NOV - JAPAN (pt 3)

Day 6 – Wednesday

It’s the Happiest Place on Earth or so says Walt Disney. Mark also agrees. He’s been a fanatic for Disneyland since before I knew him and we had to go to the original Disneyland on our honeymoon, so we couldn’t pass by Tokyo Disney, just for the craziness factor. Having gone to LA Disney twice, Futuroscope (Western France) once and now Tokyo Disney, I’d have to say it’s amazing how many people they had on a random mid-week day in autumn. We had spectacular weather till about 4.30pm when the sun started to go down and get cool. Disneyland here is open until about 10.30pm at night, so we didn’t arrive until 1pm as Mark wanted to see some of the parades which happened at 4pm and 7.45pm. I had to go before the 8.30pm fireworks as I was freezing by then and exhausted.

The Japanese sure love to shop and they are a sucker for crazy toys even for teenagers and adults, which in Australia or America would NEVER wear these things. We saw 20 yr old boys with extremely cool / put together outfits, wearing soft fabric hats with tigger or Donald duck on their heads! Nearly every girl in the place either had a hat (2400 yen) or a headband with ears or something on it. They also had this super-expensive popcorn in a plastic tub with a strap. Normal popcorn cost 260 yen but in the tub/strap (1100 yen) and I saw some parents buying one each for their 3 kids! That’s $33 AUD on popcorn.

We went on most of the rides we wanted to except for Splash Mountain which was closed and a few others. Disneyland has introduced a Fast Pass which is a great idea. For rides like Space Mountain and others which are super popular, you can place your Disney Passport into a time slot and get a return time at which time you can go straight to the top of the line. When we got ours for Space Mountain at 1.40pm, we had to wait until 3.35pm to use it! The program says that you can only have 1 Fast Pass valid at any one time, so when we tried for Buzz Lightyear at about 4pm, the earliest we could get was 8.20pm, needless to say, we didn’t hang around for that one.

After a massive walk from the JR line Tokyo station to the subway line, we eventually got home around 10pm.

Day 5 – Tuesday

Today we weren’t really sure what was the plan but knew we had to go to Ginza as everyone raves about it. We took the train there and whilst we found a few interesting places in the backstreets, we were either there at the wrong time (i.e. day vs night) or at the wrong part of Ginza as we didn’t think it was ‘all that’. Quite by chance we found the Shiseido Headquarters which runs several galleries and other non-cosmetics businesses. They had a dual feature about Women (and empowerment we assume) and Cinema in Japan. We saw a 30-mins Japanese film about 2 girls (maybe 15yrs old) visiting Ginza for the first time and obviously happening upon either an ex-Geisha or a famous lady of some sort who was about 30 yrs old. They discreetly followed her to a geisha fabric supply shop, an haute couture fashion shop and several other destinations around town. However, even though they were in awe of her, they couldn’t approach her. They still had a fabulous day taking lots of happy-snaps.

From Ginza we moved onto Electric Town which is a few more stops on the subway line. Again, not bad and we found several massive Comic book and Anime shops as well as the Tokyo Anime Centre which has only just recently opened. One of the Anime shops had about 4 floors of Japanese Porn comic books – lots of white panties on the covers. Even though we couldn’t understand the content, it certainly looked raunchy from the pictures!

7 plus floors of comic book porn (and there's two buildings of it!)

We had planned to meet up with Phil & Frank from the bus trip yesterday but due to communication breakdown and tiredness, it didn’t happen. Instead Mark and I found a great BBQ place (Kabto) in Ebisu and had some of the best meat we’ve had on the trip. It was a serious private dining, BBQ it yourself on the charcoal grill. I even managed to order some veggies to balance out the meat content. Mark did eat 3 slices of sweet potato and 2 slices of pumpkin. We got back about 10.30pm to find out my sister has had her second child, a girl, about 1 week late. Fingers crossed for the next few days that everything goes alright. At least Mum is there to help out with my other niece.

Day 4 – Monday

Today was the only planned event for the week – a JTB tour organized from Melbourne. It was an all-day affair from Tokyo by bus to Mt Fuji and then onto Hakone (Lake Asi) and finally back to Tokyo via Shinkensen (Bullet train). After waking up early, we met at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel which seemed like international businessman heaven and then took a bus to Mt Fuji (about 2 hrs away including local traffic). From there we got extremely lucky as although it was only 5 degrees there, we had blue skies and sunny patches. At one point the breeze even stopped for a few mins. We stayed there admiring the magnificent view for about 40-mins and naturally taking plenty of snaps. Mt Fuji is 3776m above sea level. We managed to drive up to the 5^th station at 2400m above sea level, from there it’s a 5-7 hr walk to the summit. Apparently in July/August 300,000 people climb to the top!

On the trip we had a real mixed bag of tour members, from a Danish CEO of a shipping company and his son, to a couple of graphic designers from Milwaukee to a family from Sydney, some Spanish, French and Malaysians. We had a really cool Japanese guide who had a set of jokes that he said completely deadpan and very amusing, especially his marriage and mother-in-law ones.

Within the next 3-4 weeks, we would not have been able to travel this high with the bus, probably only 1200m above sea level, so we really lucked out. We also got to see some amazing colours on the trees as we’re getting the first flush of autumn. Hakone is on the other side of the Mt Fuji mountain range and the weather was completely different, fog, cold and overcast. We drove for 40-mins to Lake Asi to take a very chilly 15-mins boat ride and then travel the extremely crowded Cable Car above the cloud/ fog line. It made the 40-mins pause at the top both freezing and a waste of time. However, because the only people there were on organized tours like ours, we couldn’t go any faster. So I had a really awful coffee from a vending machine and tried to keep warm before we could cable car back down. It’s meant to be fantastic to look back at Mt Fuji from the other side, but we’ll have to trust the postcards in the shop.

Eventually we got to Odewara station and then took a Bullet train back to Tokyo (only 30-mins). It was absolutely out of this world. Whilst waiting 10-mins for our train to come, Mark managed to video a couple of trains going in the other direction and it went lightning fast. Bullet trains are capable of travel up to 300km/h but due to noise pollution, only travel at a maximum of 270 km/h although in some routes as slow as 180 km/h based on curves in the path or stops at various stations. I must say it was very smooth – you don’t feel sick or jerky like something that’s moving at a very rapid pace.

Afterwards we went from the Tokyo Station (JR line) to the metro and back home. We found a ‘cook your own’ Mongolian BBQ place with no-one else in it. We ended up having a variety of lamb and mutton cuts with sesame oil sauce, onions and alfalfa sprouts. It sounds weird but was actually really nice and only $40 including a beer.

We ate in the place advertised far right on level 1F

Japan is very reasonably priced and if anything, a little cheaper than Melbourne (although we are yet to have our normal fancy or should we say expensive meal at one of the top restaurants yet).