Robot Claw

It rained overnight and as I headed to the laundromat this morning (at 5 am!) it was still coming down. I washed all my clothes and wrote postcards, and by the time everything was dry the rain had ended and the humidity was off the scale. Typical Japanese summer!

These past two days have been almost exclusively shopping and since I’m in my favourite shops on the entire planet you can appreciate I’m having fun 🙂

Today I took the train to Nakano Mall which I visit every trip and many times I wished I could take more than two suitcases back because I saw so much I would have loved to buy.

I saw the above arcade game today, and I can’t recall ever seeing it before. It’s a music game with a full keyboard control method, so you’re ‘playing the piano’ as you play the game. You have to hit keys to match the notes coming down the screen and it’s a lot of fun! I only played once but that was three songs and the game lasted maybe 20 minutes! As you can see, I nearly mastered it. I reckon a music game fan with actual piano experience (such as SFL) would love this!

This relentless shopping cycle will continue – with a few notable asides – the rest of this week. Kristin’s given me her list now, and you can bet I’ll hop all over Tokyo to so my best to fill it (and of course pick things up for myself too).

As usual I’ll blog what I bought when I return, and I’m going to do a few dedicated posts for some of the more interesting things I see in shops this week. In fact I think I’ll do one right away…

I returned to Tokyo today on an older but still extremely comfortable train, the Spacia.

Isn’t that a cool logo? I learned from my ‘mistake’ of riding steerage class on the Spacia-X (and yes, even the cheapest seat had been fantastic) and this time sprung for a private cabin:

It was ridiculously roomy and can very comfortably seat four:

In fact it was so comfortable I even fell asleep for about 20 minutes! And how much did I pay for this luxury private two hour trip to Tokyo? About $43!

I was on the same side of the train as my trip to Kinugawa, which means my views were all different. Above is very typical of what I saw: lots and lots and lots of rice fields. In the middle of one a farmer had built a miniature model of Fuji, complete with painted white top. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to snap a picture.

And now I’m back in Tokyo and the above room will be my base for the next six nights. It’s the same hotel I spent 11 nights in last June, so there’s an element of nostalgia being here once more. Kristin told me if I didn’t return home with loads of quality gifts for her she’d burn all my trading cards and turn Zoffy against me so I better start shopping!

Edo was the old name of what is now Tokyo, and during what is now known as the Edo Period (1603 – 1868) Edo was one of the grandest and most populated cities on Earth. 250 peaceful years led to great advances in art, literature and science. Today I visited a theme park called Edo Wonderland which attempts to give visitors an idea of what life may have like for residents of Edo during that time.

I arrived right at opening (9 am) and within seconds of entering posed for a photo with ‘Nyan-mage’. From that moment I knew this was going to be more than a Japanese version of ‘Old Sydney Town’!

The park has several areas (ninja, samurai, commercial etc), and does a very good job of hiding the current era via its design and construction. It’s only open during daylight hours so they don’t seem to have to worry about lighting, but toilets and drink machine and even garbages are disguised so as not to be obvious. Also there’s very little English, so I had to use my translator a lot (even to find out which toilet was for men)!

The staff are all dressed in appropriate period clothing, which means there’s lots of ninja and samurai and courtesans manning stalls and handling crowds. Patrons can dress up as well, but I felt paying ¥4500 to wear a Yukata was excessive considering I wear them for free at my hotel 🙂

The chief attractions of the park are the various shows. Above is the ‘magistrates stage’ show which presents a comedic take (including anachronistic elements like YouTube references) of an Edo-era criminal trial.

I also saw a ninja show which was absolutely fantastic! In a dimly lit room we watched a thrilling story of a lone ninja defeating an entire enemy clan. The stage extended into the audience, and I was at the very front and got a perfect view. The acrobatics and sword fighting (including some in the dark with sparks!) was unbelievably well choreographed, and the hero ninja used most of the cool tricks of the trade including flashbangs, blowing blindness powder at the enemy, monkey-like leaping and of course multi-weapon fighting. I loved it so much!

The ‘water magic’ show was three women controlling water at will. This was done via hidden water jets and while initially (deliberately?) cheesy got more clever in a ‘how did they do that?’ way. Again I was in the front row, and it was amusing watching the facial acting of the two attendant girls on the sides.

As good as the ninja show was the big draw at the park was clearly the ‘oiran‘ (courtesan) show. Comedic and slightly dazzling, this featured three beautiful young women in elaborate outfits doing all sorts of intricate dances and interacting with a lucky member of the audience. I was momentarily terrified when the selector spoke to me, but it seems the ability to speak Japanese was a requirement to be chosen for the stage! As beautiful and graceful as she was, the unearthly voice of the oiran (central in the photo) stood out the most for me!

That was about two hours of shows, and I greatly enjoyed them all. Everything was all in Japanese of course, with not even an English guide to indicate proceedings, but this didn’t bother me at all. Though are the biggest draw of the park, there’s still a lot of other things to see.

For instance I baked my own senbei cracker in a mini cooking class! It was delicious 🙂

I also ate a giant chicken skewer, which even though it was dark meat was quite tasty! This was the first time I needed a garbage (to dispose of the stick) and it took me far too long to realize the innocuous wooden crates here and there were actually disguised garbage bins!

I also visited a jigoku (hell) house and saw countless horrors including an animatronic King of the Dead:

A man-eating plant:

And even this poor chap:

I navigated a ‘ninja house’ with weird angles and dimensions. I went through a tricky ‘ninja maze’ that required you to break some fundament maze rules to escape. I even did some archery and scored well enough (3 of 5 arrows hit the target) to win the ‘special’ prize (a clear file).

Her job was to give out bags to put our shoes in before entering one of the theaters. I asked if I could photograph her since I loved her makeup and she was only too happy to let me. After this I found all the employees only too willing to pose for photos, and wish I’d asked someone earlier!

It was extremely hot and most of the park is outdoors, and when I was leaving about five hours later I was quite tired. But I’m very glad I ignored some of the reviews online saying this is a ‘Japanese only’ attraction since I had a great time 🙂

And what did this tired and overheated young man do next? How about immediately entering one of the worlds largest outdoor mazes which was right next door:

The goal here was to reach the towers on all four corners to collect rubber stamps before exiting.

They have a great system where you get a special card and you timestamp it upon entering and exiting and then can upload your time to a website.

The maze was challenging! Not only is it very large (almost 35,000 square feet) it’s also wickedly designed, and you end up criss-crossing your path multiple times since the bridges add a 3D element. About three quarters of my total time were spent obtaining the fourth stamp, and multiple periods of analysis from atop bridges or towers were required to deduce the correct route.

As you can see it took me about 45 minutes, even though I was scampering through like a mad rat. I had foolishly not purchased water before entering so I was also dehydrating with each step (did I mention it was hot today?) and to be honest it’s a miracle I even made it out alive!

But I did, and then on the way back to the hotel in the back of an air conditioned taxi that floated along like a cloud I saw this from the window:

When I excitedly said ‘monkey’ to the driver he laughed and said ‘everywhere’ 🙂

The hotel is very busy today, and in fact the entire town is. The streets are full of people, and it’s clear Saturdays are popular for onsen getaways since my pre-dinner soak was shared with maybe a dozen others. I was wiser today, and only boiled myself lightly before gobbling down the exact same dinner I had last night:

And then – after writing some postcards and watching an insane show on TV where they sunk various foods (eggs, chicken, watermelon etc) to a depth of 100m for a day and then ate them raw – it was time for these:

Hanabi they are called here, ‘fire flower’. Kinugawa would have one last surprise for me: a fireworks show the night before I depart! The launch point was extremely close to my hotel so of course I went to watch.

They were fired from the opposite end of the suspension bride I crossed yesterday. Since we were so close to the launch point, the sound was unreal. One type of shell in particular was almost deafening upon launch, but the boom when the shells exploded above us may have been heard in Tokyo!

It was a lovely show that drew a good crowd, and was a nice end to my sojourn here in Kinugawa. Considering how little I knew about this place before arriving I’m very happy by what I’ve seen and done, and I hope the future of this resort town is bright. As for hot springs in general, I greatly enjoyed visiting one and using the baths. I’d say it’s extremely likely I’ll be going to another one with Kristin one day.

Tomorrow I head back to Tokyo by train. The restful part of this trip has now passed, and the serious shopping, video gaming and UFO catching is about to begin!

I did a lot of walking today. Tobu World Square didn’t open until 9 so I had hours to kill after my 5 am bath. I completed another loop of the town (both sides of the gorge) and paid more attention to relics that weren’t giant empty hotels. Be mindful that I didn’t exactly have to hunt to take these snaps: almost all these structures are on the main road both in and out of town.

According to the sign on the door, the above was a karaoke bar named ‘Cherry’. It can’t have closed too long ago since it’s still in Apple Maps and the price list doesn’t seem to far off what you’d expect today.

The above was also karaoke, although the refuse visible through the door suggests otherwise. I walked up and had a peep inside the windows and it looked like household waste: what people may store in their garage. I don’t know why the door was open or if anyone actually lives here. I doubt it; it was very overgrown.

The above was a dry cleaners. The Venetian blinds are falling apart, the stickers peeling off the windows and – ironically – the curtains dirty and showing signs of mold. I think this one has been gone a while.

I couldn’t tell what this once was, but it’s obviously in disrepair. And yet the pots have what appears to be new flowers growing in them, as if someone tends them. It had a car park big enough for half a dozen cars that now has weeds growing in it. This also doesn’t show up on Apple Maps.

Speaking of which, there’s an abandoned hotel visible from my room window, up on a rise on the other side of the gorge. Last night I noticed a single light on in one high room. Is someone trying to live there?

This was in the driveway of a home that didn’t look abandoned although very well may be since the letter box had no number or name. The car has a license plate but the roof was damaged like something heavy fell on it at some point. The car looked like it was full of something (boxes?) but the windows were too dirty to see clearly.

The above was directly across the street from a still functioning hotel that looked fancier than mine and was receiving busloads of passengers as I walked past. Immediately next door to the overgrown car an elderly gentleman was cutting and trimming bamboo stalks with expertise. I believe he was making decorations for the hotel. I wonder what he or other locals thinks of the abandoned building and car?

A sticker in the window of an abandoned candy shop (based on a rotting sign outside) near the ropeway. I found a website with a history of the Sprite logo and this particular version was replaced in 1974. It’s hard to believe the sticker could be that old. Could it?

There are at least six bridges spanning the gorge in town and I’ve now crossed five of them (the last is a long walk north). The central one seems to have been a focal point for tourism in the towns heyday and as you can see it is now decorated with a large oni (demon) illustration. I was tired even before I started climbing these steps and as I did it felt like I died, was resurrected and almost died again.

The wall adjacent to the staircase is adorned with sculptures of what I presume are Edo-era people. But the strange wizard playing the flute is a puzzle and seems very out of place amidst the townsfolk and samurai and courtesans. Yet another sight that gave this place an eerie quality today.

This was hung up in the office of the ropeway. It’s an advert for a local taxi company, only it’s about four years out of date. And why are some numbers missing? My guess is they were printed in a different colour (red) that has long faded. Why a functioning business still displays this calendar is a question that will never be answered.

A series of red tori gates led to another shrine in advanced disrepair. This was on the main road into town (not far from Tobu World Square) and I surmise someone built this as a tourist attraction. At first glance it was striking, but then I noticed the peeling paint and worm-eaten wood and the discarded pile of now extremely overgrown replacement gates that suggested this endeavor was abandoned many years ago.

Most of the photos above were taken north of my hotel, but after World Square I ventured south and found a very different side of town. The burger I ate (mentioned in my previous post) was at a cute diner-type restaurant in what appears to be a brand new building. There’s a block of recently built houses nearby, a hotel undergoing large-scale renovation and a lovely suspension bridge with (more) wonderful views of the river:

The bridge led into a cedar forest and a split in the path. One direction led to a short walk to a waterfall:

And the other direction led through a cave,

past a sign warning about bears, up a steep incline, past a little shrine and then ended at a flight of steps that led up to… I didn’t know!

I was very tired – it was after dinner and I already had 30k steps under my belt – but I steeled myself and climbed, and climbed, and climbed some more. The stairs were so steep at times I even had to use my hands and as I did visions of fruit platters and monkeys filled my brain. Eventually I made it, and at the top I found a little lookout with views much better than the top of the ropeway:

I could see my hotel, the station, the post office, and various other places I’d been yesterday or today. I paused for a while and noticed on the tips of branches within reach people had tied notes or left ¥5 coins. I wonder why?

Going down the uneven and steep steps was only slightly easier than climbing them had been and by the time I reached the bottom I had decided if a bear turned up he could have me. None did, and I made it back to the bridge in one piece:

All this is only a couple of minutes from my hotel, and I will be going back to the bridge tomorrow night since there’s going to be hanabi – fireworks! – set off right next to the bridge!

I bet the bears will be thrilled 🙂