Alan's Rambles: Japan: 9th Sep 2015

I got a brilliant sleep last night. My alarm on my phone woke me up for 6:20. The app I'm using for my alarm is a music collaboration from Yoko Kanno & Cornelius.

Its my birthday so I opened my cards, (got another classic Eric The Penguin card from Laurie and Sue) and opened my present which was a pink shirt.

I had breakfast in a different restaurant on the ground floor. Still the same stuff though.

Today was officially a free day, however I pre booked a day to Nikko, so I had to meet at the lobby for 8am. Loads of people from the hotel went. We had a coach journey to Ginza where the coach company was based. From there we were directed to 2 bigger coaches. Only 4 of us from my tour went. 2 went on the other coach and we didn't see them much all day, which left me and a woman named Rosemary on my coach, so I sat next to her. It was very cramped. The tour guide was nice but dim and slightly useless. She felt obliged to talk about crap all the way to Nikko. It was 2 hours or so of her jabbering on over the mic. I wore my ear plugs just to soften the volume. The speaker was very close to my ear and it sucked until i wore them. Thank god I had a pair on me!

The mountains appeared and the coach wound Its way up. At the top was a massive lake. We stopped off at a car park next to the lake for photo opportunities, but this was in torrential rain and wind so i couldn't see the point. Next the coach stopped off at another rest stop nearby. Again just another empty car park. Some people got off, some people didn't. It was after a while that I decided to explore. I didn't see much. I bought a steam bun from a tourist gift shop and headed back.

Only after people were slowly getting on did I realise that they all saw the waterfall. I MISSED THE WATERFALL. Bloody hell why didn't the tour guide make it clear where we were?! All I remember her saying was something about loos and a gift shop. Damn it! Apparently I didn't miss much. Well in this weather it wouldn't have been anyway.

Next at the bottom of the mountain we had traditional style lunch with the hot pots cooking in mini stoves on our table. I didn't take a photo maybe I should have done.
The gift shop was on the ground floor and I got chatting to this american bloke. Actually wow I have that on video as I was filming the torrential rain. That's pretty cool considering.

Next the coach drove us to a temple. I found a spare seat at the very back with leg room so I sat there. The p.a wasn't as loud and I got chatty to a mother and her 15 month old who seemed to like me.

At the temple It was hammering it down yet it was still busy. I hooked up with the american guy again and got chatting about our gear. We were the only two strolling down in Gortex weather proof hiking boots not giving a damn about walking in the rivers of rain that everyone else was avoiding stepping in. Once at the gate our guide was nowhere to be seen. We tried to go in but we needed tickets. She turned up with the tickets and gave us some map of the shrine. The map itself was kinda basic, and it died very quickly in the typhoon rain. The american guy is called John. We both took the path up 200 steps to visit the original Shoguns tomb. It was quite because of the downpour but john said it was haunting in the conditions. Such a cool outlook on it.

Next I convinced John to go into the shrine. He was reluctant because of the effort needed to take off our hiking boots. He thanked me afterwards because the two of us got a free show seeing the shrine maiden and dude (that looked like Tenchi Masaki) do some sort of ceremonious actions around the shrine. Their movements were precise and obviously traditional and just 3 of us witnessed it!

After that we slowly made our way back to the coach on time at 4pm. I realised I stupidly left my bag in the place we had to take our shoes off. The rep let me borrow an umbrella and I pegged it back. It was raining very hard and I got lost and very scared that my coach would leave without me. However I found my way back OK, just incredibly shattered. It took me a good while to recover on the bus. Had I paid attention out the window I may have seen some of the flooding that happened there that was reported on the news later today, but i'm not sure. All I know is that it happened somewhere around there and yes I was somewhere around there.

I got chatting to the mother again on the bus back to Tokyo. She is a Singaporean taking her mother out for a day trip. We got chatting about her and her husband living in Tokyo for 5 years. Her boy was adorable. He wanted to play with me, sticking out his hands at me wanting me to give hi five's, not that he knew what a hi five was.

The sun made an appearance on the coach but coming back. Everyone was trying to take photos. Seeing shadows was like this epic event.

A large majority got taken back to Shinjuku where I escorted Rosemary back to the hotel. John and I walked to downtown eastern Shinjuku and walked the backstreets to find a very famous pubbing district called the Golden Gai. The houses here are the last remaining houses from before WWII and are very small and tightly packed. Apparently about 10 years ago after it stopped being a red light district, with each building being converted into pubs. There are 200 or so of them crammed into this one small area. Each one the size of a small bedroom with only 6 seats. We chose one that John thought was famous. It was brilliant. We spent over 5 hours here, talking about everything and getting to know the patrons that joined us, both Japanese and travelers like us. I used my broken Japanese skills to talk to the bartenders about anime. It became a massive conversation with everyone there. It helped that they had broken English skills so the communication worked quite well.
I spent about £40 on drink but it was the best thing about my stay in Tokyo.

I got Johns email and he invited me to stay over in Denver anytime. I was pissed, staggering back to my hotel. I got lost too but quickly found where I was due to recognising a building from when I got lost on my first night.