Kawagoe (Addition)

June 10th, 2023

The ‘fishing’ shrine from yesterday also had an extraordinary ‘tunnel’ of ema, which are wooden charms you (buy and) write wishes or prayers on. Traditionally these are hung for the god to take notice, and eventually burned in rituals.

These are common at all shrines, but the quantity I saw yesterday was incredible. The above pic was taken maybe halfway along the tunnel, so there’s at least as many behind me.

For comparison the Yatagarasu shrine had only a couple of hundred hanging:

I didn’t do one by the way. Maybe I should?

Kawagoe

June 10th, 2023

Today I visited Kawagoe, a city to the northwest. It’s famous for an old town featuring preserved buildings dating from the 19th century that look like this:

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

I woke early today and bounced around in my room for a bit (breakfast was a pork katsu sandwich, pineapple pieces and a salted rice ball) before heading to the station. It took about 70 minutes on two trains to get to Kawagoe, and even though breakfast was only a few hours prior I was famished when I got there. Haven’t I been eating enough?

The old town is north of the station at the end of a long shopping street. It took maybe 15 or so minutes of my speedy walking (yes, yes I am ‘taking it easy’) to get to the first famous tourist attraction, the Kumano-Jinja shrine, at which Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow god is worshipped:

It’s a somewhat smallish but beautiful shrine, and I was quite taken by the Yatagarasu images and charms. He is the god of guidance, so I hope he’s watching over me ๐Ÿ™‚

A bit further on I reached Ichibangai, the street full of old clay warehouse buildings from the 19th century (as pictured at the start of this blog). Almost all of them now are souvenir shops or eateries, and as it was a rain-free day the place was mobbed today by almost exclusively Japanese tourists. I got the distinct impression this is not a location frequent by foreigners, since English signage was few and far between even at the famous tourist sites.

The above shows a famous Starbucks built to resemble a period building. It’s just as fancy inside as well, and blends in so well that I suspect many passers-by don’t even notice it at first. This is on another famous street that includes a famous tower called Toki no Kane:

The tower rings a bell four times every day, and while the current version is about 120 years old, a tower has stood at that location for over 400 years (and yes I added a ‘ye olde’ filter to the pic to give us an idea of what it looked like long ago)! The tower was by far the most popular subject of tourist photos I saw today, and I had to wait quite a while to get the above pic!

A bit further to the east from the above got me to Hikawa Shrine, where I went fishing:

At this shrine you could ‘fish’ for a sea bream which contained a fortune in it’s belly. There were three tubs of fish to choose from, and since my translator failed to identify the difference I went with the traditional red. It was simple – but fun – to catch my fortune fish:

You can see the fortune sticking out of his tail! What did mine say? Here’s what the translator told me:

At this point I’d been walking for a few hours. It was hot (about 85F) and very humid, and me and everyone else were sweating like dogs. There were food and snack vendors everywhere, and ice creams and cold cucumbers-on-a-stick seemed to be the refreshing snack of choice but I’m partial to neither. Imagine my joy therefore when I found a shaved ice stand:

Like an old bloke I sat on a bench and ate it all in no time flat. It was wonderfully cooling but even then the relief was short-lived. By the end of my 4.5 odd hours in Kawagoe today I drunk three 500 ml bottles of water and ate this shaved ice and even then I’m not sure I hydrated enough! I was telling some of you about Japan’s summer humidity when I was in Oz, and today was a perfect example of how sweaty it can get.

My last stop was a quick visit to ‘candy alley’, a shortish street featuring shops selling cheap or traditional candy and snacks. This was particularly mobbed with people, and while I was fascinated by the array of stuff for sale but in the end only bought one tiny item for a mere ยฅ8 (about 5 cents):

There were other sites to see but at this point the heat had started to wear me out and it was time to return. I meandered back to the station (stopping at a game center, a retro game store and an anime goods shop) and returned to Tokyo. I was knackered with a capital ‘n’, and planned to simply eat dinner in my room and rest, but madness took me out again for a bit of shopping. There’s a reason I booked a hotel right in the middle of Akiba!

But I’ll save Akihabara stuff for another day ๐Ÿ™‚

Ikebukuro

June 9th, 2023

I arrived in Japan late last night. The flight was uneventful (aside from the fact we flew over the Mariana Trench) and navigating the airport and getting to the hotel (by taxi) were both easy.

My room is comedically small, but as with most things in this country it’s a marvel of efficiency and I know I’ll be comfy here during the ten days of this stay.

The hotel is in Akihabara on the river, and there’s a shrine right next door. This lovely fellow greets visitors to the shrine, and as you can see it was raining quite heavily both last night and this morning. I was jet lagged and very tired (I only got a few hours sleep) so today I visited Ikebukuro since I know the area well and knew it would be a less-hectic destination.

But first… I had to eat! I was still on Australian time and famished by the time Saizeriya opened at 10 am and I shoveled spaghetti into my mouth like a beast. I was still not feeling great at this point (from the flight) but I don’t exaggerate when I say the spaghetti energy was like a full life recharge and I left that place a new man!

What followed was a pleasant several hours otaku shopping in the many shops in Ikebukuro. I visited the enormous gacha machine shop, various game and anime stores, some character shops (Rilakkuma, Kamen Rider) an old candy shop and of course several game centers. Most of these I’ve been to – and described on this blog – before, so I won’t go into detail again.

The retro game shop Super Potato is world famous, and in my opinion their better store is the one in Ikebukuro. And yet whenever I visit I’m the only one there – compared to the Akihabara branch which is always mobbed. Once again today I goggled at the items in the cases, the prices on which just continue to rise as the hobby increases in popularity. Even though I sold out of all my non-handheld games, I still love looking at the rarities.

I was particularly thrilled to see The Black Onyx. This nearly 40-year-old game (the above is a 1987 port for a Sega console) is arguably the grand-daddy of all Japanese RPGs and went on to influence many other games including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It’s never been released in English which is unusual since it was actually written by an American. I’d never seen a copy before today, and would dearly love to play it one day.

A bit later in the day, on my way back to the train station, I visited Mikado, a game center specializing in retro video games (on original hardware). This place was incredible! Across three floors they have many dozens of retro arcade games going all the way back to the 1980s. While clean and well-kept, the building and interior have a bit of a grimy vibe to them, and when you step inside you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. The dimly-lot basement in particular was astounding: full of old men smoking whilst playing mahjong games with ‘questionable’ graphics! I played two somewhat ‘famous’ games I’ve never seen before, Dancing Eyes and Gals Panic 4, before the smoke chased me out ๐Ÿ™‚

The new Animate mega-store opened since we were here in January and it’s very impressive. It has eight large floors of anime/otaku merchandise and there’s a good chance of you’re a fan of any current series there’s a whole swathe of merchandise in here for you. I didn’t have the time to look at every floor (or even half of them, this place is massive), but I was taken by a giant range of cookies on the ground floor. So I bought one:

The cookies feature extremely detailed printing onto the icing, and there were dozens (over a hundred even?) available. I chose this character from Granblue Fantasy and when I tried it after dinner was surprised to find it was very hard. As in a-bit-hard-to-bite hard! The icing was super solid and the cookie more like an iron ration. Are these designed to be eaten or collected? I’ll never know ๐Ÿ™‚

I saw lots more than I’ve covered here (I’ll save Ultraman for another day for instance) but suffice to say this trip has started strong. Tomorrow I’ll change tack a bit, and show you something new. Stay tuned!

Letโ€™s Go To Japan!

June 7th, 2023

That’s the plane I’m just about to board to fly to Tokyo, and begin ‘phase two’ of this vacation. It’s time to say ‘goodbye’ once again to Australia.

These past 10 days have been fantastic and funny and busy and tiring. I saw and did so much, so much so I very nearly broke myself (I walked over 430,000 steps)! My plan is to recharge my batteries on this ten hour flight, so I can face Japan with no limiters ๐Ÿ˜‰

Vivid

June 6th, 2023

Yesterday Sue and I went to Vivid, the annual light festival in Sydney.

It’s a bit different this year with more attractions, including some that cost extra. We started with one of these: an underground installation called ‘Dark Spectrum’.

This was a series of 8 rooms in an old set of train tunnels under the city. Each room was themed to an emotion or mood (such as ‘pressure’) and the eight light installations – all of which are paired with music – were all very different.

We both enjoyed this immensely! The green laser room in particular was extraordinary, since you had the impression the beams were real physics things and many times I wanted to touch them. The use of darkness and mirrors in this room made the space seem enormous, and we (wisely) went earlier in the day and there were hardly any people in there with us.

It took about an hour in total to pass through the eight exhibits. The work that went into it was impressive, and we saw such things as moving laser projectors, industrial robots, and rooms full of thousands upon thousands of LEDs all synched to the music. Dark Spectrum far exceeded my expectations and based on what I saw yesterday is probably the best of Vivid this year.

The lights for Vivid itself went on at 6 pm and the highlights – as they were last year – were probably the bridge and opera house. Crowds were much smaller than last year though, which was nice, and we were able to walk lazily to enjoy the lights.

But it was a long day, and even when we started Vivid we were exhausted. About halfway from circular quay to Darling Harbour we got a taxi back to the hotel since we were both absolutely knackered. In particular I suspect I’ve overdone it a bit, and will take today off to rest before my flight tomorrow ๐Ÿ™‚