Sons of Loki

The weekend before last – christ, the weekend before last! – Jade and I took a trip out to Hakone, one of my favourite little destinations easily reached from Tokyo.

I’d been ill most of the week before, and I prayed it wouldn’t spread into the next week, my final week in Japan. For some reason we went out on Friday night and slept outside the Nomura building and then, when a guard moved us on, outside Shinjuku Keio station waiting for the last train (always a fun experience), so we only got to Hakone at 4pm-ish, leaving no time for sightseeing. Still, we had a wander about Hakone in the beautiful late afternoon/early evening.

Down by the river we joined a few other sightseeings in dipping our feet in the water and watching fish flutter past. It was a very peaceful scene.

Back to the ever-excellent Fuji-Hakone Guesthouse where I met up with Yuuka, one of the staff who I knew from last time. I guess I’m sort of getting to be a regular there now, this being my fourth time back there.

Down to the Susuki Fields, just up the road, where they filmed a few scenes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. (I kid, but this particular field was the inspiration for the place where Kensuke and Shinji camp out in an early episode.)

Then ramen and gyoza at China House, this reasonably-priced restaurant just down the road, and back to the guesthouse for those unsurpassable Hakone hot spring onsen. The heat! The calm! The aroma of the volcanic waters! I realised it would be the last time I visited an onsen for a long time.

After a great night’s sleep on the guesthouse’s futons, Jade and I had breakfast, said our goodbyes to Yuuka and the staff (promising to come back when we were able), and set off for a day in beautiful Hakone.

I wanted to find the point in that episode of Evangelion where Misato and Shinji look out from the heights of Mt Kintoki, but the closest the bus got us was a golf course, and in the heat of the day I didn’t really feel like going for a hike.


So we got the bus back to Togendai, boat across the lake to Moto-Hakone. All very familiar, but still fun. Seeing as it was summer and I wasn’t on my own, it seemed like I finally had the chance to do something I always enjoy doing: get a boat.

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”


It was fun, though a pedalo can’t exactly hit a great speed, and there were a few hairy moments where we got caught up in the wake of one of the big tourist boats and wobbled precariously with several hundred pounds worth of camera equipment around our necks. Nevertheless, somehow we survived and got back to dry land, heading up to the lakeside torii and the nearby shrine.



Then the boat back across Ashinoko up to Togendai, at the north end of the lake.

君が代は
千代に八千代に
さざれ石の
いわおとなりて
こけの生すまで

At Owakudani, we bought the famous black eggs that add five years to your life, and I scoffled a few down, having eaten enough there to give me a few hundred years of extra living (if the cholesterol doesn’t get me first). Fuji was invisible, regrettably.

I bought a folding screen of the cover of Pinkerton Hiroshige’s Night Snow at Kambara. As we went to get the ropeway back down to Gora, the tannoy thanked us for our continued patronage. And that’s when I realised: four times, I’ve been there. Hakone’s not the prettiest place in the world, but somehow it just feels right. It’s far enough from Tokyo to be out of the smog and the bustle, but close enough to be convenient; there’s always something different each time you go, whether it’s ice and rain or sun and clear skies. I really like it there. I hope to head back there soon enough.

Well, I’ll say this for capsule hotel beds; when you wake up, you don’t want to go back to sleep. Either this means that they do a great job of refreshing and rejuvenating you with a good night’s sleep, or that they’re not exactly the height of luxury. The truth’s probably somewhere in between. Anyway, it’s a clever design. When you have to wake up for that 9am meeting, you don’t want to be distracted by a big, comfortable bed.

Yesterday we toured Hakone properly. It was still a little chilly, and a thick, thick fog descended on Owakudani and made the ropeway ride up to the top of the mountain an extraordinarily surreal experience of floating without motion inside a cable car surrounded by a perfectly white sphere thirty metres across:

like that episode of Evangelion where Shinji winds up in the empty void inside the Dirac sea and has a mental breakdown where he encounters the spirit of his dead mother which now inhabits the freakish artificial human fighting machine Evangelion (and who unbeknownst to him was cloned as his fellow Evangelion pilot Rei in a bid to accelerate the final evolution of manki- oh I’m getting carried away with myself).

Speaking of Evangelion, I got the coolest, nerdiest thing ever. I saw they had this map up in the guesthouse, and I asked the receptionist Yuuka if they were available, and after filling out a little form I got my hands on one. (She said they were pretty limited edition; only four places in Japan distributed them.) It’s a map of Hakone collated with the various events of Evangelion, from when Misato meets Shinji at Hakone-Yumoto station to the place where they shoot the big angry diamond thingy in episode three(?). And the pampas grass field I wandered through on my first visit to Hakone and thought “hey, this is just like the field Kensuke plays in in episode four!” turns out to be the actual filming location! Or, er, inspiration for the animators.

So we saw Hakone, went to get our luggage back from the hotel, said our final farewells and caught the bus to Odawara before getting a HIKARI shinkansen to Osaka. Oh, man, the shinkansen. When the first Nozomi superexpress shinkansen burst past with a roar, I nearly shed a tear from sheer … train awesomeness.

And then we got to ride it! Scenery flashed past in the night. I bought a beer. A small child looked at me and I smiled and he smiled. We were both thinking “THIS TRAIN IS SO COOL”. (I have a new admiration for Japanese youngsters after reading Yotsuba&. I want to ruffle their hair and call them ojouchan or obocchan and buy them an ice cream.)

The first thing you notice in Osaka – and it’s seriously jarring for a while – is that people stand on the right on escalators! Also, they’re just so much more happier. They stand in groups on the subway, chatting and laughing and looking happy to be alive, whereas in Tokyo everybody just looks like they want to die. Osaka does indeed have a different feel about it; more leisurely, a little grubbier, but a little happier. The girls aren’t prettier, but they’re more attractive, if you get me.

We found a little izakaya and my gosh, it was the best I’ve ever been to. Lush yakisoba, delicious omerice, and gigantic tankards of Asahi.

Katie and Chris are staying in a proper nice hotel called the Brighton, which is all dark woods and glossy floors and polite staff. I’m in the Capsule Hotel Asahiplaza, which is all 70s carpets and PVC mouldings.

Now I’ve never been to a proper capsule hotel before. I stayed in one in Kyoto in 2007 (last option) but it wasn’t really a proper capsule hotel; more a regular hotel with capsules instead of beds. (For example, I had an entire sizable hotel room, which just happened to have two capsules instead of a proper bed.) Consequently, I kind of screwed up when I got here, the Capsule Hotel Asahiplaza. It wasn’t too hard to find, a 10 minute walk from Shinsaibashi (think I’ve got the hang of Osaka’s subway system which is, in the end, just the same as any other subway system) and I seem to be living in Osaka’s party district, which is exciting. I checked in (I was a little worried about being late but hey, it’s a capsule hotel) and went straight up to my “room”, which was my first mistake. The capsule is entirely for eating, sleeping, and maybe watching a little TV. A proper straight-up capsule, too; the second floor is laid out like the cryogenic freezing hold in some futuristic SF starliner, the walls painted with things like “SECTION C 200-220″ in massive letters, each chamber arranged with two double-decker rows of capsules. You go in. You switch the light on. You sleep.

But I brought all my stuff up there, and then realised that capsules don’t lock, so I went downstairs and found the locker room, which should have been my first port of call. Anyway, I dumped my stuff in the locker and changed into the brown pyjamas which give this place wonderfully cultish overtones, and then headed for a walk around. (I never feel comfortable in a place, especially not a hotel, unless I’ve explored every nook and cranny for interesting things.)

It’s kind of like a miniature version of my beloved Dragon Hill Spa jjimjilbang in Seoul, or perhaps an alternative version of a manga café for more sensible people. There’s lounge chairs, and TVs, and arcade games, and mah-jong; vending machines and a tiny canteen; and a sizable sentou bath area with a hot and cold pool, a jacuzzi, and a 92C sauna (phew!). I don’t think there’s internet (must investigate further) but you can charge your phone and stuff downstairs, for 100 yen. The place is populated by a) salarymans, who can be found in the locker room putting on white shirts and meticulously applying hair tonic and b) a couple of noisy foreigners like myself.

So I got a decent night’s sleep and checked out (I don’t think you can leave your bags there or anything) and went back to the Brighton to start our first proper day exploring Osaka.

We visited the castle, the most popular tourist attraction in Japan (possibly because there’s nothing else to see in Osaka, as the guidebook jests). It was pretty cool, set in a big park with lots of tourists, Osaka’s famous takoyaki, and some pretty sakura. I met a Korean couple and the man, after I impressed him with an “anyeong haseyo!”, turned out to have gone to Chung-Ang University, my summer school alumni! Small world. Also, a bunch of people looking remarkably like the Fleet Foxes walked past.

After that I was thinking about buying a new backpack, so I tried to find a branch of Don Kihote, which led us to the Umeda Sky Building. (On the way one of Osaka’s 1.6 million traffic policemen guided us with a “kocchi! kocchi!” and I replied with a stumbled “kocchi? hai, hai” which warranted a “nihongo jozu!“. People are definitely friendlier.

The Don Kihote turned out to be a cafe of the same name, so we went back to the station area and I got a very nice rucksack for 1,600 and then a plate of curry from a nearby curry house. And the owner was so friendly! People are nice here. Later, we wandered about south of the station, and I had a round of Guitar Freaks at an arcade, steadfastedly ignoring the bemania gods on Beatmania IIDX and the newest DrumMania. (ughh I really want to get DrumMania. I should have snapped it up when I saw it in that weird charity shop in Kichijoji that I will never ever find again)


After that, there wasn’t much left to do, so we headed back to the Brighton so I could use the internet and charge my various mobile devices. Now I have a 30 minute walk back to my coffin in the Asahiplaza, which I wouldn’t be looking forward to if not for the hot bath. Ahh, keep your dark woods and marble floors, I’ve got a jacuzzi.

…which is the only Beatles track to feature Yoko Ono on vocals, incidentally.

I’m a completionist at heart. Or something like that. I never like to leave anything out, and I always fear I’m gonna forget interesting stuff, and I have to blog obsessionally lest a part of my life go unrecorded. So here’s basically what’s happened the last couple days:

• Visited scenic Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi Park for the first time and had a look at all the prayers written on the wooden tablets. Most of them wished for providence in family health, for fame(!), and for success in job hunting (and there’s a good rundown of the basic Japanese ambitions), except for one nasty one in English which spoke glowingly of Jesus’s coming wrath and destruction of the unbelievers. (Ugh.)



• And Meiji Shrine provides easy access to weird and wonderful Harajuku, which continues to be unpredictable. We stumbled across a massive St Patrick’s Day parade, which was a confusing moment of green and Guinness in the midst of downtown Tokyo, but probably the closest we’ll ever get to a Gaikokujin Festival.



• On the road to Shibuya we stopped off in Design Tshirts Store graniph, which makes the kind of t-shirts I find irresistible (except for the price tag); plain colours, Helvetica font, bold slogans, very po-mo. (Or plain modernist. I don’t know.) And the documentary Helvetica on DVD.

And rather wonderfully (in a post-modern modernist in-joke) a t-shirt with just the word ‘Helvetica’ rendered in Helvetica.
We also saw a cat cafe, a particular kind of drinking establishment unique to Japan where one drinks coffee and pets cats. I was missing cats, seeing as all the cats in Japan run away when you approach them.


• After that we went for delicious MEAT at a BBQ joint in Shibuya and had horse sashima (mmm, taboo meats). After chatting to a drunk guy about my weird-ass 魔手・蛇乱道 hoodie and eating old-timey cabbage in awesome Showa-period theme bar Hanbey
  we returned to our abodes.
  
• The next day we went down to Kamakura, a nice little beach resort/temple place I’ve written about previously. We visited the pigeon temple (fulla pigeons, dontcha know) and stumbled across a beautiful little coffee shop, Thomnecogo, in the middle of a residential area with high-class jazz and freshly ground coffee (that I might give a write-up, me being such an internationally renowned journo now).
  
  
  
  
• Next, Odaiba on the Yurikamome monorail (cool as ever) and back on the plain old JR line to Shinjuku.
  
  
• Yesterday we went to Takao, the mountain that marks the end of the massive 35 million people Chiba-Tokyo-Yokohama (千東横?) sprawl. It’s a nice little day trip from Tokyo, a bit of a hike in the autumn air.
  
  
  
  
  
• And today we have come to Hakone, which is my third time here. No coin lockers at the station, so we came straight to the Fuji-Hakone Guesthouse where I chatted in Japanese to the staff about having come in January and name-dropping my famous friend, Ella May Blake, who’d just stayed a week or two ago. Then a bus to Gora, where we ate in an out of the way restaurant; this guy started chatting to us in that way old Japanese guys do, but he was a real laugh, a true ojiisan, and it was great to practice my Japanese with him. He made me promise to come back before I leave, and I really will.I’m getting so much practice guiding these guys around! If only to show off, I seem to be getting in more conversations and the fact is I’m fine in most any conversation. And it’s so much fun, such a good feeling to successfully have a chat with a complete stranger and understand and be understood. If there’s anything I want to keep studying for, it’s stuff like this.

  Anyway, by the time we’d finished it was raining. The obaachan gave us some little tea cups as a present (so kind!) and an umbrella, and we hurried out of that little wonderful den of hospitality into the rain and got the cable car and ropeway up to Owakudani, which today was a pretty close approximation to hell: rain, ice, gales, smoke, and sulphur. I’d never come the reverse route on the ropeway from Gora before, and so it’s quite a surprise when you crest a hill and come out over … absolutely nothing, just a distant quarry below you, the cablecar swaying violently in the wind and rain pelting the windows. These photos do not do it justice.
  
  
  Anyway, there was no point freezing our asses off there, so we went inside and I failed terribly at the gruelling Kagekiyo

(truly the “Through the Fire and Flames” of Taiko no Tatsujin and drank some milk tea (fun fact: first time I ever drank milk tea was Owakudani, 2007) and then we sensibly went back down to Togendai and arrived back at the hotel after shopping at Lawson (which had a poster up detailing all the appearances of Hakone in Neon Genesis Evangelion, from the ropeway to gorgeous Tokyo-3 (compared to a image of the real-life area as it is) and even Hakone-Yumoto station (where Misato comes to find Shinji in episode four(?) – I think if you told my 14-year old self as he watched his prized Evangelion VHS second volume (ordered from MCV, back in the day) with that scene that one day he would pass through that very station, he wouldn’t have believed you) It’s weird how Evangelion has ballooned over the last couple of years from a landmark/slightly niche/incredibly deep and philosophical/deeply twisted and dark anime series made by a crazed auteur coming off four years of clinical depression into a catch-all media franchise, from pachinko to sexy pin-ups to tourist marketing boards, but that’s commericalism for you.).

• Anyway, that was a long digression. Tomorrow, Osaka beckons on the shinkansen. Ah, my beloved New Trunk Line. Exciting times.

On my second day in Hakone, I woke up in my room in the ryokan at 7:45am and had a cup of green tea and a short soak in the indoor bath before it was time to go. I left my key on the reception desk and thanked the staff before heading out into the the car park, which was frozen with ice, glittering like jewels scattered across the tarmac.

I went to the nearby Lawson, and photocopied my passport. I’d told Rob I’d meet him later that day and fill out the forms for our house next year, so I needed a photocopy to send off. I bought some Pocky and a sandwich, as well as a can of coffee.

I was the only passenger on the bus to Togendai. When I reached the cable car terminal, I asked one of the station staff when the service started. He said 9:15am, so I had some time to kill. I wandered down to the lakeside. It was quiet there, the gentle winds from Ashinoko rippling across the hulls of upturned boats. They looked like the discarded shells of cuttlefish, abandoned on the shore.

Owakudani was much the same as it had been the day before, though the coating of snow and ice was a little thicker, like day-old stubble on the mountain’s face.

I took the funicular back down to Gora and then a train to Hakone-Yumoto station. On the way, I read a few pages of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. I read it back in 2008, when I was working at RBS and the breaks gave me time to read every day.

On the train from Hakone back to Shinjuku, I listened to “Kaze wo Atsumete” by Happy End. It seemed to fit the mood. A guy with messy hair tapped away on his notebook, while along the carriage a cute girl did her make-up. The clouds filtered grey midday sunlight down to the plains of Kanto, reflecting off concrete shacks and distant, tree-covered mountains.

On impulse, rather than taking the train all the way to Shinjuku and returning home on the Keio Line, I decided to get off in a place called Shimokitazawa, where I could change to the Keio Inokashira Line and get home via Meidaimae.

I took a walk about the streets of Shimokitazawa, past clothing-packed discount stores and boutiques. The sun was piercing through the clouds, and the place was crowded with shoppers. It was pleasant to walk about, and reminded me of a quieter Shibuya, or even Leeds.

I felt like Watanabe, from Norwegian Wood. I decided I liked his character; quiet and unassuming, unfazed by life whether he was spending weeks in his room doing nothing but studying or being asked out for drinks on a Friday night by Midori. Watanabe was happy in the simple pleasures of life, like bumbling about Tokyo in jazz cafes reading literature, or gardening on the patch behind his house. It seemed like a good way to live.

At a branch of Freshness Burger, I bought a gourmet cheeseburger and onion rings and ate them in the corner. Behind me, a young-looking guy in pink thick-rimmed glasses spoke of American politics in a Californian accent. He sounded like someone out of a Richard Linklater film, talking about Bush and Gore and the Supreme Court and what to do about China. I finished my burger and caught the train to Tobitakyu and home.

Hakone is a pleasant little weekend out of Tokyo; a chance to get back to nature, soak in an onsen, feel the cool, clean air customary to places that aren’t the Big Toke.

I went there back in 2007, and it’s a cheap enough little excursion that I decided to do it all over again, even the same onsen I stayed at (and thoroughly enjoyed). Really could have done with it a few weeks ago during winter break, but I just didn’t have the money.

But I got the tickets yesterday and booked the room and today boarded the smart Romance Car Limited Express and reclined in my smart chair with a view of the beautiful Odakyu line from my window. (Okay, less than beautiful in the suburbs.)

It’s kinda sweet how all the Tokyo private lines are the same except for little differences, like how Keio has Hello Kitty on its “the doors will remove your fingers” warning signs and Odakyu has a tanuki. (Obviously my train, being the ROMANCE CAR, didn’t have such frivolities.) Ah, how pleasant to watch the sardines packed into the regular express trapped in the station as we roll past without stopping. (If I had Microsoft Train Simulator I could drive this train virtually! but perhaps best if not)

At Hakone-Yumoto I leisurely sauntered out into the chilly winter air and caught a bus down to Moto-Hakone.

I was going to get the fake pirate ship straight across Lake Ashi, but I was wary of going through everything too quickly (it had just gone 12) so I strolled down to the floating tori by the Hakone shrine, where I hadn’t gone last time. Along the way, I noticed icicles had formed on the chains by the water. Chilling.

Someone’s dad said “Samui!” (“Cold!”) to me, possibly unintentionally, but I replied with an earnest “Sou, ne.” The shrine was pretty, and peaceful, and I threw my coins in the little box and rang the bell. Then back to the boat and across the lake. I wrapped my hood around my head to try to stave off the chill in the air.

At Togendai I disembarked, but I wasn’t quite ready to go straight to the cable car into the mountains, so I flipped through my little coupon book I’d got from the guy at the Odakyu service counter in Shinjuku (how very distant that feels now) and found a nearby sento hot spring for 600 yen. Bargain.
(In the Togendai tourist information booth they had a poster of Rei and Shinji from Evangelion looking smart with the words  “yokoso Togendai e” (“welcome to Togendai”) which threw me a little until I remembered that in about five years’ time Togendai is scheduled to become Tokyo-3, according to the series’ chronology, and is thus the setting for much of the action in Evangelion. Quite a cute little thing to have up in the window.)

The hot spring was in a nearby hotel called the Lake Hotel, and as I crossed an empty car park with no one else in sight towards this building that bore more than a slight resemblance to a nursing home, I felt something I haven’t felt since the last time I was in Japan; that heady joy of not knowing what you’re doing, where you’re going, if there’s anyone here who you can communicate with, if there’s anyone here at all, if you’re meant to be here cus I don’t see anyone else uh shit help kind of feeling. It was nostalgia-inducing.

The bath was open and it was pleasant enough. Shared it with a couple other Japanese guys who didn’t seem to mind me. There was a nice view of a tiny garden outside with a bird fluttering about, which was nice too. I soaked awhile, then dried and weighed myself (I apparently lost a kilo in sweat since this morning).

Then back for the old cable car up to old Owakudani, land of fire and ice.

And it really was; I’d already seen patches of snow on the way up, and in the car up we had not only an impressive vista of Fuji-san (I know the “san” in Fuji-san means “mountain”, not the honorific title as in Daniel-san, but it amuses me to think of an actual Mr Fuji) but also of snow and boiling clouds of sulphurous gases erupting from the volcanic vents. (I’m sure Japanese and British people have a kinship because we both love to talk about the obvious. The two women in my car noticed some snow on the ground. “Yuki ga futtandesu ne.” “(Snow has fallen, hasn’t it.”) “Sou da ne.” (“Yup.”)

Fuji-san was beautiful as always:

Anyway, on the ground in Owakudani there was the beautiful contradiction of icy boulders and bubbling 80 C pools of clay-dirtied water. I grabbed another pack of the famed black eggs of Hakone (they add five years to your life, so with the ones I ate last time I must be a centurion at least by now).

Snow began to fall. The sun began to tumble down from the sky. Fuji wrapped up warm, in a blanket of clouds. A voice on the loudspeaker yelled about the last cable car being in 15 minutes, so I hurried to go.

I got on what I thought was the right bus and happily ended up back at the Fuji Hakone Onsen, the place I stayed at in 2007. The kind woman showed me round the place, and by the time she’d got halfway I hadn’t the heart to tell her I’d done it all before and I knew here everything was, so I just nodded.

So I’m back in what I think is even the same room, just filled up on ramen at the local Chinese place (it’s weird eating alone in a strange town), pretty pooped. Jus’ wanna unwiiind in a hot bath or two. (I just installed the new Picasa and it has face detection, which is awesome, except when it picks up on people you don’t know. I have a gallery of the grinning faces of all the complete strangers who have ever been in the background of my photos. All unique. All nameless. Who are these people? Why were they there, passing as I happened to take a photo? It’s far out.)