the canal looking a very muddy brown this morning - iPhone + TiltShift + Instagram Hefe filter

When looking out the window this morning, the colour of the canal below was reminiscent of the Mekong River: a muddy brown that had me remembering various moments on the Mekong. One very funny one was years ago in Vietnam, where the boatman insisted on taking us to a bee farm despite our desperate mime act in an attempt to convey the following: severe allergy to bee stings resulting in anaphylactic shock and certain death on a tiny island in the Mekong Delta.

Well, obviously I survived, but we laugh about it to this day as we recall the boatman eating his free lunch (a freshly caught chicken whipped up into some tasty-looking dish), which was clearly his reward for bringing tourists to the island with the bee farm/honey store/restaurant, while we sucked on lychee nuts because there was nothing else for two non-meat eaters to eat. I do have photos of that boat ride, but they are all on film, so I’d have to dig them out and scan them.

Another favourite was stepping out from the Pak Ou caves in Laos (the famous “Buddha Caves” about 25km north of Luang Prabang by boat) and seeing this lovely scene:

looking down at the parked boats in Laos

And still another favourite moment was a late afternoon spent perched on a stool in front of a large open window watching the sun set a beautiful pink and gold on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh. I read a book and drank a cold beer and watched a man and his family push off in their small boat:

a fisherman and his family push off in their small boat

So, now, after writing this, I feel the urge to travel…

By the way, this is the usual colour of the canal in front of us:

The Tokyo Jidai Matsuri is an annual parade that depicts key events in Tokyo history through the ages (jidai means “era” or “period”). It’s one of those festivals that you might think has been around for a loooong time, but, actually, it started in 1999 as part of an event called “Tokyo Renaissance”, an attempt to promote the Asakusa area and its historical significance in the history of Edo. Just so there’s no confusion, Kyoto has a more famous Jidai Matsuri that’s been running since the late 1800s and is held on October 22nd every year.

Anyway, last November, I knew the Jidai Matsuri was on, but I didn’t have any particular plan to go and watch it. However, as I was very near Asakusa by chance (I went there to buy a ticket for the Tobu line to Nikko), I strolled over and spent an hour or so watching “The Ages” pass by. I was pleasantly surprised on many fronts: the streets were nowhere near as crowded as I had anticipated (which was my original reason for not really wanting to go), everyone in the parade seemed to really be enjoying themselves, and the costumes were fantastic.

Fortunately, I had my 135L with me and it was easy to get right up to the front, so, this is what it’s all about (if you’re interested in details about the costumes in terms of period or meaning, this website has detailed descriptions). I’ll start with my own personal favourite from the whole parade:

Okay, not everyone looked happy to be there…

This guy reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac for some reason…

Okay, this guy wasn’t actually in the parade but he was pretty cute in his absolute refusal to walk one inch further…

By the way, if you are running a WordPress.org blog and you ever want to insert more than two or three images in one post, do yourself a favour and get the Faster Image Insert plugin – it’s a brilliant solution to the very irritating built-in method of inserting images one-by-one.

I haven’t been participating in Show Me Japan for the past few weeks (hectic weekends, it seems), but this is my entry for Show Me Japan Vol. I issue XV

You can read more about Show Me Japan by clicking the image below:

We first took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Odawara:

Two bullet trains ready to depart from Tokyo station (taken with the iPhone Hipstamatic app)

From there, we jumped on the Odakyu line for a few stops and then switched to the Hakone-Tozan line at Hakone-Yumoto. If you’ve never been on the Hakone-Tozan line, it’s definitely worth it to do it once: it’s an old switchback train that climbs through the trees and you are completely surrounded by greenery. During the summer, when the hydrangeas are in full bloom it is quite beautiful. Of course, because it is a short train and you are going up the mountain in a zig-zag fashion, it is often very crowded and it is quite a slow journey (i.e., if you are pressed for time and you really don’t like crowded trains, this is not for you on weekends, holidays, or during peak seasons).

Here’s a short video of part of the journey which I shot with my iPhone and processed with the iMovie for iPhone app (quite a miraculous little app, I must say) – the volume’s a bit high, so you might want to turn the sound down:

After arriving at the terminus, Gōra, you switch to the Hakone-Tozan Cable Car and travel for 9 minutes up 214 metres to Sōunzan, where you can then get on the Hakone Ropeway and travel up and over the peak to the other side. The Hakone-Tozan Cable Car:

The Hakone Tozan Cable at Sounzan (taken with an iPhone 4)

Now, this is so typically Japanese it’s not funny: after being on every type of people mover imaginable, we arrived at the top (at Sounzan) to discover that, in fact, the Hakone Ropeway (which is like a gondola) was not operating that day due to high winds. When I say “typically Japanese” what I mean is that at NO point in the journey prior to that moment had it been announced or indicated that the Ropeway was not operating. At first I thought it was me: maybe I’d missed the announcement or my Japanese listening is so entirely crap that it had been said but I didn’t catch it. However, the confused looks on the faces all around confirmed that nobody knew until getting off the cable car that the last leg of the journey was impossible. In hindsight, it’s probably good not to tell people because you’d have mass chaos and crowding down the line somewhere and it is certainly nice enough to ride up the on the cable car and get out at Sounzan and take a look around.

There were, of course, a few non-Japanese tourists complaining that they’d been “ripped off” because they’d bought a Hakone Free Pass and could not do the whole journey. This is, of course, nonsense: the pass allows you full access to all transportation in the area and is good for two days. If it’s windy one day, you can always try the next day and, if Ashinoko is your destination, you can always take the bus (which is what we did). Getting angry about the weather and potential safety issues is just stupid. As I said to my friend about one particularly vocal guy: “I’d like to see him after he’s been trapped in a gondola that’s been stopped for 3 hours because it’s too windy and he’s had to be rescued by emergency services”. At the same time, it really did not seem windy enough at Sounzan to warrant shutting down the gondola (but we discovered later that it was extremely windy over on the other side – as in crazy-windy).

Here is the viewing area at Sounzan – not much to do, but hang out until the next cable car back down:

A few people in groups of 3 or 4 opted to take a taxi up and over to see Ōwakudani, but, as I’d been before, I didn’t think the estimated ¥5000 taxi ride was worth it (i.e., if it were my one and only chance to do it, I might have done so).

Interior shot of the cable car on the ride back down:

Interior shot of the Tozan cable car as we ride back down to Gora

Once we got back down to Gora, we hopped on a bus over to Ashinoko. When we arrived, we immediately realized why the ropeway had been closed: it was extremely windy (as in it was difficult to be out in an open space) and it was very cold. There were not many people around at all and, as you can see from the shot below, there were even white caps on Ashinoko:

The road next to the lake:

The ropeway on the ridge (seen from down below at Ashinoko):

It was so windy that we promptly retreated indoors to have some udon and tempura at one of the shops lining the road next to the lake. After that, we sought shelter from the wind in a part of the “Cryptomeria Avenue” (sugi-namiki) and had a nice stroll through the tall trees:

We then headed back down to Hakone Yumoto via bus and went to the onsen at the Yumoto-Fujiya hotel before heading back to Tokyo. All in all a great day trip out of Tokyo and, if you need to be back in Tokyo for dinner, it’s easily do-able on the shinkansen.

It was pure serendipity that we ended up going to Nikko while it was at its peak for autumn colours (i.e., we hadn’t planned it in advance at all and, in fact, decided just the day before because the forecast looked good).

There was one tree in particular that was the reddest I have ever seen (and, living in Japan for so long and coming from Canada, I have seen A LOT of maple trees in my time) – I posted a shot of it the other day from my iPhone. This was taken from the other side, with a bit of bright yellow and some vibrant green thrown into the mix (click on the photo for a larger view):

Just squeezing this post in before the 11:00 pm deadline for Anna’s great idea over at Budget Trouble: a photo meme/blog post called Show Me Japan. Jump over and take a look at the other entries by clicking the link above or  here.

Anyway, in the process, I’ve also changed the look a bit. I’m not sure if this will stay as-is for too long, but we’ll see…

At the moment, I am taking advantage of this year’s Golden Week stretch of weekday holidays, so I am out of Tokyo and looking at this view for a few days (so I probably won’t be online much unless there is a true rainy day instead of the daily noon showers):

(The beach is not actually this empty all the time – it just happens to be fairly early in the morning, when a lot of people were still doing hand-to-hand combat at the breakfast buffet)