quarter hours and it was lucky that I did see them as a couple pointed out a wild wallaby to me which I would probably have missed. Another pairing were on hand to take some photos of me at the top which was great as the views were magnificent with the reflections of the mountain in the lake waters providing an amazing spectacle.

I inadvertantly took the ‘difficult’ route down which was actually a lot easier as it wasn’t so icy and with the steps and chains to hold on to it was far quicker than the other route which was important as I was needing to get back to the driver fairly quickly to move on to the next place.

As we left the beautiful serenity of the mountain and lake behind we saw a wild wombat which was a bonus for me and further benefit was seeing the famous Tasmanian Devil albeit at a conservation sanctuary.

Tasmanian Devil Park Australia Aug '07 279 Australia Aug '07 276 Australia Aug '07 261 Australia Aug '07 264 Australia Aug '07 219 Australia Aug '07 236 A wild Wallaby

We stopped off at Ashgrove Cheese farm on the way back to Launceston to sample a wide variety of cheese (and honey too) made on the premises and I even purchased a few wild wasabi cheeses as novelty presents for a few of my students. All in all it was a very pleasant day trip and I was pleased with what I had seen.

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Australia 2007 Pt III – Tasmania, Launceston

Posted on August 24, 2007 by tokyofox

I got a good soaking at 5am on Sunday 12th August as I walked to the pick up point for my Airport bus. Typically, it stopped as soon as I got there! I checked into Launceston City Backpackers on arrival in Tasmania and went out straight away as no time to waste. 15 minutes later and I was at Cataract Gorge, the undoubted highlight of the area, where I took an easy stroll along the riverside trail to Kings Bridge where I was in a bit of a dilemma as to whether to continue on or turn back knowing that I wanted to visit a dam back the other way.

Luckily I got talking to a couple who offered me a lift to the power station lookout at Duck Reach which was two kilometres away on foot and on top of that they also drove me to Trevallyn Dam where we whiled away far longer than was right waiting for a log or two to make its way towards the edge before plummeting. An anti-climax if ever there was one!

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After that I had a go at cable hang-gliding which was something I had read about and wanted to do. As I glided over the edge of the cliff and across the valley to my destination 200 metres away the feeling was quite good but nowhere near as stomach-churning as I’d hoped. Still, what can you expect for just A$20?!

There didn’t seem to be too much on offer in the city and that was made even worse given the fact that it was a Sunday and many things were therefore closed. I saw the Japanese Macaque monkeys in the city park and walked around the Aurora Stadium and that was about it until the early evening when I went to watch the fantastic ‘Simpsons Movie‘ as it’s not out in Japan yet or ever likely to be!

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Australia 2007 Pt II – Melbourne

Posted on August 21, 2007 by tokyofox

During my working holiday year in Australia in 2001 I spent about a third of that time in Melbourne living in St Kilda so I was looking forward to taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Before that though I went with Ruth and the baby to Brighton beach and Ramsay Street and then found my bearings back in Melbourne city centre and did a bit of shopping before visiting the recently opened Eureka Tower and its 88th floor observation deck where i could see great views of Melbourne and the surrounding area.

There was even a cube which extracts itself from the building and hangs you over the edge and at that stage the glass is frosted before it suddenly clears and you’re left staring down nearly 300 metres to the ground. This would of course been more scary had my sister not told me of this the day before and for those of you who don’t want to know about it please look away, erm, a couple of lines back!!

Australia Aug '07 097  Albert Park lake

After that I visited the ‘Neighbours‘ shop out of curiosity and wasted a bit more money in there before taking a quick peek at the Crown Casino and then it was off to Albert Park which plays host to the Australian F1 Grand Prix each March. Of course bugger all was happening there now but it was literally just a pit stop (pun intended) en-route to St Kilda to visit my old haunts. I saw the house and hostel where I stayed though the latter had closed down.

The 'Neighbours' centre  Crown Casino  Australia Aug '07 119  Australia Aug '07 133  St Kilda Beach  Australia Aug '07 143

I also saw the iconic laughing face of Luna Park, a few cake shops and walked along the beach at sunset before necking a couple of quick beers in my old locals ‘The Espy’ and ‘The George’. Some people say that laughter is the medicine of life but not for an asthmatic like me who needs inhalers!! Unlike the UK and Japan, these are freely available over the counter in Australia so I stocked up on a few of them too.

Luna Park  The Prince Of Wales

On the way back to the city I stopped off at the Shrine of Rememberence which I also visited for a photo stop the following day in daylight after watching an Aussie Rules Football game at the MCG. The famous cricket ground was far from full for the clash between Hawthorn and Brisbane Lions but it was a good atmosphere for me to be able to savour and the third quarter was particularly exciting as the Hawthorn Hawks ripped through the Lions’ defence.

Aussie Rules football @the MCG  Australia Aug '07 170

My final calls of duty were meeting up with cousin Dan and then going to ‘Hungry Jacks’ for a set meal which I couldn’t even manage to finish. Not used to that kind of generous portion I guess and it was also strange to be in a country where I understand everything being said around me. Not such a good thing to be honest and it shows how much I can shut myself off in public from the Japanese if I choose to do so.

Melbourne Central Roof  Shrine of Rememberance  Australia Aug '07 179  Australia Aug '07 185
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