Celebrating a life

In Memoriam

Charles J. Szoke

1919 - 2004

Shopping

No trip to Tokyo would be complete without a visit to Akihabara (electric town). Unfortunately, I’m not sure words can adequately describe this experience. Think Chinatown in either SF or NY – several blocks of stores with people everywhere, all talking at once, selling, buying, bargaining. Now combine that with Fry’s – everything being sold or traded is electronics related (and yes, adult toys are apparently considered small electronics). And as a final touch, add the Japanese love of neon. It’s a simultaneous assault on all 5 senses. Well worth doing for a little while just for the experience, but have a quick exit strategy handy to avoid overdose.

Since we were also on a mission to find a set of Japanese chisels (talk to XDirtPushr, not me), we ended up at a place called Tokyu Hands. It’s billed as Japan’s original do-it-yourself store, but it’s geared more for crafts than projects around the house like our Home Despot. It’s 9 floors in a tall, thin city building of the most amazing collection of stuff (conveniently, they have an English version of the store directory). The first floor is seasonal goods and is currently stocked with umbrellas, galoshes, and raincoats. The second floor is coat hangers, build-it-yourself furniture, and suitcases. The next floor is raw materials – sheets of copper and aluminum, blocks of plastic and foam, wire and chain, fiberoptic tubing (no, I am not making this up). Then come tools for all variety of crafts and sports. Wood and metal working tools, bikes and bike parts, jewelry making supplies, quilting fabric and sewing supplies, party goods, models of Anime figures and things with engines ... the list goes on and on. And in case you’re starting to feel like you’re trapped in a desert with no hope of escape or sustenance, there’s a restaurant at the top (and they do serve ice cream).

As an antidote to the shopping and people, we also explored one of Tokyo’s older formal gardens (Rikugien). Nothing in particular was in bloom, but the green was a welcome relief after all the concrete (although it wasn’t that much cooler and the mosquitoes were vicious). The pond was stocked with the requisite Koi (who are well trained to follow humans around, waiting for handouts), but also turtles. The turtles might be slower, but they’re meaner when it comes to fighting their way to the top of the teeming pile.

Museums

After watching and reading up on Sumo, we figured we had to at least go see the Sumo museum (besides, it’s free). I had expected it to be pretty cheesy, but it turned out to be rather cool. You start by walking through the omnipresent gift shop (I couldn’t resist so one of you lucky people is getting a box of tiny chocolate sumo wrestlers as your next present!) and into a seating area to watch a tape of past sumo highlights. When you’re finally done being amazed by large men charging into each other and landing outside the ring (front row seats at this sport are only for people who are already flat or who have titanium reinforced bones), you walk around the corner into the museum itself. The entire museum is housed in one not-huge room, so they rotate the exhibits fairly regularly. Right now, it’s an exhibit of clothes of past wrestlers. There is nothing like a pair of shoes or set of footprints to convince you these guys are LARGE. XDirtPushr had trouble all week with the slippers and robes the hotels expect you to wear. He needed the “special big” robe (is that XL or XXL?) and the slippers were just hopeless. But these shoes made his size 12s look like little kid feet. (Afterwards we happened to pass by a store that sells clothes to the wrestlers – I think they’re “extra special big”)

The size chart they had on the wall went up to 180kg and 2.5m. That’s one big man!





The last museum on our list (can you tell we’re not big museum fans?) was the Fireworks Museum. It’s even smaller and harder to find (and horror of horror, has no gift shop!) but it’s equally cool in a nerdly sort of way. All Japanese fireworks are still made by hand, because no one’s figured out how to pack them robotically. Instead of long cylinders packed with one color of powder, these are spheres packed in concentric layers of different colors. All layers are separated by paper, with more paper wrapping the entire thing up like a giant Christmas present. If you want a white snoopy head on a blue background, you pack little spheres that will burn white in the shape of a snoopy head into the big paper sphere and fill all the blank spaced with little spheres that will burn blue. And there’s no need to bother with safety equipment and precautions, because if one of those spheres goes off in the factory, the whole place is gone anyway. So you might as well work without those annoying gloves and respirator.







But look at the results of all that hand labor! I think the butterfly is my favorite.

Sightseeing around Fuji

As much as I thought climbing Fuji-san was a waste of time and energy, the Fuji 5 Lakes area and Hakone are very worthy of much more time than the 2 days we spent on them (we had to pass on the monkey preserve and the Porsche museum!). It looks and feels a lot like the Tahoe area – mountains, water, lots of people but obviously a vacation place so there’s a peacefulness about it. The only caveat is that it’s really a Japanese tourist place. It’s really hard to find information about the area before you get there (at least, information not in Japanese), and once you get there, there is surprisingly little English. But then again, that’s pretty much par for the course on this trip.

The whole area is built up on layers of lava from Fuji and surrounding volcanoes. On the base of Fuji itself is a forest (Aokigahara Sea of Trees) that grows entirely in a few inches of soil on top of lava rock. The rock is magnetic and messes up compasses, so it’s fairly easy to get lost if you stray off the trail (assuming you don’t have a GPS gadget with you). For this reason, it’s become a favorite spot for people to commit suicide. We saw no ghosts, but it is a very odd feeling forest!

The lava also lends itself to caves. From the literature we managed to collect, we had three options: the bat cave (the biggest cave with “countless bats”), the wind cave (used to store silkworm eggs), and the ice cave (used for pre-refrigerator summer ice storage). Since it was a hot day, we opted for the ice cave. It’s very non-OSHA approved, but they obligingly had this very clear drawing of the dangers you’re likely to face. The steps do have railings, but then you have to crouch through the tiny areas, trying not to slip on the ice or touch the wall to catch your balance. The one thing the sign doesn’t say is to bring your sweatshirt because it’s cold. I know, it seems rather obvious that it would be cold in an ice cave, but you don’t think of that when it’s 90+ degrees in the sun. I think that’s the coldest I’ve ever been in Japan.








Hakone is in the basin of another, much older and larger volcano. The only way you can even tell you’re in a volcano basin is by the ring of “mountains” around you, and the steaming sulfur pits. The pits are fascinating, if repelling. The Japanese also seem to think that eating eggs cooked in the steam is good for your health, but XDirtPushr is convinced that they bring their kids to eat blackened eggs to retard their growth and keep the population short.













In the center of Hakone is another lake, complete with what is possibly the most famous torii in Japan. If the day had been clearer, you would see Fuji off in the distance to the left in the picture.




An hour on the toll road (and a little bit of speeding) brought us back to the traffic and smog and heat that is Tokyo. Why do people live here again?

Japanese Hotels

Work normally puts people into “western” hotels, partly because they seem to think we’d like that better and partly because these are the only places that are guaranteed to have a concierge who speaks some English. However, I had been told that a Japanese hotel was an entirely different ballgame, so while on vacation, we avoided all Holiday Inns. And I have to agree - this is an experience not to be missed.

The hotels themselves weren’t anything particularly special – just a nice hotel lobby with pleasant receptionists who try very hard (but not entirely successfully) to remember their English. And the room itself is a typical Japanese room – tatami mats on the floor and the only pieces of furniture are the coffee table and tv. It only has a bathroom attached if you pay extra, and even then a shower (or bath) isn’t always guaranteed. Instead, you go to the public bath (onsen). And this is one thing the Japanese seriously do well.

It is a tad odd. First off, you have to find the right room. Most hotels seem to have two onsens – one for the men, and one for the women (apparently it used to be co-ed, but isn’t very often anymore). And since the two are generally not identical, they swap back and forth every night at midnight. So you have to carefully check which one is which that day (we’re assuming the squiggles on the door-way curtains say something useful, but we found that generally the women’s curtains were red/orange, while black/blue meant men). No, we don’t know what happens if you’re in the tub when the clock strikes midnight.

As you duck through the appropriate color curtain, you enter into a changing room/lounge – baskets to put stuff in, massage chairs, a vanity complete with an assortment of scented bottles, cotton balls, and hair dryers, etc. You dump all your stuff into the baskets (yes, *all* - this is where XDirtPushr started desperately hanging on to his swim trunks and protesting “I was mis-informed!” rather wild-eyed) and walk into the next room.

Here you find a large sunken hot tub of some kind in the center, and a row of munchkin-high cubicles along the wall, each with a 6 inch tall stool, round bucket, water tap, and a mirror. You’re expected to take a “shower” sitting on the little stool, using the bucket to pour water over yourself. Luckily for us gaigin, all the places we went also had hand-held shower heads (and hot water). But it’s still weird to be able to wash the bottom of your foot without having to hop around on the other foot.

Once you are completely squeaky clean, you get to step into the hot tub (apparently the biggest faux pas you can make is to get dirt or soap suds into the tub). The tubs themselves vary a lot. They’re usually large enough for a small crowd (10-15 people), have some kind of a view, and are hot enough to pop blisters. The best ones are pools of water from natural hot springs, but there are lots of man-made ones done up in blue pool tile or natural concrete rock. They can be inside or outside – sometimes the main tub is inside, while the secondary tub is outside. Once place had a whirlpool tub and sauna. Another also had a smaller tub up on the roof with a fantastic view of Fuji and the lake. The trick is to use your gaigin license to explore your options before your shower (while you still have your robe on). Then shower and enjoy.

Once you’re completely relaxed, you head back to your room for dinner. You can either go down to the restaurant, or be a total hedonist and have dinner served in your room (although the advantage of the restaurant is that it usually has a real table and chairs). Either way, dinner consists of more little, brightly-colored dishes than you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Don’t ask what they are – just eat and enjoy. And pass your husband the nasty raw shrimp while he passes you the clear gelatinous blobs.

Then you get to roll over all of 4 feet onto the futons they spread out on the floor for you and fall into a food coma. And if you’re experiencing this the day after you climbed Fuji … well, it’s just a little slice of heaven after a long night in purgatory.

Inch by inch

The Japanese call Fuji-san “shy” because of the clouds that hide the peak from view most of the time (the mountain is tall enough that it generates its own weather, mostly clouds). But every once in a while, the clouds part for a minute and allow a view of the well-known profile. This particular view came from the toll highway that we weren’t supposed to be on. (The driver didn’t listen to the navigator’s directions and took a left turn against his advice and cost us $5 in tolls - but wasn't the view worth it?)

The proper way to climb Fuji-san is to start at the bottom, and climb all the way to the top through the 10 “stations” along the way (most stations aren’t much more than mile markers, but they’re absolutely necessary to break the monotony). You buy a wooden walking stick (complete with jingle bells to scare off the evil spirits) when you start, and have it branded at every station along the way to prove you hiked the entire thing.

You can, however, drive as far as Station 5. Since we weren’t Shinto pilgrims (or total idiots), we started from this halfway point (after removing the jingle bells, like all the other non-Asian climbers). Yes, our walking stick is missing the first 4 brands. But since Station 6 was closed when we got there, we’d be missing one through no fault of our own anyway. So we refuse to feel inadequate.

As we set off, it was so very romantic. There was a full moon, the path was a nice wide stroll (albeit uphill), jingle bells chimed in the distance, and the lights of the surrounding towns (including a small fireworks display) were spread out beneath our feet. We also noticed that we were hiking way ahead of schedule (there’s no real place to wait until sunrise at the top, so you don’t want to get there early), so we were deliberately ambling (putting on speed only when the jingle bells got too close and loud). In addition, there were a ton of foreign tourists on the mountain, most of whom spoke English, so we could exchange Japanese horror stories with people at the rest stops. All in all, very pleasant.

After about Station 7, it stopped being a steep hiking path and became more of a scramble over knee-high chunks of old lava – much slower and more painful. But before it got really tiresome, there was a hut with a really cool monkey brand for the walking stick. It’s the adult version of giving a kid a Looney Toons band aid, and was just as effective.


Unfortunately, even the thrill of a monkey brand only lasted so long. Somewhere after the 8th station, the climb just started to hurt. The refrain “inch by inch” started running through my mind over and over and over again as I scrambled on and on, but the lights at the top didn’t seem to get any closer. Dejection started to set in. Food and bathroom became more and more expensive (and smellier, at least for the latter). It got colder and windier. And you’re not allowed into the huts for even the length of time it takes them to brand your stick (you hand the stick in through the crack in the door and wait outside with your nose pressed up against the glass until they’re done – if you want to rest in the warmth, it’ll cost you $10 an hour).

The final straw came several hundred meters from the top – the human traffic jam. The climbers with a cigarette in one hand and an oxygen bottle in the other need to stop and take a rest, which they do in the middle of the road. If you try to go around them, the guides start screaming at you in incomprehensible Japanese (I can only assume they’re yelling at people to stay on the marked trails), so your only option is to trip the stationary people with your walking stick and climb over their limp bodies. To top it off, the sky was getting rather light, so there was a real sense of urgency to get to the top.

Sunrise at long last, viewed from the highest point in the land of the rising sun. And it was magnificent.















After many pictures, another set of brands, and some very expensive soup, we headed down (down the wrong trail due to navigator error – 45 minutes later we were again headed down, this time on the right trail). Only to find out that up was the easy part. The ascending trail travels up a spine of rock, but the descending trail follows the rock fall. It’s all covered with lava chunks buried in loose sand (ball bearings in grease), especially designed to twist ankles and blow out knees. And now it was light out so we could see how far we still had to go (and how ugly the mountain really is up close). The only amusing part was watching the 3 Americans bound down the trail with a half dead looking Japanese girl between them. They kept telling her how well she was doing as they dragged her along, but we never saw her actually move on her own.

All in all, Fuji-san just hurt. The view from the top was amazing, but did not justify the 14 hour hike over treeless, wind-swept lava. Unless it’s a religious experience, I highly recommend finding another, less popular, prettier, 12,000 ft peak to watch the sunrise from. Or even better - a hot tub with a nice view instead.

Bazilsmom: “No more mountains ever!”
XDirtPushr: “No more volcanoes ever, but do you want to climb half dome next year?”

Happy Birthday to the Redhead!

None of us know how to say "Happy Birthday" in Japanese, but we hope you're having a good one anyway!

Anatomy of a vacation

Rather than write entries for every day of the vacation, itinerary style, we thought it would be more interesting (and easier to write) if an entry only covered a single destination. But to give you a sense of the overall trip, here’s the short version of the itinerary (the actual one, not the planned one – as usual, a lot of items got dropped as the realities of hot, humid weather and sore muscles set in).

Saturday – Pack up 2 months of junk, see the best of Ibaraki in a whopping 5 hours
Sunday – Train trip to Tokyo, immediate shopping trip to get the long-awaited chisel set
Monday – Drive to Fuji, start climbing after a not particularly successful attempt at a nap in the car
Tuesday – Continue climbing, stare blearily at a beautiful sunrise, scramble down for a very long time, sleep for even longer
Wednesday – Sightsee around Fuji and Hakone, return to Tokyo’s traffic, heat, humidity, and smog
Thursday – Tour of (very) select museums and the visual and audio cacophony that is Akihabara (electric town)
Friday – Fish market (although not for sunrise), Rikugien garden, and a bird’s eye view of Tokyo from the top of the government buildings
Saturday – Return home at very long last

There’s no place like home

We’re still unpacking and sorting out pictures and souvenirs and other assorted items, but I wanted to let everyone know that we both made it back in one piece (there was a rough patch at the top of Fuji when XDirtPushr remarked the view was fantastic, what night did we want to climb Half Dome – but the god of the mountain helped me control my fist of death and he lived to tell the tale). We do plan to post at least the Fuji pictures, but now that I have a house to take care of again, it’ll take me a little while.

In the meantime, the Redhead is keeping busy back in Omiya. He’s decided to continue the blog while he’s there. So Volume II can be found at www.almightygozar.blogspot.com.