CODY SHIMIZU

A look into my life, a journal to look back on, a blog for others to see.

I slept in this morning as I only planned to go visit the Arashiyama area, and make my way over to Hakone, after a slow start to the morning I took a train to Arashiyama where I first made my way to the bamboo forest. After talking to some people in Koyasan they told me to keep my expectations low as apparently it wasnt as instamazing as some people made it out to be, and to be honest unfortunately it was true. The path way was lined with stall straws of grass making it hard to see the actual bamboo on the other side, and it was once again full of tourists.

After I had actually planned to visit a few more temples, but after seeing all of the other temples the past two days in Kyoto, I was kind of bored of them. Yes, I know it sounds bad; but each one still is absolutely amazing and stunning in every way, but there were too many other extraordinary ones that the others just were okay? I guess? So instead I decided to go and visit a Monkey Park!! Like seriously who goes to Japan and can miss out on seeing some monkeys? Okay well maybe most, but Ive always seen picture of cute monkeys on Japanese television and I wanted to see some in person. So I headed to the Arashiyama Monkey Park, once I got there was when I found out that it was ANOTHER 45min HIKE UP THE MOUNTAIN to see monkeys. After slogging myself up the side of the mountain, it was all worth it. It was soo awesome to see them all over the place scrambling everywhere.

As a bonus right when I got there, it was feeding time, as the staff spread their food everywhere all of the monkeys came scrambling from every direction to grab a handful of food. I also got to feed the monkeys some peanuts. All over the park they had signs every where warning people to not crouch down, dont stare at them, don’t feed them outside, etc, but in all honesty the monkeys were quite friendly.

At this point it was barley noon, and with nothing else I had really planned to do, I decided I would do a quick side trip to Nagoya, this is where Toyota has its head quarters and they have multiple museums around the area. Also they have a very famous castle, the Nagoya-jo. I quickly headed back to the hostel to pick up my bags and rushed out of Kyoto. At Nagoya station I left my bags in a coin locker and headed to Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, the reason I headed here was it was the closest from Nagoya station. The museum was amazing, it was located where the orginal factory was and was very educational, showing off its first machinery as a textile machine manufacturer, and the history of transitioning into developing and manufacturing cars. The amazing thing was that since the museum was located in a factory, the building had enormous machines that used to be apart of an assembly line for manufacturing cars, and you could actually operate the machines as they demonstrated how they worked. It was INCREDIBLE, they had amazing easy to understand displays of the internal mechanism of a car from the clutch to power steering, to brakes. I spend hours in the museum! Almost too many hours, that I ran out of time to visit the castle.

So instead I headed straight back to Nagoya station, picked up my bags and headed to Hakone. By the time I got to Hakone, it was already dark outside, but thankfully google maps lead me to the Hostel. Unfortunately there were no restaurants around the Hostel I was staying in and I really didnt feel like walking 30min to a random restaurant so I headed over to the convenience store nearby and picked up some rice and pre made curry and had it in the hostel. I dont know how they do it, but it still tasted awesome.

The next day I planned to do the Hakone Round Course, where I would be travelling the Hakone area using train, cable car, rope way, boat, and bus. I was quite excited because the last time I was in Hakone, I did a part of the Hakone round course to Owakudani, where they have extremely active sulfur deposits. To start was a train ride partially up the mountain, it was incredible, the train actually does switch backs up the mountain since the turns are too tights to make on the train, even though the trains were already specially made to be shorter than usual for the tight turns, even then it still has to do switch backs.

Next was the Cable car, a short 5 min ride, up a 30 degree incline. Than to the ropeway that took me up to Owakudani, which is the main attraction of the entire loop, Owakudani has these incredibly active sulfur deposits, unfortunately when I went it was too active that they had to close off the trail that you could actually hike to get closer to the deposits. But it was all worth it when on the other side I could actually see Mt.Fuji. Not just a part of Mt. Fuji, but all the way till the top. When I was reaseaching Hakone, many sites were saying how its possible to see Mt.Fuji but it is very rare to have the weather be clear enough to see the entire mountain. I was really happy and excited as I really wanted to climb Mt.Fuji but it was impossible because it was closed with all of the snow at the top of the mountain.

Another popular thing at Owakudani was the black boiled eggs, where when they lower the eggs into the sulfur deposts to boil the eggs the shells turn black, and it is said that if you eat the black eggs you add another 7 years to your life. But the stupid thing was that since the demand was so high they only sold the eggs in sets of 5 and I really didnt need an extra 35 years on my life, so I just passed.

After I took the ropeway down to Lake Ashi where I would be taking a boat across the lake, the thing was that the boat was completely decorated to replicate a pirate ship which was cool, but in my opinion too cheesy. Anyhow after a chill boat ride it was a quick bus ride back to Hakone Yumoto Station. The bus ride was actually pretty interesting with crazy winding narrow roads pretty much downhill the whole way, it looked like it would have been pretty fun to ride on a road bike.

From the Hakone Yumoto Station I just headed straight back to Tokyo as I would be meeting one of my dads good friends who Ive met a quite a few times, from his visits to Canada. I met him in Shibuya where we went and had some incredible Tempura, like a legit high end restaurant. Everything tasted incredible, the oil that they used didnt taste bad or anything the crust was incredibly crunchy, everything was just incredible! At first when the food came out there wasnt a lot of food, so I thought that’s how it usually is but later as we were eating more fresh tempura came out. It was awesome, since you could see the chefs frying them right in front of you.