HIKING, HALLOWEEN, AND TRICKED-OUT CARS
A Calm Contrast
Train stations in the city are almost always rambunctious. Trains coming and going, people everywhere, loudspeakers saying something, it's all quite a bustle. But eventually it all becomes second nature, you get used to it and it becomes white noise.
In going out for a hike on the west range of town, the doors on the train would open and something just seemed different. After a few stops I figured it out, it was quiet on the platform. It could be that most of the stops are outdoors (where as most of the trains I ride in the city are underground), but the station was quiet outside. Few people, no announcements, just a light breeze and calm atmosphere. It was quite serene.
Hiking
As I mentioned, I went hiking with some friends on the morning of Halloween. We headed west from Tokyo, out towards Mt. Fuji, to climb Mt. Momokurayama. It's one of Japan's 100 most famous mountains, and a great decision and excursion for a cloudy but wonderful fall day.
We got to Saruhashi, and saw the one tourist attraction in town, the Monkey Bridge. Why's it called the Monkey Bridge, you ask? Also, why aren't there any monkeys there? I can't answer that one, but..... supposedly it resembles how monkeys used to link up in order to cross the ravine. Regardless of whatever it resembles, it's a cool bridge. I only wish we would've explored the valley a little bit more, it was very picturesque and seemed pretty awesome. Alas, we moved onward and upward.
After admiring the bridge and the canyon/valley/chasm/ravine it was in, we headed to the trailhead. A good amount of the climb was the road leading up to the trailhead, but still gave off increasingly great views of the valley on the way up. We made it to the trailhead, dove into the woods, signed the hiker log, and headed up the hill.
It was damp and chilly in the trees, but perfect for hiking. Halfway up, we had a nice lookout of the valley and took a little break to rest and admire the view. After we left the lookout, it felt like it was just another 10 minutes to the top, as it went by really quickly. But hey, we all made it up! Unfortunately it was super cloudy that day, so we couldn't see Mt. Fuji, so we just had to imagine it's shape through the clouds. But victory food was eaten and victory sake was imbibed as we chilled at the peak.
The hike down had a super steep spot, but other than that was fairly uneventful. We made it back to the train station, I grabbed some ice cream, and then we made our way back to town.
Halloween
No lie, I was close to not going out on Halloween just because I was tired. Thankfully I smartened up, found an extra wind, put on my banana suit (shoutout to you, Nana), and headed to Shibuya.
The reason I stayed in town for that weekend was the reason I went to Shibuya. Halloween in Tokyo, and specifically in Shibuya, is absolutely nuts. I was told of the madness, but didn't really have a clue of the sheer madness this involves, and naturally, words can't really describe how absolutely packed with people it was.
I got to the right subway station, and was immediately confronted with people overflowing down the stairwell. I had to push my way to the top, and just dove right into the infinite mass of halloweeners taking over the square.
The Shibuya crossing is the busiest intersection in the world on a slow day, and that night just made it that much more insane. For some reason, they didn't close the streets down to cars, so they had to somehow maintain an open roadway after the crosswalk turned red. They did this by using giant hoses as crosswalk barriers to keep people only on certain paths, and then jamming them all up on to the sidewalk as the light was turning red. Surprisingly enough, it kinda worked.
So yeah, the place was a mad house. I met up with a few frisbee friends, and we walked around a few of the side streets and those were still packed, but full of revelry and ridiculousness. In the spirit of that, I made it my personal goal to photobomb as many pictures and people as possible. So if you know anyone that was in Shibuya this year for Halloween, have them look through their pictures for a bearded banana man.
Craziness all over the place... After more walking around and raucous dance parties on the street, I made my way to my frisbee friend Doug's house for an after party (hosted by Niji, just go with it). We drank a good bit there, and I got force fed a few too many shots. But then when I was heading home with Kracker, we grabbed some Ramen and it was exactly what I needed. Spicy ramen is the best. For realz.
The next morning wasn't too bad, the ramen was a lifesaver. I had a chill morning, got some stuff done, then donned the banana suit once more to go heckle and help at a hat tournament. Unfortunately I wasn't able to play, but I passed out candy to people that did cool shit and made cool plays. A big shout out to my man Jay for throwing some on-point hammers.
Video Dump
I have videos from the last couple years that I need to upload to Youtube at some point, so look out for those to slowly trickle in. I'll try and only post the cool ones, but the reason I'm saying this is I have a couple of videos from Shibuya at Halloween that can hopefully shed some light on the craziness.
The candy I got (thanks Mommy!!!) was a hit (I think) to the players. But as I got to the end of my bag, some of the little soccer kids around our fields caught on to what I was handing out. Eventually, a couple of them came up and said something to me, and I just smiled and said hi, then walked on. Well apparently that wasn't good enough, and someone told me they actually asked for candy. So, being the benevolent banana that I am, gave them a piece. Welp, you know how dominoes work...
The last of my bag was raided by 5 little kids. But I only had four pieces of candy... I felt pretty bad. BUT, the kid that took the last piece, offered his piece of candy to the kid that didn't get a piece. What a kind offer! I ended up "talking" with these kids and their growing group for a few minutes. They talked about me being banana, asked where I was from, and then after throwing a frisbee with them for a couple throws, I eventually got slashed down by them with my own samurai sword. Betrayal brought on by a lulled sense of awareness. It's a killer. But what a delightful little group of munchkins.
The after party from the tournament was at Doug's. Beforehand, me, Anthony, Hora, and Sean went and got some Tsukemen, which is ramen, but the noodles are dipped in the soup rather than mixed beforehand. Of course, it was delicious. Always go with the spicy kind, you can't go wrong. But yeah, we got to Doug's and met up with everyone from the tournament, ate, drank, played beer pong, and had another merry evening with some wonderful Frisbee folks.
Tricked-out Cars
Monday I had work, but Tuesday was a holiday. Hooray!!!!! What'd I do? I went to the Tokyo Motor Show, and ended up seeing half of Tokyo there. Not exactly the best choice to go on a Holiday to one of the major conventions hosted in Tokyo, but it was the only day that worked for me. Either way, it was a pretty cool experience.
I met up with my boss and a few managers that were in town for a project workshop for the week to start, but quickly got separated/ditched them among the fray. I did a good bit of just walking around and looking at the cars and trucks, and not a whole ton of getting information and details and such. But even just doing that was pretty fun, as there were a lot of cool and crazy vehicles to check out.
Rather than writing something boring, here are my favorites.
Fuso Spider Truck
Acura NSX
Nissan Gran Turismo Concept
Hino Dakar Rally Truck
Honda Go-Kart thingamajig
There were a bunch of other cool ones too.
Odaiba
After I was motor-showed out, I got outside to finally enjoy the B-E-A-Utiful day we had. It was unbelievably sunny, clear, and just all around marvelous. So from Tokyo Big Sight (weird name for a convention hall, right), I walked over to Odaiba to get a great view of part of Tokyo's Harbor and some other stuff.
I stopped by 7-Eleven first to grab some vittles, then walked on over. On the way, I walked across a cool bridge, saw some beautiful fall colors, a super tall Gundam statue, and then finally made it to our Lovely (little) Lady Liberty and the Rainbow bridge. With a great view of the harbor, I pulled up on a park bench and had some grub.
From there, I walked a little more around the harbor, saw the beach and a bunch of wind surfers, and then headed back to town. I was planning on heading to this toy store in Ginza to find a toy/keychain I've been looking for the entire time I've been here.
I got to the toy store and didn't end up finding the keychain thing. BUT it was definitely not an unsuccessful adventure. While there, I strolled past an M&M display, and lo and behold, I found them. They were on my list of things-to-do while in Japan, and I finally found them. Caramel Apple M&Ms. So I bought them out of their stock. OH YEAH.
After that, I went to the train station and booked my Shinkansen tickets :-D for a trip to Osaka and Kyoto for the weekend, and then headed home. A successful holiday to say the least.
Cedar Tree Craze
On our hike, we hit a weird patch in the forest with clear and defined steps in the ground, about 3-4m long on the ledge, and 1-2m drop. On those steps was a forest of cedar trees, and nothing else. While we were walking by, Tamir mentioned something about a cedar tree planting craze after WWII, how they took off like gangbusters, despite a large percentage of the Japanese population having hay fever. I was instructed/intrigued to look up what out of that was true, and did so.
Well, I found nothing. Regardless of what I input into the Googlewebs, I found very little regarding a noticeable trend, frenzy, craze, pattern, or whatever regarding the planting of cedar trees after WWII for quite a while. Then I found this scholarly article.
From the conclusions:
The first major postwar forestation policies were developed as a way to decrease the area of cutover land. These policies were followed by introducing temporary enforcement measures under the forest planning system. Following this, national and local governments prepared forestation plans and related legal systems to increase the planting of coniferous forests, and strongly promoted policies with the same goal by founding planting organizations; policies for a subsidy system were also developed. As a result of policies, the total volume of Japanese forest resources has recovered. However, cutting activities are generally weak, although many of the planted forests have recently reached the final cutting age. In addition, large debt has been incurred by the Prefectural Forestry Corporations. We are facing serious forestation problems today which are different from those experienced just after the war. It is time to discuss how to manage approximately 10 million ha of existing planted forest in a new way.
So it seems that there was just some bad policy measures put in place that promoted the sole plantation of coniferous trees, rather than a diverse portfolio in the re-planting of their forests. Shame too, because now they get a nasty smack of hay fever every year and there's not much they can do about it. Oops.
In full disclosure though, I read the introduction and the conclusion, so maybe my very short interpretation of the article is off.
Moments of Pure Joy
As I was sitting in the train to frisbee I had a moment of pure bliss. Staring out the window blazing by on the express train, Can't Sleep Love pumping through my ears, dressed in a banana suit with the sun shining down on me, all of it collided into pure happiness and a fat ole smile slapped hold of my face and wouldn't let go as I was dancing in my seat. Such awesomeness.
Joint Dinner
So this past week, we've had a workshop/face-to-face with our whole group, aka with people from Japan, Germany, and the U.S. To celebrate the end of the workshop, we went out to a Joint Dinner this past evening to celebrate and let loose.
In this setting, I witnessed firsthand the complete separation between lives of people here. A persons work personality here is completely different than someone's personal-life personality, and those latter personalities came out in full force this past evening, which I found absolutely refreshing.
Work in Japan is quite stale; everything is so bland, people show little to no emotion, and it can be quite intolerable and unenjoyable at times. Well once the drinks started flowing and the food started coming out in meager droves, people seemed to don a separate version of themselves, and it was quite the improvement (I mean specifically you Japanese colleagues).
From what I've heard, this is par for the course. People have their normal, day-to-day mentality, and they have their non-work mentality, which are two completely separate human beings. A lot of the colleagues I assumed to be their working-selves became a completely different, a more enjoyable and more fun person.
Long story short, we had a great night celebrating the end of the workshop, wolfing down as much of the small izakaya portions as we could, and keeping the beer and sake flowing. Successful for sure.
Up Next
Today is Thursday, and tomorrow is Friday, and on Friday I get to ride a Shinkansen!!! I'm taking a half-day off at work and leaving before lunch to ride down to Osaka and Kyoto for the weekend. I'm super pumped about the train ride, and the necessary bento box and beer I'll be enjoying on the ride down. Additionally, I'm super excited to meet up with Erin from my CBYX Program! She's living in Kochi City right now, and we're going to wander around Osaka and Kyoto to explore and catch up, and it's going to be awesome!
Original Publish Date: November 5th, 2015