Robot Claw

It was a drizzly morning yesterday, so we headed to the mostly-indoor attractions of Odaiba for a lazy day. Rather that just take the train though, we traveled there on this:

It’s one of the Tokyo Cruise Line’s special ferries, named Himiko and designed by legendary manga creator Leiji Matsumoto. We both thought we’d been on this boat once before, but once inside thought again:

It’s pretty wild and ‘futuristic’. A fun way to get to Odaiba. As you can see we shared the trip almost exclusively with a large school group, who spent the time (about 50 minutes) mostly playing Uno of all things!

The four malls at Odaiba were fun, and we bought many (mostly souvenirs). One mall had a retro arcade in it that had (American) pinball machines, which seem very rare here:

Another full day! We’re running on fumes now, but have one last big event planned for tonight…

Arcades (called ‘game centers’ here) still seem to be going strong. They’re still massive, still full of people, and still sorting a dazzling array of technologically impressive arcade games.

They all follow the same basic pattern. Almost every one has UFO machines on the ground floor:

These contain a remarkable assortment of things, from food to toys to stuffed figures to just about anything else you can imagine (I won a knockoff Roomba yesterday).

The larger centers arrange the machines by prize category as well, with the ‘enthusiast’ stuff (such as anime girl figures or things for girls like the above) usually on the second or basement floor.

Almost all game centers have a bank of ‘purikura’ (photo sticker) machines as well:

Think of them like passport photo machines dialed up to 11. They all include the ability to edit the photos now, and there’s a great range of machine. Some game centers have dozens of these over two or more floors, sometimes renting costumes as well (and often barring single men from those floors).

Then we get to games! These are arranged by type as well in the following categories:

Card games, such as those shown above, can be any genre but all utilize IC cards for play. Sometimes you use them to actually play the game, sometimes the cards add functionality to the game itself. Players arrive with their decks of cards and the machine reads them. These are very popular and there’s card vending machines in the arcades (and games bend cards too). For someone like me, these are essentially unplayable!

Music games come in all shapes and sizes from idol games (the first photo) to complex push-the-button-to-the-rythym games as below. These are prominent in most arcades and most look insanely difficult. Watching people play them well is very entertaining 🙂

Medal games are similar to those in the USA albeit much bigger, and this floor of the arcade usually includes things like Star Horse (top photo) or the multiplayer football games. Medals serve no purpose here and by law can’t be exchanged for prizes, so winning them is just for fun?

Last but not least are the traditional arcade games, including fighting and driving games (in dedicated cabinets). These are sadly rare now, and only in the bigger arcades. The card and music games seem to reign supreme now, and if you’re just after a quick blast of Espgaluda (like the old days) you may be disappointed! Except of course for Akihabara, where the good old games are still common 🙂

I almost forgot to mention the kids games, usually collected into their own area and covering most genres already describes, as well as the…

Gashapon (toy vending) machines which are in abundance almost everywhere but especially in arcades.

Also, these places are not just for the young! Some of the games are not cheap to play (the IC ones go up to ¥600/game!) and obviously aimed at adults, and you see every demographic in the arcades here. It’s very much a common and normal entertainment venue in Japan and always has been over the 15 years we’ve been visiting.

Yesterday we took the bullet train back to Tokyo.

Our hotel room for the last four nights is impossibly luxurious, with six separate rooms including a full sized sauna and patio with hot tub!

In the afternoon we toiled around Ikebukuro and Ueno for some shopping and game-centering 🙂

Three more full days in Tokyo! Today we’re off (finally!) to Akihabara…

Fushimi-Inari shrine, about 10 minutes SE of Kyoto by train, starts off impressively. Directly across the street from the station is a large and lavish complex of temples at the foot of Mt Inari, named for the Japanese rice god. Walk through this complex and you’ll quickly see a path leading past some smaller shrines heading up the mountain. You can’t miss it, since it’s lined with gigantic red tori gates.

These gates are used to denote entrances to shrines or sacred spaces, and the entire mountain is considered sacred, with tens of thousands of tiny shrines dotted all over it and allegedly about 10,000 torii lining the paths.

For certain lengths closer to the bottom, the density of gates is so high it seems you are walking through a hall. The vibrant reds shine in the sunlight and it’s all a bit magical. We went early, to beat the crowds, else photos like the ones I took would be impossible.

The messenger of Inari (the god) is the fox, and virtually every shrine – from the big to the small – feature carved foxes. Look closely and you’ll see an item in their mouths: that’s a key to Inari’s rice granary.

The path winds and twists its way around and up the mountain, occasionally passing by residences that double as souvenir shops and cafes.

Sometimes the path led through areas with great concentrations of smaller shrines that have the appearance almost of a western graveyard.

There’s not a lot of English signage so I can’t explain much of this, but we did learn that the tori themselves have been erected over hundreds of years (over 500 actually) by businesses or families for prosperity and the trend continues today. It’s not cheap to have one erected (up to $13000) but if you do your name will be displayed on the reverse.

While it was early and the temperature comfortable, the walk was still strenuous. Most people walk up to where the path splits, which takes about an hour, and then have an ice cream or rest and return. We pushed on to the summit, and it was during that leg that the challenge increased dramatically!

Closer to the top it just became endless uneven steps! After almost two hours of walking already this was agony, but we eventually made it to the top (alone, since almost no one goes that far!) and we’re proud we did.

While only 233 m, and not a particularly long hike, it was the stairs coupled with the exhaustion from the tip so far that made it such a challenge for us. Well rested, I’d say it would be a tiring but not overly difficult hike.

The shrine neve closes, and you can actually hike all the way to the top at night! This would be simultaneously fascinating and terrifying (signs warn of dangerous boars!) but I’d love to do it, and can only imagine what it’s like from this instant photo someone had left at the base of one gate:

There’s a very good reason Fushimi Inari is one of the most popular destinations in all of Japan. It combines the sort of ancient reverence of the great European cathedrals with astonishingly beautiful scenery and we’ll remember it forever.