Japan 2023: September 2023

Colin's Photos, Day 5 (September 28): Shinjuku & Kichijoji

The rest of the group went to Enoshima while I stayed "home" and did some logistics for the rest of the party. So I went solo to wander around Shinjuku and get some fancy matcha & sweets from the food court of the Takashimaya department store.

Then I went to Kichijoji, a more residential neighborhood, and wandered around Inokashira Park and got dinner from an izakaya that specialized in Italian-ish food.

There was a full moon, so many of the locals were coming out to the park at night to view the moon (tsukimi) and photograph themselves in front of it.

Colin's Photos, Day 4 (September 27): Hakone

Here's my photos from Day 4 of our trip. Destination: Hakone!

We saw Mount Fuji (first photo, upper right), a "floating torii" gate on the water, Hakone Shrine, had amasake and sweets at a 400-year-old teahouse that's been run by the same family for 16 generations, and then saw an active volcano that's still emitting gases.

To make the circuit in one day, we got to ride all of: a local train, a bullet train, two different buses, a "pirate ship", a gondola, a cable-car train, another train that goes back and forth along switchbacks, and then finally a long local train ride home. All in one day!

Colin's Photos, Day 3 (September 26): Imperial Palace & East Gardens, Shinjuku at night

Here's my photos from day 3 of our trip, including a tour of the Imperial Palace, a stroll through the palace's East Gardens, and Shinjuku's Kabukicho neighborhood at night.

Thank you, Google, for those 5 minutes of 2am panic

The actual email from Air Canada has the correct date, it was just Google trying to be helpful that was wrong. Thanks to my husband Chris for helping me figure it out.

Normally I would have viewed this as a happy accident, but I think after the 13-hour flight I would not have been up for a spontaneous Montreal adventure.

Hakone: A Multimodal Transportation Adventure (9/27)

On Wednesday, Colin, Lisa, Yuri and I went to Hakone to try to see Mt. Fuji.

First we took the subway to Shinjuku, the busiest subway station in the world at the height of morning rush hour.

Then we rode the Shinkansen to Odawara.

Then we took a bus to Hakone. (While we were getting oriented, we actually DID see Mt. Fuji over the lake.)

We walked up the road a bit to see the shrine there, and then had lunch at a tiny noodle restaurant. After lunch, we took the bus out to the Amasake Tea House, where the same family has been serving the same fermented non-alcoholic rice drink for 400 years.

Then it was time to take a boat across the lake. It was decorated kind of like a pirate ship.

On the other side of the lake we took the Hakone Ropeway up and down the mountain, and saw more of Mt. Fuji.

Once we were over the mountain, we took a cable car down the other side.

Then we took a train down more of the mountain. There were a couple of switchbacks where the train actually changed direction rather than make a turn.

One more train ride, and we were back at Odawara station. Lisa’s JR pass has been having some issues so we had to take the slow (but still perfectly adequate) train back to Tokyo. Colin and Yuri stayed in Odawara for dinner and then headed back on the Romance Car train, which is just the name of a train that goes from Tokyo to Hakone, but makes me laugh every time I come across it.

We had a lovely day in Hakone! Here is the transit map from inside the cable car, showing 4 different modalities, 6 different “lines,” and a more than 1000-meter altitude change from the top of the ropeway down to Odawara station.

Here's Colin's post on the same day, which is focused more on what we did and less on how we got there.

Slightly Wrong

September 28th, part 1

Dana, Isaac, Yuri, and I are off to Enoshima today. We arrived by monorail and got about 3 steps outside of the station before we stopped for street food. Dana even tried the local specialty shirasu on hers!

September 27th

We further splintered the party today with Colin, Dana, Lisa, and Yuri heading to Hakone; Kit heading in a whirlwind nerd tour of Tokyo; and Isaac and I spending a chill day near the AirBnB.

We took the morning off, drinking convenience store tea and eating Ginza department store baked goods, and digitally decompressing. I looked for something to do for lunch without much walking and found a nice looking tempura place a couple spots down the Chuo line in Koenji. There were a couple shrines nearby in the map, so we headed there.

Lunch was fantastic. We ate at Tensuke, a small counter restaurant only open for lunch that pride themselves on their tempura egg don. Egg yolk on rice is so good.

After lunch we wandered to the shrines I'd found on Google maps, poking into grocery stores and small shops along the way. Koenji is great for this; there are lots of little stores, particularly for vintage clothing. I finally found a Daiso in a market here and picked up a cheap mug. The Buddhist temple we visited was beautiful, covered in lush moss. And the Shinto shrine was less verdant but fun, claiming to be the only weather shrine in Japan and selling little weather dolls.