Day 13. Train ride to Aomori

Day 13. Train ride to Aomori.

(No pictures...yet. If I find any, I'll add them).


As I had booked the extra night in Shibuya on a whim at the desk, and not via a website, I didn't get the free breakfast included in the price of the accommodation, so I went looking for some sushi. I couldn't find any open so early so I just got a breakfast sandwich and coffee combo from Doutor down the road. I have to be honest, the coffee was pretty bad and the sandwich was just passable, but the staff were friendly and efficient and I got a nice view of the people walking along the street below from the upstairs window seat.
Checkout from the hotel was 11 so I had some time to figure out how I was supposed to get to Aomori. I had already checked online for the best route to get there on my JR pass. Now I just needed to make sure I didn't miss any of the trains.
After breakfast I headed back to the hotel to fetch my bags and check out. There wasn't really anything else I could do in the time before the train departed, so I caught the Yamanote Line train to Tokyo station where the Shinkansen to Aomori departed from. While on my way, I checked the JR line map I had with me and noticed that the Shinkansen passed through Ueno. I thought I would be smart and save some time by getting off at Ueno instead of Tokyo and then catching an earlier train from Ueno. When I stopped at Ueno, it was lucky that I enquired about the platform for the Aomori train as the officer mentioned the cars were all reserved seating only. The train was about to leave and I would have been able to get to it if I had run (which I was thinking about doing) but I would never have been able to organise the reserve seat and still make that train. The next train after would be another 45minutes, and it would be the train I would have caught in Tokyo. I used the extra waiting time to look around other parts of the Ueno station, and noted how much had changed since I had last been there. A plethora of restaurants had opened up and the areas that were under construction last time had now been completed and housed food stores and other shops.
When I got to the platform, there were still a couple of minutes to wait so I bought a (terrible) onigiri rice ball from a platform food store and a Detective Conan manga. I still had some bakery goods from Hokuo in my bag so I didn't need to buy much else other than a hot chocolate from the vending machine. The brand of hot chocolate was called Van Houten and I laughed thinking about Millhouse from the Simpsons. In all seriousness though, it was a pretty good drink and a nice break from the terrible canned coffee and sports drinks.
Finally the train arrived and I boarded to what appeared to be an empty carriage. I didn't quite get why it was reserved seating if so many seats were empty, but I didn't think more of it. I settled in for the 4+ hour train ride and cracked open my manga and tried to decipher the story from the pictures because I couldn't read Japanese.
We made 6 or 7 stops along the way and picked up some more passengers. It was when the carriage filled up that I realised by it was reserved seating. I was luckly the two business men who say next to me were so sleepy as they either slept or were vey quiet and kept to themselved the whole trip.
The view out the window was quite nice at times and as we got further and further north there was more pronounced snowfall over the ground. Since my SLR was right at the bottom of my bag, I didn't get it out.
I'm not too sure but I also had the feeling that we didn't pick up or drop off as many people at the stations closest to the Fukushima area. I'm guessing this area is still showing the after effects of the Tsunami.
It was about 3:30pm when I arrived in Shin Aomori station, and transferred to the local train to get to Aomori City. As soon as I stepped off the train, I was hit with a face full of cold. It has also just started to get dark. There was also a long wait at the station and it wasn't until about 3:50 that I arrived at Aomori station. The walk to the main terminal was also really really long. The platforms all branch off a main overhead walkway which spans the entire width of the lines. My platform had been right on the end.
When I exited the station I pulled out the directions I had written down and proceeded to get lost almost immediately. Most signs were in Japanese except for an english map at the station, but this didn't seem to have the street I was looking for.
I showed the ticket officer a picture of the address on my phone in Japanese, but they couldn't work out where it was (I realised later that the address wasn't of the hotel, but was of the head office of the booking agency, even though the hotel address was in english below it.), mostly due to language difficulties.
I wasn't too hungry at that point as I had eaten some pastries on the train, so I decided to walk along some of the streets to see if I could spot any of the landmarks mentioned in the online directions. I was able to locate a couple of large department stores and hotels, but I still couldn't find the street or the hotel. It didn't help that the image of the front of the hotel on the website was tiny and blurry. I couldn't tell if it was 3 stories tall or 20 stories tall.
I walked down a back alley and found a local outside another hotel and asked if he knew of the street. I was probably pronouncing it wrong but he caught a portion of the name and pointed me to the next street down. I thought I was onto a winner but this just left me even more lost. I had been walking around for ages and it was already 5:30pm and quite dark. Pretty soon I wouldn't be able to see much so I decided to enter the next brightly lit store that might contain some english speaking staff and ask them for directions.
The first store I came across was an Excelsior Caffe. These places are like Starbucks. They even use the same font (albeit in a different colour). The staff looked at me blankly as I spouted out English dotted with terrible Japanese. The two girls behind the counter shook their heads and I sighed and headed for the door. Just as I was about to leave, I heard a 'chotto matte' from behind. Good thing I'd watched so much anime as she was asking me to wait a second. She had gone into the back room and a few seconds later, she emerged with another girl, about 14, wearing non work clothes looking quite confused. The other staff girl was trying to tell her that I only spoke English, and then the new girl realised what was happening.
She turned to me and spoke in very broken english that she was learning it in school and would try to help me if she could. I literally sighed with relief and proceeded to show her the address and the map I had and even explained the directions. All of these were counter-productive though as some of the information contradicted the other so she finally took the name of the hotel, got out her Galaxy S3 and plugged it into the maps app. I saw that the hotel had only been about 2 minutes away from the station and the reason I couldn't find it was that way the streets bend, I had been going on the main street and around and past the entrance everytime.
With a firm palm to the face I thanked them and started walking, only to find the young girl next to me insisting she take me to the entrance personally. I'm not sure if she thought it was the polite Japanese thing to do, or if she was genuinely afraid I would get lost again. Along the way she asked about where I was from and what I was doing in Japan. She said she would like to go overseas one day but had never even considered going to Australia as it seemed so far away.
Pretty soon we arrived at the hotel entrance and I thanked her excessively for helping me find it. The hotel itself felt pretty small but it was 9 levels or so, tucked against the back of a much larger hotel behind it. Definitely inconspicuous.
There didn't appear to be anyone at the counter so I rang the bell and sat down on a seat and waited. 5 minutes passed and another person entered the hotel. He also rang the bell and yelled something out in Japanese to behind the counter. After a while an elderly lady came out and he asked for a key number. The lady handed it to him without question.
I stepped up to the counter and told her I had a booking for 2 nights. She looked in a book and found my name then proceeded to say a whole lot of Japanese I couldn't understand. I wasn't sure what to do and after a few repeats with no progress, I took out my phone and hoped there was wifi. There was! I opened up the google translate app and got her to speak into it. It seems she was just explaining the pricing and what room number I would be in. After about 10 minutes of awkard conversation translated via my phone I was all set with key in hand. I dropped my things on the room floor (which was tiny) and got out my laptop to figure out my plans for the next day.
There were a few tourist attractions dotted around the surrounding areas, but there were also a few things to do right near where I was staying. As most of the remote areas had only 1 or 2 things to see, it didn't seem worth travelling out there and then have to travel back. At most I could do one activity that required a trip outside of the city. A couple of websites had mentioned the aquarium to the north-east just near Asamushionsen station. As it was one of the only things on a train route, I decided to go there, rathen than another gondola ride or an apple orchard. It didn't occur to me that it was the middle of winter and the aquarium might be closed, but I was hungry and I wasn't thinking straight.
I jotted down my list of things to see and headed out to find some food. When I got outside it was pitch black. There was ice underfoot and I had a hard time getting back to the station, where I had last seem some places to eat. I looked at my phone. It was about 10:30pm. I hadn't realised it was so late, but I figured there might be a small change there would be a small ramen shop or something similar still open.
As I got near the station, a policeman approched me and held up his hand for me to stop. He said something in Japanes but quickly realised I had no idea what he was saying. His english wasn't too bad but he had to speak very slow as he thought about the words. I was actually pretty impressed, given what he was about to ask of me. Apparently there had been some knife attacks in the area recently, and people had been told to be careful when out and about. He asked me if I was carrying a knife and then had me empty my pockets and patted me down. He also asked for my ID. I'm pretty sure we both knew I wasn't a knife-weilding purple-shirted eye-stabber, and he asked me about Australia. He apologised for having to go through procedure but it was his duty. When I asked if he knew if there was anywhere to get food nearby, he shook his head and told me no restaurants stayed open after 10pm, and my best bet was to get something from the Lawson down the road.
I purchased a 'King Cup' instant noodle pack as it was the cheapest and biggest of the noodle cups. It also had a pretty nice picture on the outside.
Back at the hotel, I remembered reading in the guide pamphlet that there was no hot water or kettle available so the staff put out thermoses of hot water which patrons can use. I grabbed one on the way back to my room and tried to enjoy a not-quite-hot cup of quite-disgusting-but-ok-for-the-price cup of noodles. I wasn't very successful and only ate half. The other half went down the sink. On the plus side, my room no longer smelled of cigarette smoke. Now it smelled like cheap cup noodle ramen.
With dinner out of the way, I lay down to what was probably the quietest nights sleep since getting to Japan.

Coming up: what I did in Aomori.

Day 12. Hakone

Day 12. Hakone.

Today marked the first day of me running solo and having basically no solid plan of what to do. I did a quick search on Google using the hotel internet for some attractions to see in Hakone and all the page results seemed to point to a Hakone Freepass which could be obtained from the Shinagawa station.
At first I was a against purchasing the Freepass in favour of using my JR pass but after several searches it looked like it was actually going to cost more on the Odakyu rail system to pay as I went after using the JR pass to get to Odawara. I took it on faith and thanks to the kind help from a Shinagawa ticket office staff member (she actually was there to usher people to the counter but she was the only one who spoke English), I obtained a discount 2-day pass for travel through Hakone. Even though I was only going for a day, the smallest ticket they had was 2 days. It was still apparently cheaper than paying as I went. For anyone without a JR pass, the ticket also gets you on the shinkansen to Odawara.
Upon arriving in Odawara, I followed the map that came with the pass and caught the small train that travels along the north side of Hakone. These were only 2 carriages long and felt really slow. My carriage was also full of old people.
Here is where I started to fail. Epicly.
On the map, there are 3 small dots indicating stations. I didn't realise this and so when everyone else got off at the first stop, I figured this was the stop for the change of train. It wasn't. The old people were just getting off there. Since the signs were all different, I had a really hard time seeing the small English writing below the giant Japanese characters. I turned around but just as I did the doors closed and I watched the train leave the station. I sat there alone for 20 minutes.
Now, you'd think I would have learned my lesson after this, but no. I did the exact same thing at the next 2 stops.
Eventually, I arrived at Hakone-Yumoto for the train swap, an hour behind schedule. This next train was headed to Gora Station, where the base of the gondola 'ropeway' was that would take me to the pier at Togendai-Ko station.
Along the way I intended to stop at Chokokunomori and check out the Hakone Open Air museum. The train ride was quite slow as the line had to twist through mountainside.
At one of the stops, I took a quick photo just to make sure I was in the right place and noticed there was still snow in certain areas even though it was quite a warm day.

Our train conductor was a pretty funny guy. He noticed there were some small children on the train and knowing that the ride might be a bit boring for them, he started giving a running commentary on the scenery as we passed. At one point the tracks curved around and so he stuck his head out the side of the conductor's compartment and noted exclaimed that if we looked out the side of the train we could see...his face!
He was a pretty big hit with the passengers and all the girls wanted a photo with him. (Must be the uniform).

 Since the train shared it's tracks with other trains going down the mountain, there were some tricky directional changes along the way which saw us 'giving way' as the other train went past and down the tracks we had just come up. It was quite a bizarre site but like everything else in Japan, the manouvre went smoothly and quite quickly.
At Chokokunomor, I disembarked and noted how dead the place looked.

There was hardly anyone else about other than the occasional student. There was some great scenery though and you could make out large patches of snow between the surrounding mountain tops. The museum was only a 2 minute walk from the station and had lockers for storing backpacks. I thought I may have broken the locker when a 100yen coin dropped out of the coin return but it turned out I had just been lucky as the last person must not have bothered collecting.
I figured I would spend about an hour looking around before getting back on the train to Gora.
I'm not normally an art person, but some of the sculpures were quite spectacular. I didn't have anyone else to do the 'handshake hole' with, so the image ended up looking quite lonely and sad.

 

 

 

 The below piece was particular impressive.

 Inside the wooden structure was a net suspended from the roof which made it look like the ultimate cubby house.

 I didn't go into the picasso building. Partly because I was conscious of the time, and partly because when I was learning about him in art class at highschool my teacher was an jerk. I've never fully gotten over that fact...

 

 You can't see it in the above shot, but there is a guy in a wheelchair behind the middle section of the sculpture. I also didn't go into the Green Gallery becuase it just looked like a cafe, but it's something to keep in mind if you ever find yourself there and want something to eat or drink. It's about halfway through the museum. Below is a picture of a...something. I have no idea.

 The Symphonic Tower was a chore to get up, but the view from the top is quite nice. Not quite as good as the view while climbing the stairs though.

 Again, I have no idea what any of the below is.

 

 Tucked in the corner of the entire grounds, and only visible from one window inside the back of the main gallery, I found what appeared to be a giant broken stone pedistal. I can only assume it was sliced into pieces by a ninja when a saiyan threw it at him, much like this but sorta better: http://youtu.be/G2HLw3FDUMw

I was supposed to only spend an hour in the museum but I got so immersed in all the different pieces that when I emerged from the exit and grabbed my bag, over 2 hours had passed. I also hadn't eaten anything since waking up.
More than 2 hours behind schedule I jumped on the next train to Gozo and before long I was on a cable car heading to the gondola station.

A small marker on my map indicated that Mt. Fuji should be visible from a small section of the ropeway. This got me excited as I hadn't had a very good view from the Skytree in Tokyo.

 Unfortunately, the sky was so hazy that I couldn't see anything beyond the mountains immediately surrounding Hakone.

 

Once over the highest point of the ropeway, the ground below was covered in pipes and sulphur with various pockets of steam billowing out.

 I had intended to stop here to check out the black eggs that get cooked naturally by the geothermal heat, but as I was running late, I made do with watching one of the other tourists buy one from the makeshift stalls at the ropeway transfer station. I continued down the next gondola to the lake pier.

 

 Even without seeing Mt. Fuji the view was great.

 

 

My Freepass got me access to the boat ride across the lake which was as picturesque as it was cold, and it was freezing cold on the deck.

 

 

 

 There were first class seats but I don't think anyone adhered to any sort of segregation.

  

 There also seemed to be a lot of defibrulators around. Not just on the boat, but in Japan in general.

 

 

 Once we arrived in port, it was about 5pm. I took a small look around and I almost mistook the founder of the place for Colonel Sanders of KFC fame.

 On closer inspection, it was not him. He has a different tie. Everything seemed shut so I decided to walk to the local shrine which had been visible from the boat earlier. I was also starving at this point as I still hadn't eaten. I grabbed a hot chocolate from a vending machine which surprisingly sated my appetite (for a little while at least).

 A continuing trend I've noticed in Japan are stored prominently displaying two things that they sell or make.
 The torii gate indicated I was on the right track for the temple.

 The waterfront is a popular place to walk dogs. Even dogs dressed like Bruce Lee.

 

 

  For some reason these steps reminded me of Monkey Magic.

 

 

 The forest behind the temple was particularly peaceful, probably because it was off limits to people. I guess that's why the shrine maiden was yelling at me.

 

 After a quick stop by the water, it was back to the bustop and I was looking at the map cursing myself for being so tardy and hence missing out on most of the tourist activities along the way. I would definitely have to come back at some stage in the future and see all the things I hadn't on this trip.

 I just thought this sign was funny.

 I had thought the bus was going back to Gora and I would take the train from there, but that route was apparently closed after 5, so the bus took me all the way back to Odawara, where I caught a Shinkansen back to Tokyo. As the train stopped there on the way back, I decided to visit my favourite bakery in Japan, Hokuo at Ueno station.
It had saved me last time I was in Japan when I had been desperate for something to eat and here it saved me again. Everything is in Japanese so I never know what I'm eating, but it doesn't matter because everything tastes awesome.

I didn't realise how tired I was when I walked out of the bakery and I wolfed down a small pastry and lugged the rest back to my hotel and ate some more before going to bed.

Coming up, Aomori.