Tag Archives: Travel

Summer Journeys – Mt. Fuji (富士山) [part 2]

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There’s a Japanese proverb, which goes as follows: “He is a fool who never climbs Mt. Fuji, but he is twice the fool for climbing it two times”. Should I’ve headed this warning after climbing the biggest mountain of Japan at the beginning of September already when Ruth told me that she wanted to go up there too? Maybe, but somethimes you just have to be a big fool to make great experiences, and so I agreed to climb the symbol of Japan again in late September. 

Beeing even more out of season than the last time, we had to be very careful with weather conditions to avoid potential problems (like hitting a typhoon, for example :D ). Unfortunately for us, it was quite a rainy time and our options on when to climb the mountain were slowly diminishing before the planned continuation of our trip to Tokyo. Finally on our last day in Mishima the weather cleared up and we chose to do the trip at daytime to be able to do it at all. With everything we might need in our bags we set out in the morning to catch the first bus to the 5th station and our trip began.

It was a beautiful and warm late summer day, even considering the height we beeing at, but we soon noticed a different problem: time. Climbing out of season meant that only few buses were doing the tour up and down to and from the 5th station, so our time frame was shorter than would have been good for us. Upwards was still ok, but we really had to hurry quite a bit on the way down to catch the last bus, including running in the end, although we took the very first and last available buses for the maximum amount of time. So you can imagine us two beeing totally exhausted in the end: smelly, sweaty, in need of a good relaxing bath. This might be the fulfillment of the saying…

…but damn if this wasn’t worth it! :D

Summer Journeys – Atami (熱海)

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Once a town famous for its many resort hotels catering to beach and hot spring tourists alike, Atami wasn’t a town we had planned to visit. But as bad weather prohibited our climbing of Mt. Fuji that day, we gave it a chance due to the close proximity to Mishima. It took maybe half an hour to get there by train and we didn’t have anything better to do that day anyway.

Now places like Atami might look nice and all that when the sun shines and many people are around, but when we went there it was all grey, rainy and quite deserted. Therefore we aquired some informations on what might be worth a look at the train station and just went for a walk through the town.

Atami was nothing special in the end and the drabness that was oozing from many of the town’s corners seemed to fit the declining tourism and change to a bedtown for people working in Tokyo and Yokohama. Maybe it all looks different in the holiday season with good weather, but I remain sceptical.

 

Summer Journeys – Mishima (三島)

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Ruth’s and my next stop was Mishima, a relatively small town located between Mt. Fuji and the Izu-peninsula. It was supposed to be our basecamp before climbing Mt. Fuji and as we weren’t sure of the weather conditions we had booked a few days in a hotel in order to be flexible about the climbing date. As we arrived there early in the morning and it was still a few hours until we could enter our rooms at the hotel, we decided to walk around the town a little bit. After a short time we found the entry to Rakujuen park, which we decided to enter after some persuasion from Ruth (I didn’t really feel like going there in the beginning – tired and without having been able to take a shower that morning xD).

But it’s good to have someone to talk you into something, so we entered and it was a nice place actually. The park was a mixture between a small zoo, natural woods and arranged greenery and even contained an old imperial villa dating back to the Meiji-Era (1868-1912). Like a lot of small zoos everywhere in the world, the cages were definitely very improve-worthy in regards to size and included plants/design, but I guess that’s mostly a financial problem and not easily solved. Still, we had a few ideas flying around on how to work on a few of these things without too much investment very fast. Don’t know if we were thinking to simple and leaving a few peaces out of the bigger picture though…

My personal favourite was the lesser panda, who was having a nice nap the whole time. For some reason Ruth liked the two white alpacas and one big fat marmot a bit more but just look at how cute this one is!

Close to the zoo area there were also a few attractions for children (everything looked a bit old and worn-down, but that made for an interesting atmosphere – think creepy empty theme-park!) where we found a good friend who was just waiting to take a picture with me: Hey Pikachu!

But that was enough joy from childhood memories and fluffy animals for us and we went to see the imperial villa, for which this garden was arranged in the first place. Of course, they didn’t have the zoo and Pikachu back in the days, but you know what I mean. During the 30 minutes tour, which was completely in Japanese and I was only understanding very little of it, all the old people (and there were only old people despite the two of us!) were constantly aah-ing and ooh-ing about everything and also eeh-ing a bit when there was something hard to believe for them. It was like a constant sound while we were in there. Definitely a lot different from German tourists!

Sadly, we weren’t allowed to take photos inside the villa (they had some very beautiful traditional paintings in there), but the scenery outside was making up for that with it’s relaxed atmosphere.

Finally the check-in time came closer and we went back to our hotel where we had placed our luggage earlier to move into our room. It was really tiny, but we didn’t need much anyway, so it wasn’t a problem at all. In the evening we went out to eat some ramen noodles before visiting the Mishima shrine. But due to it beeing late and dark already, my photos of the shrine itself didn’t turn out too well. Instead I have the following for you:

It’s the main exit of the shrine and in my opinion the torii gate and the street lanterns formed a nice contrast for a picture. And with this picture it’s enough for now – I hope you enjoyed the article again! :)

 

Summer Journeys – Kobe (神戸)

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While Ruth, Jonas and I were in the Kansai area we also just had to pay Kobe a visit again, of course. I think it’s a pretty sure thing to say that Kobe is my favourite city in Japan and I wanted them both to get a glimpse of it. But considering that I’ve already written two articles about Kobe on this blog (3/2010, 5/2011) I didn’t want to repeat stuff and chose a few photos, which show a few different things  than before.

The first is the Ikuta shrine, which I seem to have left out so far, which is quite a shame. While this one is definitely not the biggest and most impressive shrine in Japan, it is one of the oldest and is also dedicated to the patron saint of Kobe. It is said to have been founded in the 3rd century by the Japanese Empress Jingū after her return from fighting in Korea, but noone knows for sure.

As you can see in the picture, we had really nice and pleasant weather and we even were a bit lucky, because there was some Shinto ritual going on inside the main hall. Of course we didn’t enter, but it was interesting to watch it for a bit. The priest was chanting in front of the altar and also performing a ritual cleaning of the guy sitting in the front row later. I have no idea what exactly this was about, but it’s also not the first time that I was able to observe religious practices in Japan. So the traditional religion is still pretty much alive here.

Of course we had to go to the port after that, but on the way we stumbled upon a small shop that I wouldn’t have expected there: a curry sausage snack bar! Besides the question, if the curry sausage was invented in Hamburg or Berlin, it definitely is a dish that is strongly linked with Hamburg in my mind and I definitely had to eat one! And it even tasted surprisingly good! The sauce was nearly perfact and only the sausage itself (although well-grilled) would have been better if they had used one of a different kind. Still really nice!

Now while I just mentioned us going to the port I’ll just skip this part here, because I didn’t make photos of things that you didn’t already see here. Instead I’ll do a small time jump and show you Kobe’s Chinatown at night, as I found that to be really nice place to be and the atmosphere seemed to be different than from the daytime.

Just look at the nice illumination and compare the plaza to the daytime when it’s totally crowded and you’ll notice how much more relaxed it is. Of course, the people wanting to sell their foods were still screaming like mad because it seems to be the thing to do, but it was still more enjoyable, I think.

Still, walking around all day, we were a bit exhausted in the evening and Jonas would also be leaving the next day to travel to Kyoto an his own while Ruth and I were going to travel to Mt. Fuji again. So the next day we brought Jonas to the station and spent some time in the city on our own before planning to catch the night bus in the evening. And we met up with Yoshino and Yannik in a nice café in Kobe, which had a relaxed atmosphere and a whole small bamboo forest in front of the entry. It was nice meeting them again :)

Did I mention I really like Kobe? ;)

Summer Journeys – Ruth arriving and Nara (奈良)

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The 18th of September brought with it a higly pleasant visitor, as Ruth was coming to visit me in Japan! She arrived very early at the Kansai International Airport in Osaka, so I had to get up even earlier in order to be able to take the bus and pick her up there. I was anxious and happy the whole way as we hadn’t seen each other for half a year (except for Skype) and also didn’t sleep too well the night before because of that. Waiting at the exit of her arrival gate also wasn’t much better ^^” But when she finally came out of the gate, it felt like we’ve never been parted for so long and holding her in my arms again made me really, really happy and filled with joy :)

But Ruth was still a bit sleepy from her flight, so the three of us (her, Jonas and me) spent most of the day relaxing at Yannik’s place, who was kind enough to leave it to us when he went on a short journey to Korea for a few days. The still really hot and humid climate did it’s part as well, I guess. Instead we went and had some fun with friends from the dormitory in the evening before starting our first jouney as a group of 3 in the next day, which would be visiting Nara.

Nara was the capital city of Japan from 710-784, also know as the Nara Period. During this period, the city became the political and cultural center of Japan, and increased its religious importance as well, of which the many shrines and temples of Nara are an impressive testament. When Nara lost its status as capital city, the political power began to wane, but the important religious role was carried on even until today. So much for a short glimpse on the history ;)

When we went there, we were accompanied by Yumiko, who had also studied in Hamburg for a year and was gonna be our guide for the day, so we also had to exchange news between us regarding what had happened in our lives since we last saw each other in Hamburg in early Spring. So the four of us had a really cheerful day in Nara, as you will be able to see in the following pictures in the gallery.

As always, feel free to leave comments and questions as they arrise ;)