Month: August 2005

This is the fourth and final entry from our trip to Tokyo last month.
After our return from Mt. Fuji, we rested up during the day and went back out that night. We decided that we wanted to see a traditional Japanese Kabuki theater show. However, since we don’t speak Japanese, we opted for a tour package that included an English speaking guide and headsets that provided the English translation.
Here’s a picture of the Kabuki-Za Theater we went to.

We enjoyed the show, but it seemed that the acting was more based on physical acting than delivery. It’s a style of theater that takes some getting used to.
We also decided to visit the Imperial Palace and gardens surrounding it. Here’s where the Emperor of Japan lives…








Here are his gardens:


Here’s a great view of the juxtaposition of the serene and chaos apparent all over Tokyo.


That ends our trip to Japan. We loved it and look forward to going back. When we do visit again, we already have a list of places we want to see. So, until then….
-Jim

Hi, this is the third chapter of our Japan trip in July. It’s by far the longest and if it has taken a while to load, I apologize.
A little background before the pictures….
One of most important reasons we chose to visit Tokyo was to climb Mt. Fuji.
As the tallest mountain in Japan and spiritual appeal to locals, Fuji-san is certainly the most revered mountain in Japan. It’s said that a wise man climbs Fuji-san once, but a fool climbs it twice.
We certainly enjoyed our climb, and the following is a brief synopsis highlighted with our photos.
Fuji-san is a freestanding volcano (similar to Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa) with the summit 12,388 ft above sea level. The mountain is divided into 10 stations. The most popular place to begin (and where we started) is from the 5th station at about 7,000 ft.
Since we climbed right in the middle of the “official” climbing season, we expected large numbers of people to join us on the trek to the summit. While we never had to wait in line to continue the hike, we did meet lots of interesting people. Almost from the very beginning, we met 2 other young American couples climbing. They lived in Tokyo and worked at Tokyo Disney (sound familiar, Rob??). We all got along well, and basically ended up climbing the entire mountain together.
Since large crowds were expected, we decided to climb through the night to arrive at the summit around sunrise. So, we left our hotel at about 8 PM to catch a bus that would take us to the fifth station.
We actually began hiking at about 11:30 PM. The sunrise was at 4:40 AM, so that gave us about 5 hours to reach the summit in time. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it up to the very top, but we stopped at the station right below the crater rim to enjoy one of the most spectacular sunrises ever.
Truly, the sunrise from the top a mountain is breath taking and one from a “free-standing” mountain is unbelievable. I’ll let you decide for yourself though….
Here’s Anna right before the sun peeked out from under the clouds.



One downside to the top of the mountain is that it was VERY windy (notice my hood is about to fly away…) As we got closer to the top, the wind became almost unbearable. It even made the wind in Colorado seem gentle in comparison. The worst part was that the wind carried the fine, gritty volcanic dust and it was impossible to protect your eyes from it. If you ever climb Mt. Fuji yourself, remember your ski goggles….they would have been HUGELY beneficial.



Here we are enjoying a hot cup of cocoa trying to avoid the wind/dust. This is the inside of the 9th station. We rested here for a little while before the final push to the top.





Once we’d thoroughly warmed up and were ready to brave the wind again, we headed back out for the final ascent. It was even worse than before. At times the wind was so strong, I could not stand in place. I estimate that the wind gusts were over 80 MPH. If the trail had been treacherous, I would have turned our group around, but it was just safe enough to continue. We eventually made it to the top and here’s what the top of a volcano that last erupted in 1707 looks like:



There are even enough visitors to the top to support a mall of sorts. It was still closed when we arrived, but interesting to see nonetheless.

A view from the top of Japan…

Looking back down at station 9:


This is as close to snow as we’ve been in the last year:




Well, after hours of slogging up the mountain, we finally got to come back down. Here the soft soil made it very easy to move quickly with very low impact. 🙂 Unfortunately, that meant we got even dirtier than before! Here’s proof:

We were excited to be done though.

Fuji-san graced us with a brief appearance from behind the haze and clouds and allowed a view to where we had been.

Here’s what most people did after climbing 🙂 Pass out in the middle of the plaza.

OK, so I have been quite remiss in my publishing of these pictures. Thanks to everyone who asked for them. Here is the rest of our trip to Tokyo in July.
Anna enjoying a pastry snack…

Downtown at night…


This is the prefecture we stayed in.

Roppongi really comes alive at night. It’s the epicenter for westerners at night.


We visited several parks while in Tokyo. There are a couple unusual things we noticed.
1. People do not eat lunch in the park. We tried once and found we were the only ones, even though there were hundreds of other people there at lunch time. Most people were just there to be outside. When we walked away though, there were numerous cars parked along the edge of the park. People chose to sit in their cars (with the A/C running) and eat their lunch.
2. There is a very small (visible) homeless population in Tokyo or the surrounding prefectures. However, in this park, we found a group of blue tarps and tents. They looked semi-permanent. From what we understand, this is a tolerated compromise to a small problem in a country where space is at a premium. Here’s what they look like:

More pictures of the park and museums:




Here are a few shots of a shrine. There are many shrines of varying intricacy. Fascinating to look through, even if you have no idea what the writing says….





Another highlight of our time in Tokyo was the shopping experience, and experience it is. This is a typical street side market. Notice the train line overhead. The public transportation is the best we’ve ever seen. Fast, affordable, ubiquitous and best of all….always on time. 🙂


I’ll finish this installment of the trip here. There will be a third chapter soon though….. 🙂
–Jim

It has now been a week since we returned from a week in Japan. We spent most of our time in Tokyo, with a few trips to the surrounding area. If we had more time, we’d love to go back and explore Kyoto for a couple days at least.
Ok, enough with the intro, here is our trip as captured in photographs…
First, we stayed in the Roppongi district, so the first order of business was a walk about to get a feel for the city and more importantly, see what was around.
Here is a picture of a cemetery (along with a number of prayer sticks) in the middle of the city. We liked the contrast here.

This is me, walking the streets…

A bike that Anna liked…

Fireworks were invented in China and since Japan has the benefit of proximity, we decided that the display being advertised was worth a trip to the adjacent city of Yokohama. It turns out that most people in Tokyo decided to join us there….well, at least it seemed that way. The train system was completely flooded with people. However, the Japanese government it their usual efficiency were able to get everyone into a very small space with relatively little problem. In fact, it was amazing to watch 50,000+ people move into a few small block, occupy less than 6 square feet each and not complain at all! We Americans could learn a few lessons from them! Anyway, the firework display was worth the effort. The following pictures don’t do them justice, but there were over 8,000 individual fireworks that lasted over an hour. If only we had brought our Crazy Creek chairs (backpacking chairs for the ground), we would have been all set. Unfortunately, the asphalt of the street intersection where we were sitting got a little uncomfortable after the first 45 min or so…. 🙂
Here’s an unfortunately blurry shot of our fellow firework watchers.

Anna ready to be amazed by the fireworks.

The highlight of the firework display were the “shaped” fireworks. There was even a “Hello Kitty” firework!
Here they are:





Suffice it to say, that we were quite impressed. This was all just to celebrate a Japanese national holiday known as Marine Day. It was free to watch and worth every penny.