Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama - August/September 2015

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Sunday 30th August

From Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama - 2015

On the home straight of the trip, I didn't have any major plans - the next few days were a contingency for any logistical delays encountered during our ambitious visit to Hachijo-jima and Aogashima. However there were still a few interesting activities around Tokyo I'd been keen to check out. I started with a generous breakfast at a nearby cafe (still trying to bump up my weight back towards normal levels), and grabbed some extra snacks at a convenience store, incurring the wrath of the lady behind the counter by queuing in the wrong spot.

I took the train to Ueno, and then walked through some of the back street shopping areas towards Akihabara, grabbing some lunch on the way. It was a bit frustrating that many of the dining establishments offered free WiFi - but you had to be able to send an email to register to use it! I continued on and arrived at Akiba Fukurou, a cozy Owl Cafe. I hadn't booked but I was lucky that I arrived just before one of the session times and the queue wasn't too big and I was able to join in. The "Cafe" part of the name is a little aspirational; you are given a bottled water and that's it for refreshments, but I don't think anyone's there for a cappuccino! We were taken through owl etiquette ("keep hold of the cord on the owl's leg, otherwise- big owl, little owl, 'yummy'!") and then spent the rest of the session meeting our charming new buddies. I was introduced to a medium-sized owl called Negi ("Spring Onion" - a nice link to our Sado accommodation at Shukunegi), who posed for some pictures with me. The owls seemed pretty cool with the situation, and overall it was a lot of fun and social, albeit in a very quiet and calm atmosphere.

I grabbed a more substantial afternoon tea, perhaps starting to overload my system, and took the Chou line across town to Yoyogi for a quick look around the park. The last time I had visited I'd been amazed by all the activity, but today was a bit dreary so I wasn't expecting to see much happening... but I managed to run into a huge eisteddfod (I think?) called Super Yosakoi. There were lots of big groups of performers in very ornate and highly characatured costumes- miniature top hats pinned at severe angles, that sort of thing- but also fans, masks, kimonos, giant flags and so forth. There were two stages running performances, each of which was set to pumping J-Pop, and in the few minutes on stage, the many dozens in each teams would show off some highly dynamic choreography, costume changes and heaps of colour and movement, with grace and precision, despite the light rain. It was quite mesmerising! At first I thought they were all school groups, and some of the teams had lots of members that were in their mid-teens, but there also seemed to be a lot in their twenties and thirties as well. After watching several performances I did a quick lap around Yoyogi Park, and as expected it was very quiet; and then with Super Yosakoi finishing up, headed back to Yoyogi Station, partly to enjoy the surroundings, but mainly because I missed the entrance to Harajuku Station... I think I did that last time too!

I caught the train to Koenji, a few stations away, where a bunch of the tour buddies were meeting to watch the Awa Odori festival. There was a big crowd crammed in the narrow streets, and very helpful festival staff, but with only occasional trickles of WiFi available I gave up any hope of meeting up with the others. but it was fantastic to see the many groups of dancers and musicians. The tight spaces probably added to the intensity of the performances.

I then took the train back to Shibuya - there seemed to be some sort of performance happening in the main square (pentagon?) next to the station- it obviously was the day for it! Crossing back through the station I immediately took the wrong road, heading nearly south rather than east... all seemed fine to start with but after a few major blocks, things were not matching up with the screenshot of the map on my phone and I figured out my mistake. I took a punt on taking a shortcut through the backstreets which was quite educational - I really hadn't expected to see a fairly suburban enclave so close to major CBD-like areas. It was very quiet, and the streets were very twisted; I started to lose track of which way I was facing. I gave up trying to get anywhere meaningful on foot and found a concierge/security guard of an official-looking establishment; possibly an embassy, who was quite helpful despite having no common language. We figured it would be best for me to grab a taxi, and one appeared on cue. A few minutes later I arrived at Red Shoes (a trendy basement bar), and hoped I would still be in time to see a bit of Tomoki Sato's show. Tomoki had stayed at my place when performing at the 2014 Melbourne Ukulele Festival and I was looking forward to seeing him perform on home turf. I could see him in the crowd but the ticket guy said that he'd thought he'd just finished and I was a bit reluctant to pay nearly $50 to see a show if it was already over - on top of the taxi fare it'd make it a pretty expensive chat! After weighing up the options for a minute, I saw that Tomoki was about to start again so I paid up and squeezed through to the front to catch the final set. It was great to have a chat afterwards and meet his manager as well, and most importantly, to return his socks that he'd dropped in my car when I drove him to the airport after the Dandenong Ranges Ukulele Festival in May. It had been a bit of an ordeal to get there but very happy that the adventure had had a good outcome! On the train back there was a big crowd of people that, judging by their T-shirts, had just been to see the J-Soul Brothers. Incidentally it had been interesting to see that shirts with writing on them were quite the fashion throughout the areas I'd visited; the vast bulk were in English (usually with sensible phrases, but not always) with most of the remainder in French. There were often also big neighborhood information signs with a headline/title in English but all details in Japanese.

Monday

From Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama - 2015

I'd had some provisional plans that had fallen through so I took the opportunity to squeeze a bit more value out of my JR Pass and take a day trip. I headed to Ueno Station and picked up a few brochures and set off for Nikko, a mountain town featuring lots of historic shrines and temples. I took the shinkansen to Utsunomiya, and found that I had an hour to wait for the connecting train; it looked like the late morning timeslot was very much off-peak in their timetable - oh well, early lunch at the shopping mall next door and a very quick look around the city. The Nikko train was kitted out with historical decor and it had a bit of a holiday feel to it. At Nikko station I joined the queue for information about what do in the few brief hours left, and the very helpful JR attendant efficiently guided us all to our best options in various languages with a big cheery smile on her face.

It was quite drizzly as I headed up the hill. The township seemed a bit like Warburton, nestled in a small valley with lots of souvenir and craft shops. I bought a ticket to cross the Shinkyo Bridge, which was quite nice but the grey weather left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. It probably wasn't helped by being quite worn out and creaky after a crazy few days. I crossed the river to the shrine precinct and started to get my bearings. I only had time for a good look at the Toshogu Shrine which had a number of intricately decorated temples and other buildings - a lot of which were dedicated to selling some incredibly tacky souvenirs. It was generally very nice but I didn't have much of an appreciation of the subtleties. A highlight was a demonstration of a 'sweet spot' in the Crying Dragon temple where the sound of a clap resonated for quite a few seconds; when the monk repeated the demonstrated a metre or two either side, the sound faded almost instantly.

I zigzagged through the neighborhood, past the museum and some other temples. There was a team of teenagers enthusiastically practicing Aikido in a large open hall. Heading back into town I was a little surprised to see some monkeys crossing the street via the overhead powerlines.

On my final Shinkansen journey of this trip, I ticked off another milestone - finishing the final episode of NHK World's Easy Japanese language app - it had been a great companion and highly useful during my trip. Joutatsu no kotsu! Back at the hotel I was just settling in to the quiet solitude of attending to a few emails when a perplexing call came through from reception asking me (a little accusingly) of whether I knew of where all the noise was coming from! I couldn't hear a thing...

Tuesday

From Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama - 2015

After returning from Hachijo, many of the tour group had continued with other travels, meeting friends and so forth. Those of us in Tokyo had some ideas for activities but with reliable internet limited just to the hotel, I found it quite difficult to keep up with plans- I typically found out about gatherings a few hours after they'd occurred... next time perhaps I'll look at getting a local data SIM or perhaps WiFi might become more universal. I'd also tried to message a few of my Japanese contacts but they weren't available. However I was delighted to receive a message from Yuki, a ukulele friend that I'd met briefly at a couple of festivals; she'd returned home to Yokohama and was keen to meet up! I took the train through Tokyo peak hour and it was very crowded at times although not quite at the stage of people being crammed in. I alighted at Sakuragicho and had enough time for some quick souvenir shopping.

Yuki arrived and we set off into the rainy morning. It was fantastic to catch up and to revisit some of the places I'd passed three weeks earlier and explore further - coffee at the Red Brick Warehouse, lunch at Chinatown, and then to get our fortunes told at the Masobyu Chinese temple; apparently I need to be patient. We crossed through the Motomachi shopping area and figured out how to go upstairs from the subway station to get to the America Yama park that extended over the rooftop. We enjoyed the view from Harbour View Hill Park, and with Yuki becoming very popular with mosquitoes, we headed back to an exquisite cafe in Motomachi for a cake and coffee. It'd been a fantastic day - thanks Yuki! It had been great to get her perspectives on Japanese and English languages - she liked how in English, you get the sentiment early in the sentence (eg "I don't want another biscuit") where Japanese leaves you hanging until the end.

I headed back to Ikebukuro for the last time. Our accommodation from a couple of weeks prior was around the corner from Penguin Bar, which given my volunteer interests in Melbourne, I was keen to try. I had previously tried to dine or drink there without a reservation but had been not been allowed in - the Maitre d' had said that it was booked out even if it had looked like there was plenty of room. Regardless I thought I'd give it a final try; I had mentioned it to Yuki and she had booked for me. I was under strict instructions to arrive at 6pm sharp, and after the train journey of around 70 minutes and a dash to exit C6 (hundreds of metres through underground tunnels from the station) I made it with about 30 seconds to spare. There were three African penguins in the room and they were behind a big pane of glass with a pool just big enough to do a tumble turn in; so it wasn't nearly as interactive as the Fukurou, but all up it was kind of cool despite the passive-aggression of the wait staff. The food was actually quite nice - all slightly pricey but it was an interesting experience. There were only a handful of other diners, so it was about two-thirds empty.

I had a quick look around the shops to try to find some souvenirs & presents for all the birthdays I'd missed but couldn't really find much suitable amongst the huge range of shops in the area (but confirmed that I'd been one of the very last customers at a donut stall before they closed down... they were quite yummy!). I returned to the hotel in Minami-Senju to pick up my bags - it was quite close to the city (and very comfortable, a great price and friendly staff) but just far away to be a real pain to get there and back - a change of train, 5 minutes travel and 15 minutes' walk each way with a banged-up suitcase. At Minami-Senju station I faced a dilemma - I was following instructions to get to the airport via Tokyo station, requiring a little bit of backtracking, yet there was a train heading direct to Narita from the opposite platform... I decided to play it safe and stick to the original plan; but found that I had an interminable wait at Tokyo station, and it didn't have any trains to the airport anyway; at that time of evening they all stopped at Narita city nearby. (It looks like the other train would've taken around 75 minutes, but it took me probably around 2 hours.) There may have been fiddly public transport options to the hotel but by then I was getting pretty tired so I jumped in a taxi, figuring that the hotel was pretty close - it turns out it's only about 7km away but the fare was still around $35!

I checked in and calmness returned. Some of my tourmates had arrived earlier in the evening but they'd all headed to bed by the time I did a quick reconnaissance of the bars.

Wednesday

From Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama - 2015

I'd scored a good deal booking the airport and made great use of the included buffet breakfast, as a last-ditched effort to get some weight back on. I was delighted to see a small souvenir shop at the hotel which sorted out my shopping needs and then jumped on the hotel bus for the short transfer - the hotel is only barely beyond the airport perimeter.

The new Terminal 3 has barely opened and there wasn't any signage about how to get there from where the bus dropped us off at Terminal 2, but a helpful airline employee pointed me in the right direction. Not wanting to bother with another bus, I set off on foot for the few hundred metres, somehow losing my booking printout in the process (though it was not required). I checked in - finally crossing paths with a couple of the others from our group; even though many of us had stayed in the same hotel the previous night we hadn't managed to meet up at breakfast or anything- I think I was less pessimistic about the time required to get to the airport so had slept in a tad longer. However, I didn't proceed through customs straight away as I was hoping to meet up with Nancy and Nic, my uke buddies and almost-neighbours from home, who were just flying in on the plane that I was to be returning on. I made a final call home for a birthday greeting - and then my phone started reporting all sorts of weird SIM errors - thankfully it had lasted to this point! Nancy and Nic dutifully appeared and it was great to swap a few quick travel stories and to exchange my remaining Yen for $AU. Then straight through the spartan terminal and various processing stages, to meet the rest of the group (Jenny P and Piers had new tattoos to show off) and find the plane had already opened for boarding. The pilot warned us that we had a long taxi ahead and this proved to be the case - it was around 20 or 25 minutes before we joined the queue of a dozen or so planes to take off. After that we enjoyed a very comfortable flight - it was only about 20% full so plenty of room to spread out, enjoy the views and do a bit of mingling with the other tourmates on board... though it wasn't quite the 'party flight' - we were all pretty worn out!

And then - home; it was great to have a fantastic welcome! Over the next few days I saw a bit more of Japan on the news as severe storms and flooding had hit some areas around Tokyo, in particular, Nikko; also I was also still getting updates from friends that were still over there.

Trip summary

Thanks to everyone involved with the trip, and shared the journey with me, either in person, behind-the-scenes or electronically... it was always nice to see Taiko Tour, Shome Shome, Earth Celebration or Aogashima Taiko shirts in a crowd. It was an amazing experience and will be hard to beat! Each day brought lots of new adventures and reminded me that there's so much interesting stuff happening when you just get out to explore - it was great to have a little bit of a digital detox as well, and find that the world continues quite nicely by itself without needing to follow the daily news media.

I'm keen to start thinking up my next big adventure but it'll be very hard to top this one! Meantime, for all my old and new friends from Singapore and Japan - you're very welcome in Melbourne, let me know when you're coming!