Robot Claw

There’s a ropeway right next to our hotel which leads to an ‘observatory’ with incredible views of Mount Fuji.

At 3776 m it’s far from the tallest mountain in the world, but it is Japan’s tallest, and its relative isolation coupled with its symmetry have rightly made it an icon of Japan. It’s always impressive seeing it from a distance, but the views we had today were breathtaking.

It was just below freezing when we went up and since we still have some cold symptoms we had to protect against breathing the freezing air. But the sky was clear and the views were tremendous, not just of Fuji but the lake as well. I’d say this observation area is a contender for one of the best in the world.

Actually climbing Fuji is a big task that requires careful preparation (an old Japanese saying says only wise men climb Fuji but only fools climb it more than once) and I’ll never do it, but I learned today that the first man who ever did apparently completed the task about 1500 years ago when he rode to the top ‘instantly’ on a horse! Since he was a prince, I’m guessing the accuracy of the tale may have elements of uncertainty to it 🙂

After we descended we took a short cruise on the lake to once again view Fuji, this time from the water. The lake is very still and the surface reflective, and apparently at certain times it can also be mirrorlike. Today was not one such time – not least because of the boat wake – but I did my best to capture a reflected image regardless.

The other mountains you see in the above photo are to the north/northwest of Fuji and are less than half of its height. They’re impressive as well, but given you can just turn around and see Fuji I suspect these guys get short shrift. The above photo by the way was taken from the viewing terrace on the roof of our hotel.

It was a relaxing day and we’re both feeling much better, and we’ll repeat this again tomorrow. The hot springs at this hotel are great, so I look forward to several more soaks before we depart.

That’s the night view of the lake from the front of our hotel. And yes, even with all the obvious light pollution it’s still dark enough here to clearly see stars!

Today we traveled to Kawaguchiko, a town on the foothills of Fuji. Since there’s no direct train there from Nagoya, we had to go via Tokyo. Naturally therefore our first leg (back to Tokyo) was on a Shinkansen.

The train was much busier than four days ago, since we’re now entering into the new year holiday, which is one of Japans biggest travel periods. The stations were busy with people heading home for new year, gifts in hand.

Once we got to Tokyo we had to take three more trains to Kawaguchiko, and in total the travel took a little under six hours. Probably the most single-day train travel we’ve ever done in our lives!

And once we got to our hotel and opened the door, this was our view. Here’s a better look at what we see from our room:

That’s Lake Kawaguchi, and it’s surrounded by lots of onsen (hot springs hotels), including the one we are staying in. I’m sick as a dog and KLS is recovering, so for the next few days we’ll relax and enjoy the onsen life!

We started by booking a private hot spring, which we just returned from. It was open-air, which means chilly above the water and toasty below. Here’s what it looked like:

We had a good soak and then some ramen for dinner:

Now it’s time to loaf around and watch idols on TV. Tomorrow we’ll go and check out some tourist stuff around the lake, but tonight it’s time to sleep without an alarm for the first time this trip 🙂

The above picture – taken at a laundromat at about 6:30 this morning – is a good depiction of our energy levels after several very busy days. Today therefore, would be ‘low impact’.

That meant going to SCMAGLEV, the JR rail train museum! This is a museum with a variety of Japanese trains on exhibit, and you can walk through many of them to explore the insides as well.

Much of the focus of the museum is Shinkansen (bullet trains) – Japan is rightly very proud of their triumph of engineering – but they have other trains as well and right now have a steam train exhibit.

The fact they apparently rotate out these trains every now and then is impressive since it wasn’t at all obvious how they’d get them in or out (some weigh over 100 tonnes). It’s likely the entire back wall can be opened to roll them in, but that functionality is well hidden!

In the above photo we’re standing in front of the actual lead car of the first bullet train, which carried its first passengers in 1964. We watched a video about the development process and it’s incredible viewed from today’s perspective that the entire technology (trains, tracks, signaling etc) was developed in only five years!

The above is a photo of some of the English explanations of the displays. There was a vast amount of material – including hands on demonstrations – about bullet train technology, almost none of which I knew. For instance information about max speed limits is transmitted to the trains through the tracks, or the carriages automatically become airtight when trains enter tunnels to avoid pressure waves from discomforting riders, or that the rails are made from welded segments that are 1.5 kilometers in length! I was very impressed by the scientific detail in the exhibits, which were well written to make them understandable without sacrificing complexity.

Cutely, the cafe at the museum is a ‘Delica Station’, which is one of the stores you buy bento from at Japanese rail stations. Kristin got the ‘Doctor Yellow meal’ because it came with a free trading card of Doctor Yellow, the famous yellow Shinkansen.

They even had an older Doctor Yellow on display! These famous trains are diagnostic and travel the rails at night to do tests and check for needed repairs. Since they rarely run during the day they’re not often seen and amongst Japanese rail enthusiasts it’s considered lucky to see a Doctor Yellow working the rails.

That’s a photo from the ‘diorama room’ where a detailed diorama of the entire Tokaido Shinkansen line – from Tokyo to Osaka – was on display. As you can see it was an insane amount of detail, with most of the more famous landmarks reproduced in tiny scale.

The above train was in the entry hall, and was one of the first things you see. At first I thought it was a prototype but it’s actually a maglev train! Magnetic levitation trains have been undergoing R&D in Japan for years now with the hope of one day using them to carry passengers at speeds that make even bullet trains seem slow. In fact the speed record for a train – 603 km/hr – was achieved by one like this back in 2015. The museum had a wonderful maglev section with very clever demonstrations and a simulator of sorts where you sat inside a car and experienced what maglev travel may one day be like.

Moving on from the trains, we were amused and amazed to note today that many of the Christmas decorations are gone and replaced with elaborate new years decorations! I was told once it is ‘very important’ in Japan to remove decorations as soon as possible after a holiday and today we saw evidence of this.

Today was our last day in Nagoya, and tomorrow we head to a hot spring for a few days. The timing is perfect since we’re both very tired and I’m a bit sick. Let’s hope the mineral baths heal us back to the stamina level we’ll need when we return to Tokyo around new years!

Once again the day began early with me heading down for food at the crack of dawn. I’m guessing there had been reports of a suspicious gadabout in the building since the number of security robots had doubled, but I was able to evade them safely make it to McDonald’s for Christmas breakfast.

Our goal today was the Osu shopping district, and maybe a (self purchased) Christmas gift or two. We hadn’t done much research so were eager to see why the district is on every list of things to see in Nagoya.

The subway was busy as any other workday. Despite being less than a quarter the population of Tokyo Nagoya is still a very big and busy city and in rush hour you’re one of a zillion people. If you didn’t like crowds you may be a little put off but this is one thing I love about Japan.

That’s Osu Kannon Buddhist temple, after which the adjacent shopping street is named. The temple is about 700 years old and has a rich history. The current version is relatively new (about 50 years) since the place had been razed in WW2.

We’ve got a tinge of travel flu (which may simply be due to the very dry air) so we were careful to breath in the healing incense at the temple. Given we feel better this afternoon I’m guessing it worked 🙂

‘Osu shopping street’ is actually a series of interconnected pedestrian covered shopping streets that span several blocks adjacent to the temple. Apparently they cover a few miles and have over 1200 shops. Of particular note to us was that a large portion of these shops (farthest from the temple) are game/anime/card shops, which makes this Nagoya’s version of Akihabara.

That’s the real entrance to an Alice In Wonderland themed store, and yes you must bend down to get through the door! The shop itself sells all sorts of slightly gothic Alice themed merchandise, and was quite popular.

I sent some postcards from the above postbox – you’ll probably get one – and I wonder if they’ll have a Christmas Day postmark? Be sure to check!

Osu seems to have several local idol groups (men and women) and there’s lots of posters and such along the shopping streets to promote them. Can you see me hidden in the above shot?

There’s lots of Game Centers as well, and with my unparalleled skill I effortlessly won Kristin this lovely hair clip (which she removed right after this photo).

I found a retro arcade as well. Can you guess which game I’m playing?

Naturally we visited many game/otaku shops, but I’ll probably do a dedicated post about that sort of stuff in time. One slight difference from Akiba was the fact most of the Osu maid cafes were concentrated in a very small area (most of them right next to each other) and there was quite a variety!

The above was a used book/cd/dvd shop ran by an ancient man. Most of the right wall are 7″ singles and there must have been thousands of them. I bet there were treasures to be unearthed in there…

This photo captures the spirit of today. Lots of laughs, partly due to tiredness and partly due to the mad, quintessentially Japanese stuff we saw today. It was a fun way to spend Christmas Day!

Speaking of Christmas, it seems here the holiday is mostly decorations and music. And they don’t skimp on the lights, with most large shopping centers having massive displays!

Advertising screens often show Christmas videos, and employees often wear Christmas decorations on their clothes. Considering Japan doesn’t celebrate Christmas, the decorations here are more abundant and impressive than anything I’ve seen in the USA.

The above was taken yesterday at the zoo for instance, and was a tiny (one inch) Santa in a fish tank!

This evening crowds assembled to pose for photos with the tree at the base of our hotel building. This seemed to be continuing all day so it seems important to many that you get a snap in front of a big Christmas tree!

Chicken still seems to be the flavoured Christmas meal. We saw long lines today at chicken restaurants and when I went to KFC the other day they had a dedicated machine set up for Christmas preorders.

Christmas cakes are also very popular, and sold almost everywhere. The above photo was taken in a department store (the cakes are about $40 each) but you can buy cheaper ones – almost always strawberry – at convenience stores.

Kristin today purchased herself two very special Christmas cakes! These are ‘piyorin’, a chicken shaped ‘pudding cake’ that is a hot commodity here in Nagoya. As you can see, today they were Christmas themed 🙂

Our hotel is the one in the middle, and we’re on the fourth highest floor on this side (in fact I can see our room in this photo). Today was a long, eventful and very fun day; a very happy Christmas!

I hope yours was wonderful too 🙂

I woke at 2 am because of ‘second stage jet-lag’ and in the very early hours ventured out looking for food. Since our room is on the 21st floor of a tower block and it takes two elevators to get to ground level this entailed walking through a dark and empty lobby 15 floors above ground level while being watched by a security robot. Eventually I got to the ground but the station shops were (unsurprisingly) all closed and I had to venture out to find a 24 hour convenience store. Breakfast was saved!

There’s the room view an hour or so after sunrise. Even though we’re not in the tallest building in Nagoya I like our view doesn’t show the higher ones so we feel at the top of the world 🙂

About seven hours after waking, we headed to Higashiyama Zoo, which is a popular tourist site here in Nagoya. It’s a somewhat sprawling combination of zoo, botanical gardens and children’s amusement park, that has been open for over 85 years. It’s showing its age in certain parts, but overall was a fun place to visit and the best zoo I’ve been to in Japan.

The highlight for us was a feisty jaguar who was playing in his pool. I’d never seen a large cat swimming before and he was a particular handsome example who was swim-playing just like a household cat.

The zoo also had an impressive nocturnal house and a gigantic freshwater aquarium building called ‘medaka world’ that felt like a live fish collectors dream as long as you were focused on the medaka species. I’m not exaggerating: hundreds of small meticulously kept tanks with an eye-opening variety of unremarkable small freshwater fish on display!

The zoo had all the usual animals – including a world-class koala exhibit – but also some I’d not seen before, such as siamangs, bush dogs and volcano rabbits (no I’m not making these up, go and google them)! Of particular note to the Antipodeans reading this was they also had a ‘woylie’ on display, which is an Australian beast with a name I’d not seen before. It looked a lot like a bettong…

They also had three life sized (?) dinosaurs on display, which are currently being restored so they can remain on display for years to come. There was a lot of construction in various parts (including a new Komodo dragon enclosure) so the zoo seems well-funded for a place that only cost ¥600 to enter.

Lunch was pasta and potato. It was very cool in the morning, so we used the indoor areas (the reptile house, ‘medaka world’ etc) to ‘soak up some heat’. The food was ordered from a quaint machine using a ticket system and was both inexpensive and much better than we expected from a zoo.

It took us about 4 hours to see the animals and then we visited the kiddie amusement park to ride the rollercoaster. Unfortunately we didn’t fit into the carriages since there wasn’t enough legroom! So I rode the Ferris wheel (did you glimpse it in the dinosaur photo above?) and we went through a mirror maze.

We then rode ‘Slope Shooter’, a very unique gravity based ‘coaster’ that has been entertaining people at the park for 63 years. There’s no track, and you ride in a wheeled carriage as it travels down a steel track somewhat like a bobsled. It was slow but fun and historic and actually the reason we learned of this place since someone we follow on YouTube made a video about it several months ago.

Before we left we rode the antique monorail all around the zoo for a last look. It was like sitting in a little greenhouse and was very comfy.

Nagoya station was bonkers busy when we got back mid afternoon, and it was notably busier than the previous day. I went out a bit later (around 6) to get some dinner and the crowds had even increased to the point where walking through the food levels of the department store at the station was a challenge! Was this due to Christmas? Maybe I’ll find out tomorrow…