Archive for July, 2009
It seems the weather finally changed for the better. It’s a few degrees warmer than before but the rain stayed away. Kyoto is the old Japanese capital and as such has a rich history. Part of the city has a concentration of old streets and temples. We partly walked and rode a bus to Gingaku-ji the temple that is the furthest away from our hotel at the start of the philosopher’s route, a path that connects most of the ancient temples and shrines. The path ends at Sannensaka with it’s traditional small shops offering typical Japanese crafts. Through a narrow street we walked to the Yasaka Pagoda and then downhill to the Gion busstop for a ride back to Kyoto station. The daily tripmeter of the GPS showed 27 Km of which about 10 Km were by bus the rest was done walking.
Last year in Key West we had the opportunity to score a First To Find on a few caches but it seems the was something terribly wrong with them as no-one found these new caches before they were archived. This time I checked the nearby caches after visiting Byodo-in Temple in Kyoto and saw that in my 2-day old GPX file that the nearest was placed only 3 days before and had no finds yet. I expected the new cache to be found already in the previous days but to my surprise I found a blank log and a FTF tag in the small container. I signed the log, took the tag and left a travelbug I had with me from another cache. The second cache nearby was not accessible because the bridges leading to the small island were closed. Too bad, because this could have been a Second To Find.
We left the guesthouse in Futaminoura behind us but not after receiving a few gifts from the owner and his family. These people really went out of their way to make our stay as enjoyable as possible even while speaking very limited English. This is a place we will remember forever! It stopped raining when we were waiting for the train to Nagoya. 70 minutes later we transferred to the high speed Hikari to Kyoto. Even though Futaminoura is only 107 Km “as the crow flies” from Kyoto, the distance by train is 250 Km and takes 2.5 hours. We checked in into our hotel, dropped our luggage and set out to Kyoto station again for a short trip to Uji. This is the place where the famous Byodo-in Temple is located. We visited the grounds and museum and compared it with the replica of this temple we already saw in Hawaii. The original still needs some work to restore.
After breakfast we took the train to Toba. It’s just a 10 minute ride to the trainstation and a few minutes walk to Mikimoto pearl island. There’s an exhibition of the pearl trade and harvesting and a demonstration of pearl divers. We also went on a 50-minute boat tour around a few of the small islands of Toba. We took the bus back to Futimunoura and got of at Ise Azuchi-Momoyama Bunka Mura, an historical theme park depicting the era of the Samurai. On top of the hill a large donjon allows visitors to view the area. We left the park when it started to rain even harder than it already did during the day and retired to our room.
Time to leave the Mount Fuji area today. It was already warm when we left the guesthouse and set out to take the bus to Odawara. We made a reservation on the high speed Hikari train to Nagoya. This part of the train ride only takes 72 minutes and the connecting ordinary train takes 96 minutes for a total of 397 Km. The Hikari travelling at 270 Km/h the “Rapid Mie” at a mere 110 Km/h. We arrived in Futaminouri just after 1 o’clock, crossed the square in front of the train station and checked into our new guesthouse for the next two nights. The owner went out of his way to show us everything and after we settled in he offered to take us to the local aquarium even though it’s only a 1.5 km walk. The main attraction here are the “wedded rocks”, two rocks in the water joined by ropes. There is also shrine here were many Japanese come to pray. We walked back to the hotel where a little later dinner was prepared for us in a separate room. It was a typical Japanese dinner so we had to sit on the floor and eat with sticks from different little plates. After this we retired back to our room for the night.
Caching in Japan is kind of special. We try to pick up a few and move TBs and coins around when possible. Some of the caches state that coordinates are off or inaccurate but I found the ones we did mostly spot on or at least within the expected deviation. Then there is the language barrier. Some descriptions are a bit odd and seems to translated by computer. At least the descriptions are all in English, could that be an idea for caches back home? Caches don’t get found as much as we are used to and some areas are blank. Too bad that virtual caches are no longer accepted as it would be an excellent opportunity for visitors to create some action.
As for our caching, The Japanese maps I got for my Colorado 300 have proved invaluable. In places where signs are only in Japanese we still find our way around by just looking at the GPSmap.
Since yesterday evening the wind was blowing hard and in the morning it was no different. We set out to explore Lake Ashi today. We took the bus to Gora where we boarded the Hakone Tozan cable car to Sounzan. We then transferred to the ropeway to Owakudani station where a path leads to the onsen that spill steam and where the famous “black eggs” are cooked. The views from this area should be spectacular, however when we were there there were high winds and low clouds drifting in and out. One moment we had a great view and the next we could barely see 20 meters in front of us. We boarded the ropeway again for the rest of the trip to Togendai. Just outside the ropeway station we went on board of a replica pirate ship that crosses Lake Ashi to Hakone-Machi. We visited “the old checkpoint” here and in Moto-Hakone we went to the Hakone Shrine and the Peace Gate before the bus brought us to Hakone-Yumoto. A scenic trainride brings passengers to Gora from where we took the last bus back to the guesthouse.
After breakfast we were taken to Kawaguchiko station in the hotel van. We boarded the bus to Gotemba where we arrived about an hour later. We transferred to another bus to Senkyoro-mae where we checked in to a guesthouse. We still had all afternoon to spend and set out to explore the area. Unfortunately it started to rain very hard so we decided to buy the Hakone Free Pass first and take advantage of the free bus travel included in this pass to return to Gotemba for dinner. By evening we were back in the guesthouse to take advantage of the “onsen”, an outdoor hottub that gets its hot water from the vulcanic underground of the area. Because of it’s origin the water has a strong smell of sulpher.
As we woke up it was raining heavily, not good to go up Mount Fuji. As before, the rain stopped while we had breakfast and there was some sun about when we left for the station. We took the bus to fifth station at an elevation of 2300 meters. The parking lots were filled up with busses from all over Japan bringing climbers to this base camp. Although the top is only 3.4 Km away it takes 3.5 hours to walk to 3770m. When we arrived we had clouds above and below us and soon visibility was down to 20 meters. We could not see Fuji-san even though we were halfway up. We did walk up for a while but since there were no views to be seen we descended back to the bus stop for our ride back to Kawaguchiko station. As on the way up, we had sunshine on the way down and so we did have a very short peek at the top of Mount Fuji.
Back at the station we walked to the Fuji Visitor Centre. Entrance is free and they show a 10 minute film on how Mount Fuji was formed and give some information about the area. Only 1 Km away, near Fujikyu Highland amusement park, there was a geocache hidden so we went there on the way back. Since the cache was near the train station we decided to take the train back to Kawaguchiko. As we arrived there it started to rain again.
The alarm was set for 7 o’clock as we had to leave Tokyo today. Two subwaytrains took us to Shinjuku station where we had tickets waiting for the Chuo Highway Bus. 1 hour and 45 minutes later we arrived right on schedule at Kawagutchiko station near Mount Fuji. We called the hotel and a little later they came to pick us up. Once again we left our luggage in storage and set out to go on a short boattrip on the lake. Next on the list was a trip up the hill with a ropeway (cable car) so we had an overview of the city and it’s surroundings. The view to Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) was blocked by low hanging clouds. During late afternoon the clouds started to clear a little so we are getting our hopes up for tomorrow. The weatherforecast predicts strong morning thunderstorms but hopefully it will be better by noon when we will arrive at Mount Fuji’s 5′th station.
