Robot Claw

That’s Atami Castle, which I visited today. It’s not a real historic castle, but was built in 1959 as a tourist attraction. According to a plaque inside it became famous in 1962 for being destroyed in a Godzilla film, which I looked up:

The castle is up on the same cliff the ropeway took me yesterday, which means I rode the ropeway again today. Here’s a view looking up the cable (the opposite of the photo I posted yesterday):

The ropeway and area at the top was much busier than yesterday, so it seems Sunday is a bigger tourist day than Saturday here in Atami. There was a line to buy tickets for the castle, and as I was waiting I spied a sign hanging above the entrance which rendered me speechless:

Wizardry Daphne is currently one of my favourite games and I play it daily. I was even playing it in line moments before I noticed this sign! Not only did I have no idea there was a collaboration going on with Atami castle, but for me to arrive on the final day is incredible luck!

I was hopping with excitement waiting in line to see exactly what a collaboration between a game and a tourist attraction could be! When I purchased my ticket I was given a leaflet with a ‘quest’ inside:

You needed to find give of the games characters hidden throughout the castle (one on each floor) and you also had to find and defeat the ‘red oni’ to finish the quest. It sounds much harder than it was to complete, although I initially had some difficulty with defeating the oni since it required accessing a YouTube video via a fiddly QR code.

I went through the castle twice: once to complete the Wizardry quest and again to actually see the attractions. The quest didn’t take me long, and when I presented my solution to the man at the shop he chuckled, I assume due to my poorly written Japanese:

And my reward for this effort? A very high quality vinyl sticker:

Of course Japan being Japan, the collaboration also meant exclusive goods for sale, and you can bet I made a few purchases. Overall I loved doing the quest and experiencing the collaboration, and I’m still amazed how lucky I was to stumble onto it.

The castle itself had different exhibits on each of its six floors, including authentic samurai armor and weapons. The katana in particular were brilliant:

There was also an eight-barreled arquebus which is the most ridiculous firearm I’ve ever seen and took three minutes to load!

One floor had extensive historical information about Japanese castles in general, as well as a dozen or so extremely detailed wooden models of famous examples. Can you tell what these are made of?

They are entirely made of matchsticks! The detail was extraordinary and I can hardly imagine the effort that went into making all of these.

There were also displays of Edo-era art, and an entire floor dedicated to pictograms which was entirely lost to me because of the language barrier 🙂

The basement was a surprise: an arcade of mostly gigantic cabinet shooter and rythym games with everything on freeplay! I sat at that massive Space Invaders with the LED screen and played it for maybe half an hour, amazed that I could since this is usually a redemption game and it beggars belief anyone could last that long. It gets insanely difficult – almost impossibly – but with free play I just kept going. It was fun 🙂

In fact if this castle was next to my hotel I’d still be in that basement, playing the latest House Of The Dead and Jurassic Park shooters through to the end!

The highest level of the castle also provides the best views of Atami city. As you can see it’s cloudier than yesterday, although even since we had a light rain forecast today it never eventuated.

I’d say the castle would have been worth it anyway, but the Wizardry collab for me made it one of the most memorable moments of this entire trip!

Right next door was the ‘Atami Trick Art Museum’. These are common in tourist locations here in Japan, and are full of art based around optical illusion. KLS have always imagined these to be worthless tourist traps, so I was surprised today how much fun it was.

For starters, massive props to the employee who walked me through half the museum, taking the photos you’ve already seen. She had no English, but managed to show me how to pose and knew exactly how to take a good photo. She was lovely.

Secondly I was surprised how many adults visited. Or rather, how few children. I had been incorrect when I dismissed these places as just for kids!

Many of the illusions were extremely effective, including paintings that seemed to move when you viewed them, but my favourite is probably the one above. As you see, only my reflection in the mirror is visible. Can you guess how this was achieved?

Before we head back down to the city a word of caution: Beware the black kites!

I headed down and slowly back to my hotel, walking along the promenade. It was very hot and humid, and the light breeze was very welcome. The beach was more popular today, and there was some sort of event going on where a long line of men (possibly tied together) walked out into the water while being cheered by the crowd.

The sand is fine and in various colours. There’s almost no surf (probably due to breakwaters) and watching the men it seemed to deepen quickly. Compared to Australia it’s not much of a beach, but it’s probably the best I’ve seen in Japan.

I saw something unusual from a distance, and when I got closer it resolved into a giant monkey (Kong?) holding two buckets of pachinko balls! This is on top of a very old pachinko parlor down near the seafront. I didn’t go in and regret that. Silly me!

I returned to the shopping district near the station and it was even busier than yesterday! I saw many people eating the fish cake hotdog things, and it seems ‘octopus and ginger’ was the most popular at the stand with the longest line.

I was looking for ice cream (with no luck) and saw the above. This is puréed fish – tuna or salmon – in an ice cream cone. They refer to it as eating sushi in a cone and the photo at right is a stealth shot I took when two people ordered it. Judging by their reactions this is as unusual to the Japanese as it seems to us!

There were some performances going on outside the station, including a lady middle-aged rapper and a bunch of other older women dancing in kimono. These had drawn large crowds and were quite delightful to watch. These dancers in particular were excellent and very well coordinated.

Atami has been fun. It’s exactly what I needed, since I was so worn out. While I haven’t exactly been resting – I still did over 20k steps each day and climbed over 700 steps today alone – it was relaxing to be away from the crowds and intensity of Osaka. Plus I was forced to sleep in since nothing opens early!

Tomorrow I return to Tokyo for the last leg of this trip. Lots of shopping, lots of arcades, and a few blog posts about specific topics. Look forward to them!

Shin-Osaka station was very busy this morning, and those travelers without reserved seats looked a little nervous as they joined the very long boarding lines. I was in the first class car so had no worries, and as always the journey was extremely comfortable.

That’s a real candid (not posed) selfie I took on the train. Kristin said I “looked dead” and she was at least half correct. I had pushed myself too much and it was time for a rest. That’s why I’m spending a couple of nights in another onsen town, Atami.

My room is ludicrously big. It’s as big as a large apartment, or even a small house! It has multiple rooms, and the cupboard contains 16 futon so I imagine it’s the sort of room used to sleep entire classes of school kids. It also comes with a projector in place of a TV!

It also has its own hinoki wooden bathtub! I had no idea of the room size or wooden bath when I booked, so these were nice surprises (although to be true the room is possibly too big).

The hotel also has a public bath – which I just came back from – and while it’s not as picturesque as the one I was in at Nara at 44 C it was heavenly for my aching bones.

Atami is an onsen town built on the seaside. Hot springs and a beach is a good tourist combination, and being only an hour from Tokyo helps as well. I was amazed how busy the station was when I arrived, although the host at my hotel says this month is off peak since it usually rains ‘every day’ in June.

After checking in I immediately walked to the ropeway, which if you’re keeping track of is my third this trip. At the top is Atami Hihoukan, a dated and kitschy museum dedicated to sex and erotica. It’s full of weird animatronics and art installations and is one of the strangest attractions I’ve ever visited! Apparently these used to be scattered all over Japan but this is one of (if not the) last one left. It was very popular today, and it seems most people found it as funny as I did.

The views from the ropeway station are fantastic, and you can see the entirety of Atami. The city is built on steep slopes, and aside from down at the sea level walking anywhere requires slopes and often stairs. Sometimes lots of stairs!

My hotel is four flights like this from the ocean, and at least that many from the station as well. I did a lot of walking today – over 20,000 steps as I have every day since arriving in Japan – and I’d say easily 1000 of them were stairs! So much for relaxing.

After the ropeway I headed back to the station area since there’s a lot of tourist shops there. I quickly noticed that 95% of them sell food, and most of those sell dried fish!

There’s so many different types of fish available, and some of them are actively being prepared right there at the shops. Others are dried and packaged, and some of these are very expensive (over ¥10000).

Of course I won’t try any of these, but it seems to be one of the things tourists visit Atami for.

Another food popular with the tourists is fried fish cakes, often sold on a stick like a hot dog. I saw many people eating these as they strolled, and stalls sell them in all sorts of varieties. Some combination of seafood and mayonnaise seems to be the most popular, and I don’t doubt KLS would eat this were she here.

There’s also some local version of custard or pudding that seems extremely popular based on the lines at the shops. One of them had a sign that briefly looked like shaved ice which excited me, but then filled me with momentary rage when I realized it was some sort of pudding 🙂

After dinner (a cup ramen in my room) I went down to the beach for an ice cream and saw this group of girls being professional photographed. They kept jumping over and over; obviously the intention was for the guy to get a photo of them all in the air. After I took the photo and walked away I heard loud squeals of joy from behind me so I assume they got the shot!

I had fun walking around today with no schedule, and even though it was strenuous the day was still somehow relaxing. As I mentioned I’ve soaked in the hot spring already tonight so all that’s left is to write some postcards before a long sleep.

Tomorrow is another lazy day in Atami, and I hope it’s even more relaxing than today 🙂