Koufu
Last weekend I travelled to a city called Kofu (reminds me of the Greek island) in Yamanashi. Like my Sendai trip I travelled on the seishun 18 ticket. Unlike my Sendai trip, I went with my friend Hong Ee. Unfortunately, I got distracted from my journal and forgot to add to it from the first afternoon, but I will post anyway.
Saturday 850
Left Katsuta with Hong Ee (I slept over the night before). Heading to Ueno down the Joban Line, passing beautiful Ibaraki countryside... except it's boring - we always use this part of the Joban, so there's nothing to see. Hong Ee, having finished breakfast, is now sleeping, and I'm writing this.
Just before he nodded off we were looking at a map of our route. He's spotted an onsen on the way and wants to go. I'm wondering if there's a way to get into an onsen without getting your hair wet.
Oh well, will report later when things are more interesting.
930
Wow, lots of cute girls on this train! Heaven! One girl has a pair of boots that I really want, too. Also just met another fellow JET. She came on the train for a few stops until Tsuchiura where she was catching a bus to Narita Airport to go home to Canada for a week! But school is just starting! Why now? Pretty weird.
1100
Switched onto the Chuo Line at Tokyo Station. Almost got onto the wrong train which would've taken a completely different Chuo Line to the completely wrong place. On the right train now, going all the way to Takao - one of the Western Bastions of the Tokyo Metropolis. I made that up.
Cute girl report: None.
1130
Still on Chuo - left Tokyo, but still in Tokyo-to. The metropolis stretches on forever in all directions - countless numbers of hoses, apartment blocks and the same shops gathered around each station. The Chuo cuts a dead straight line west for 15 miles (oh, I thought it was a more interesting figure than that...)
Hong Ee is still sleepy; he's worse than me! We are also getting warnings on the train's tannoy that "the train may stop suddenly to prevent an accident". I guess that means this line is a popular destination for idiots trying to commit suicide...
1150
We saw that a Special Rapid train to Takao was going to overtake our train, so we jumped onto it at the next station expecting to be whizzed away to Takao. However, it skipped just two stations before we were told "after this station, we will be stopping at all stations beyond" - basically a normal train again... But, there's a very, very cute girl sat beside me playing a DS :D
1217
Changing at Takao. Still on the Chuo Line but now we're on a rickety old train which will take us out of Tokyo-to and into the mountains of Yamanashi-ken. Okay, it's not falling apart, this train, but it's not the state of the art train we just got off. There's also more climbers and holiday-makers now - only just out of Takao we're faced with the 599-metre high Takao-san (not 5990 metres high like I read at first) and burrowing into a tunnel beneath it.
Before we hit that, the old woman sat across from us in our box decides to shuffle up closer to the window. Fine. But then she wants to pull the blind down on the window so that it doesn't glare her while she's reading. Why move out of the aisle where there's shadow, stupid *****?!
1245
We moved to a different seat - one without self-contradicting women. The landscape is wonderful - deep valleys and tall, tree-covered mountains, and lots and lots of tunnels. Japanese mountains are so sharp and deeply-cutted that scenes flash by in a moment. Often a tunnel will open out to a bridge over a gorge and return into a tunnel again. The sudden view out of the gorge is always amazing, but impossible to capture.
Now, some mountains are covered in cloud, we are that high up!
Sometimes Hong Ee really confuses me with his sudden decisions. We've stopped at a station for a short time and suddenly jumps up saying, "Let's buy onigiri!" (rice balls) He sounds so excited I assume it's some special onigiri only available in this town. But no. It's just a platform kiosk.
1335
Passed through a very long tunnel and came out into a huge valley with acres of grapes being grown. No rice fields to be seen, just grapes growing on wire grids making the whole land look like its a metre higher. There's also rows and rows of small trees (note: which I now think are peaches). I wonder why they grow them in hilly, upland areas...
Hong Ee has reminded me of the onsen a few stops away - I'm still thinking about my hair.
Spotted Mt Fuji! I think. The problem is, from this side, there is a large range of peaks in front of it, so I only managed to spot the very peak of it because I knew which way to look from my maps.
1445
Skipped the onsen for later and went straight on to Kofu. It's the capital of Yamanashi prefecture so it's a big city, but just 3 minutes walk from the station is the ruins of Kofu Castle, or Maizuro-jo. What is left is rather well preserved and there are a couple of reconstructed towers housing exhibit, as well as authentic looking buildings which turn out to house toilets. Bizarrely, in the centre of the ruins, on the highest mound, stands an obelisk! So weird. Did Tokugawa have a trade link with ancient Egypt (despite the 2000-year gap)?
Now we're off for a walk around Kofu's temples with the sun beating down upon us. No rest for the wicked...
After that, through sore feet from so much walking, and through receiving some unsettling news/advice, I forgot to update my journal. So here's how the rest of my trip went:
We took the "scenic" route up the the north end of Kofu and to its biggest shrines. It wasn't so scenic but did take us to a shrine and the grave of the shogun of the area or someone important like that, and finally to the Kodu's big shrine which I never actually caught the name of. It was a busy little place, with tourists, mikos (shrine maidens) and a menagerie of animals including large koi carp, swans, turtles, chickens and Hello Kitty's. We prayed like we should, and visited a small exhibit of old samurai armor and other relics from the days when the place used to be a castle). I also bought a little charm with a chinese-year rat on (note this is a Shinto shrine...) to go with my Aquarius charm that I bought in Kyoto.
We tried the grape ice cream (there's lots of grapes around as I pointed out before) and mochi ice cream (mochi is pounded rice cakes, so imagine that taste...)
We walked back to the station and on to our hotel, where Hong Ee rushed us into the hotel's 10th floor onsen, much to my annoyance. After we bathed he informed me the reason for his rashness was due to my feet stinking like vile sulphurous eggs (I may have paraphrased that).
Later, we went out to eat the local speciality, houtou noodles, which where the best noodles I've eaten in Japan, for sure, second only to the seafood ramen I ate in Sapporo. And for dessert we sampled, from a tiny postage stamp of a shop, a strange squishy little black and green ball of sweetness which we have never been able to identify. We skipped onto a train next and returned to the onsen town a few stops away, but upon realizing how far away the interesting stuff was from the station, we returned to Kofu and our hotel and took another dip in the onsen.
We awoke casually, and made yet another trip to the onsen before catching a train south on the quaint single-track Minobu Line down to the town of Fuji, which nestles between the south side of Mt Fuji and the Pacific Ocean. The trip took 3 tiresome hours during which the thrill of clinging to the edge of a beautiful steep valley eventually became dull. But before it reached Fuji city the line swung around and out of the valley to give a fantastic view of... clouds. None in the sky. just a blanket covering the whole of Mt Fuji expect for it's lowest foothills.
As a little boy behind us said to his mum, "ダメよ" ('no good').
Let's play, Spot The Mountain
We changed trains immediately at Fuji, ran along the Tokkaido Line towards Tokyo, but jumped off at Numazu, grabbing a bentou box and eating on a train to Gotemba and hoping we'd find something interesting there. There wasn't - Gotemba is nothing more than a gateway for those heading to Mt Fuji and it's surrounds. Disappointed and still unable to see Fuji under it's cover, we got on the next train, back to the Tokkaido Line. But instead of returning to Tokyo, we diverted on some other line (not my choice, I was ready to go home already, had been for hours) and found yet more nothing-of-interest. Back on the Chuo Line, we returned to Tokyo and then on back home. At last.
Saturday 850
Left Katsuta with Hong Ee (I slept over the night before). Heading to Ueno down the Joban Line, passing beautiful Ibaraki countryside... except it's boring - we always use this part of the Joban, so there's nothing to see. Hong Ee, having finished breakfast, is now sleeping, and I'm writing this.
Just before he nodded off we were looking at a map of our route. He's spotted an onsen on the way and wants to go. I'm wondering if there's a way to get into an onsen without getting your hair wet.
Oh well, will report later when things are more interesting.
930
Wow, lots of cute girls on this train! Heaven! One girl has a pair of boots that I really want, too. Also just met another fellow JET. She came on the train for a few stops until Tsuchiura where she was catching a bus to Narita Airport to go home to Canada for a week! But school is just starting! Why now? Pretty weird.
1100
Switched onto the Chuo Line at Tokyo Station. Almost got onto the wrong train which would've taken a completely different Chuo Line to the completely wrong place. On the right train now, going all the way to Takao - one of the Western Bastions of the Tokyo Metropolis. I made that up.
Cute girl report: None.
1130
Still on Chuo - left Tokyo, but still in Tokyo-to. The metropolis stretches on forever in all directions - countless numbers of hoses, apartment blocks and the same shops gathered around each station. The Chuo cuts a dead straight line west for 15 miles (oh, I thought it was a more interesting figure than that...)
Hong Ee is still sleepy; he's worse than me! We are also getting warnings on the train's tannoy that "the train may stop suddenly to prevent an accident". I guess that means this line is a popular destination for idiots trying to commit suicide...
1150
We saw that a Special Rapid train to Takao was going to overtake our train, so we jumped onto it at the next station expecting to be whizzed away to Takao. However, it skipped just two stations before we were told "after this station, we will be stopping at all stations beyond" - basically a normal train again... But, there's a very, very cute girl sat beside me playing a DS :D
1217
Changing at Takao. Still on the Chuo Line but now we're on a rickety old train which will take us out of Tokyo-to and into the mountains of Yamanashi-ken. Okay, it's not falling apart, this train, but it's not the state of the art train we just got off. There's also more climbers and holiday-makers now - only just out of Takao we're faced with the 599-metre high Takao-san (not 5990 metres high like I read at first) and burrowing into a tunnel beneath it.
Before we hit that, the old woman sat across from us in our box decides to shuffle up closer to the window. Fine. But then she wants to pull the blind down on the window so that it doesn't glare her while she's reading. Why move out of the aisle where there's shadow, stupid *****?!
1245
We moved to a different seat - one without self-contradicting women. The landscape is wonderful - deep valleys and tall, tree-covered mountains, and lots and lots of tunnels. Japanese mountains are so sharp and deeply-cutted that scenes flash by in a moment. Often a tunnel will open out to a bridge over a gorge and return into a tunnel again. The sudden view out of the gorge is always amazing, but impossible to capture.
Now, some mountains are covered in cloud, we are that high up!
Sometimes Hong Ee really confuses me with his sudden decisions. We've stopped at a station for a short time and suddenly jumps up saying, "Let's buy onigiri!" (rice balls) He sounds so excited I assume it's some special onigiri only available in this town. But no. It's just a platform kiosk.
1335
Passed through a very long tunnel and came out into a huge valley with acres of grapes being grown. No rice fields to be seen, just grapes growing on wire grids making the whole land look like its a metre higher. There's also rows and rows of small trees (note: which I now think are peaches). I wonder why they grow them in hilly, upland areas...
Hong Ee has reminded me of the onsen a few stops away - I'm still thinking about my hair.
Spotted Mt Fuji! I think. The problem is, from this side, there is a large range of peaks in front of it, so I only managed to spot the very peak of it because I knew which way to look from my maps.
1445
Skipped the onsen for later and went straight on to Kofu. It's the capital of Yamanashi prefecture so it's a big city, but just 3 minutes walk from the station is the ruins of Kofu Castle, or Maizuro-jo. What is left is rather well preserved and there are a couple of reconstructed towers housing exhibit, as well as authentic looking buildings which turn out to house toilets. Bizarrely, in the centre of the ruins, on the highest mound, stands an obelisk! So weird. Did Tokugawa have a trade link with ancient Egypt (despite the 2000-year gap)?
Now we're off for a walk around Kofu's temples with the sun beating down upon us. No rest for the wicked...
After that, through sore feet from so much walking, and through receiving some unsettling news/advice, I forgot to update my journal. So here's how the rest of my trip went:
We took the "scenic" route up the the north end of Kofu and to its biggest shrines. It wasn't so scenic but did take us to a shrine and the grave of the shogun of the area or someone important like that, and finally to the Kodu's big shrine which I never actually caught the name of. It was a busy little place, with tourists, mikos (shrine maidens) and a menagerie of animals including large koi carp, swans, turtles, chickens and Hello Kitty's. We prayed like we should, and visited a small exhibit of old samurai armor and other relics from the days when the place used to be a castle). I also bought a little charm with a chinese-year rat on (note this is a Shinto shrine...) to go with my Aquarius charm that I bought in Kyoto.
We tried the grape ice cream (there's lots of grapes around as I pointed out before) and mochi ice cream (mochi is pounded rice cakes, so imagine that taste...)
We walked back to the station and on to our hotel, where Hong Ee rushed us into the hotel's 10th floor onsen, much to my annoyance. After we bathed he informed me the reason for his rashness was due to my feet stinking like vile sulphurous eggs (I may have paraphrased that).
Later, we went out to eat the local speciality, houtou noodles, which where the best noodles I've eaten in Japan, for sure, second only to the seafood ramen I ate in Sapporo. And for dessert we sampled, from a tiny postage stamp of a shop, a strange squishy little black and green ball of sweetness which we have never been able to identify. We skipped onto a train next and returned to the onsen town a few stops away, but upon realizing how far away the interesting stuff was from the station, we returned to Kofu and our hotel and took another dip in the onsen.
We awoke casually, and made yet another trip to the onsen before catching a train south on the quaint single-track Minobu Line down to the town of Fuji, which nestles between the south side of Mt Fuji and the Pacific Ocean. The trip took 3 tiresome hours during which the thrill of clinging to the edge of a beautiful steep valley eventually became dull. But before it reached Fuji city the line swung around and out of the valley to give a fantastic view of... clouds. None in the sky. just a blanket covering the whole of Mt Fuji expect for it's lowest foothills.
As a little boy behind us said to his mum, "ダメよ" ('no good').
Let's play, Spot The Mountain
We changed trains immediately at Fuji, ran along the Tokkaido Line towards Tokyo, but jumped off at Numazu, grabbing a bentou box and eating on a train to Gotemba and hoping we'd find something interesting there. There wasn't - Gotemba is nothing more than a gateway for those heading to Mt Fuji and it's surrounds. Disappointed and still unable to see Fuji under it's cover, we got on the next train, back to the Tokkaido Line. But instead of returning to Tokyo, we diverted on some other line (not my choice, I was ready to go home already, had been for hours) and found yet more nothing-of-interest. Back on the Chuo Line, we returned to Tokyo and then on back home. At last.