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April 22nd 2013
Published: April 22nd 2013
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Japan


Hakuba 47's Expert RunHakuba 47's Expert RunHakuba 47's Expert Run

Trickier than it looks, I obviously conquered it though
I spent two days skiing in Hakuba where the snow was actually quite good considering it was the middle of April. The ski area wasn't massive however, and some of the runs to the valley were already closed due to a lack of snow at that level. This meant one day's skiing here would probably have been enough. I'd originally planned to go to one of the other nearby resorts on my second day, but the advertised free shuttle from the hostel wasn't running anymore as I was pretty much the only person there skiing at the time. I did a second day in the same ski area which I enjoyed, but by the end of the two days I knew most of the place backwards. I enquired about whether Apres Ski exists in Japan or not, as the area I was in was completely dead once you got off the slopes. Apparently it does, but not in April. The slopes were busy enough though, and I think I was the only non Japanese person skiing on either day I was there. My only problem with the place would be the amount of snowboarders; I think they actually outnumber the skiers.
Mt  FujiMt  FujiMt Fuji

About the best photo I got of it
Also there was pretty much nothing to do once you'd got off the slopes, the walk to seven eleven was the highlight of my evenings.

After Hakuba I spent two nights in Kawaguchiko, a town just north of Mt Fuji. There is a theme park nearby I'd originally intended to visit, but I decided not to after reading a few reviews. Nothing wrong with the park itself, but you'll spend most of your day in a queue if you go there. The good thing about the hostel in Kawaguchiko is that it had a little bar, which by 10 o'clock contained about 8 people. A couple of Aussie lads, an Irish girl and her Spanish boyfriend, and a few Japanese. After the bar closed we moved on to a Karaoke place, the famous Japanese past time. Karaoke in Japan is not like Ireland; you don't get up in front of a packed pub of people and make an idiot of yourself. You rent a small room for you and your friends, and nobody else hears you attempt to sing. It was actually good fun, and I'd like to think I did Mick Jagger proud with a few of my efforts. Think I did a David Bowie number too, and I'm also unashamed to say S Club 7. There ain't no party like an S Club party.



So on my full day in Kawaguchiko I decided to hire a bike and cycle around the lakes, I ended up running into the crowd from the night before and we all cycled together to the next lake over which took almost two hours (there were a few steep uphill sections that we had to walk). What were we going to visit? Aokigaraha, also known as Japan's suicide forest. This is the most common place to commit suicide in Japan, and the second most common in the world behind the Golden Gate Bridge. There is something like 80 suicides a year here, which has come down in recent times. Bit of a weird thing to cycle two hours for, but there you go. The forest itself has a few caves, and a shrine which I presume was for the people who'd died there. As we went down into the cavern that housed the shrine, the temperature dropped from about 18 degrees down to 3 or 4 in a matter of metres. Very weird, never experienced anything like it before. This wasn't a proper cave either; you were still out in the open. The cycle back was considerably shorter as it was mostly downhill, and there was some really nice scenery with cherry blossom trees next to the lake. The only unfortunate thing about Kawaguchiko was that the visibility was quite poor when I was there, and I wasn't able to get any decent photos of Mt Fuji. You could see the mountain no problem, but it doesn't come through in the photos that well.

In an attempt to break up this blog entry somewhat, here are some things I have noticed in my two weeks in Japan so far:


• This place is overrun with vending machines, usually selling coffee in a can. You can't walk more than 50 metres down the street without coming across a vending machine. They are to Japan what pubs are to Ireland.
• The sprite here is crap; it tastes like some kind of Tesco brand lemonade. For some reason I keep buying it.
• There are no immigrants here; all the menial jobs are done by the Japanese themselves. It is by a
Vending MachinesVending MachinesVending Machines

Bleedin everywhere
long distance the least multicultural developed country I have ever been to. I have since read in the lonely planet that Japan has a very strict immigration policy, but there are a small number of Korean immigrants here. I'm too ignorant to tell the difference I guess. Anyway I would be very confident there are more vending machines in Japan than there are immigrants.
• The rear doors of Taxis here close automatically. Only realised this a few hours ago when some guy got out of a taxi in front me, left the door open and just walked off.
• Japan is not as crazy as I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe I was hoping for Japan to be like one big episode of Takeshi's Castle. However I've found it to be very normal, civilised and just an all round very pleasant country to travel in.


Right, onwards to Kyoto, the cultural capital of Japan. The city and entire region is flooded with temples and Japanese gardens, so naturally the first thing I did in the city was to go to a monkey park. The park is on top of a hill overlooking the city, so you get a good view of the place as well as a bunch of monkeys to look at. What more could you want? The monkeys were just roaming around the place, not caged up or anything. I managed to avoid getting attacked by one. After this I walked through the gardens of Tenryu-ji, a UNESCO world heritage site. Finally I went back into the city and visited the Kiyomizu-dera temple.

I'd had my fill of culture and decided to visit the relatively nearby Nagoya on my next day. I say nearby, they're actually 150km apart by train. However in Japan that's a 40 minute journey. You'd spend about 5 hours going a similar distance in Vietnam. Nagoya has the JR rail museum, which is interesting if you're a train nerd. I enjoyed it anyway, the process of me turning into my dad continues. After this I visited the Toyota museum (Toyota was founded in Nagoya). This one wasn't as good, it was very engineering focused and half of the museum was dedicated to automated loom machines (this is the industry Toyota first made a name for itself in). There were a few cars to look at
Shinkansens of OldShinkansens of OldShinkansens of Old

These older bullet trains no longer run
near the end, but apparently you need to go to the Toyota automobile museum way outside the city to see more of that.

My last day in Kyoto I spent by visiting the nearby Nara. It was once the capital of Japan, and has a couple of things worth seeing. The east side of the city is one big park, which is overrun with wild deer. I say wild, they weren't afraid of approaching people in the hope they'd get fed. Also in the park were a Shinto shrine and then the biggest Buddhist temple I've seen to date, Todai-ji. I'm getting pretty sick of looking at temples after being in Southeast Asia and now Japan, but this was actually very impressive. It only takes 40 minutes to get to Nara by train from Kyoto, and it's worth checking out for a couple of hours.

Finally to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb detonation. To be honest that's about all there is to see here. The once densely populated area of the city centre where the bomb was detonated over has been turned into a memorial park that houses a museum. Also here is the a-bomb dome, a building that somehow survived the blast that they have kept as a reminder to what happened. Worth spending a couple of hours in the park, and not exactly a pleasant experience, but once you've seen that you've seen nearly everything Hiroshima has to offer. Went out this evening and sampled the local delicacy, Okonomiyaki. It's kind of a noodle cabbage egg pancake thing, fairly edible and tastes quite similar to a lot of other Asian noodles dishes.

So I've another week in Japan, but I'm starting to feel like two weeks would have been enough. I'm getting a little sick of sightseeing, and found myself just wanting to relax and do nothing over the past few days. However in Thailand relaxing and doing nothing meant sitting by the pool and sipping on a beer. In Japan it literally means doing nothing, so it's not really an option. As I said in a previous blog post, there's not really that much of a backpacker scene here and I guess I'm starting to feel a small bit isolated. Don't get me wrong Japan is a very cool country and I'm very glad I came here, but I'm starting to look forward to getting to Australia where I'll be meeting up with some people I already know. I guess Japan just doesn't lend itself to solo travelling as well as Southeast Asia does.

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22nd April 2013

censorship
Why is the Video private?
23rd April 2013

Dunno, fixed it now
27th April 2013

Cabbage?!!!
Can't believe you ate something green!

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