Hakuba - Day 2 - Monday

So, on the second day we decided to go on a proper hike. We started the day by walking from teh campsite to the 'Adam' Gondola lift (it's most bizzarre being in a ski resort out-of-season!), we then caught two further chair lifts and arrived at the top of the walk. The first part of the walk was very much on marked trails with ropes on either side, but still quite tough terrain, and obviuosly up hill!

The 'marked' trails culminated in a beautiful lake (you can see the wooden steps which have been put in place!) Most people turned around at this point and headed back down. We however did not! We stopped here for some lunch, and continued up the climb. From this point on, it got a bit tougher - still a marked trail, but much more 'rough' and rocky, and no ropes!

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At one point, we also came across a small snow-field, which was most bizarre, as it was still about 25 degrees!

THe kids did amazingly well, but about an hour before we reached the top, Neve decided that she was 'bored' and that it was 'really pointless' to walk up to the top of the mountain, only to get there and turn back down again. Whilst she might have had a point, we were loathed to have got so close to turn back, and either way, we still had a long walk back down! So we eventually persuaded her to continue. After many, 'surely the top must be nearly here by now' 'it's just round the next corner', we rounded a corner to find a huge hut - and the summit only a little further up (you can see this in one of the pics, but I can't figure out how to move these pics around, as Blogger have changed their system!)

Neve was delighted when we suggested that she stayed at the hut and ate the chocolate cake we'd brought with us, and watched us climb the last bit, and she sat next to all these old Japanese bids, who thought she was very 'kawai' (cute) and wathed after her for a few minutes.

So this is the view from the hut to the summit. Here, Neve also chose her badge (for every mountain, you can buy a really nice shiny silver brooch (not sure how you spell that!) - it later transpired that this was Neve's key motivation for climbing the mountain! So for every mountain we've climbed, we've bought one each for F & N.

Here's a better view of the hut. What's interesting about walking up mountains in Japan, is that most of the people are old bids (well over 60 anyway!) We've figured this is becuase the Japanese people don't take holidays (one of Ross's compnay objectives is to ensure each of his workers take a week's holiday a year!!), so all the people who have time to climb mountains are retired!

This is Ross and Felix at the Summit. We really darted up here to get back for Neve, and a group of Japanese school kids (around 15 or 16 yrs old) thought it was most amusing that Felix ran past them on the way up, then ran back on teh way down.

These are my arty pics - there were the most beautiful alpine flowers

The day was great - except for hte last bit... We knew that we were going to have to walk the last bit down the mountain, as the gondola and chair lifts stopped at 4:30 and we didn't leave the summit until 3:15. So we walked around the (now deserted) lake around 5pm, then walked down the boardwalks - it was beautiful, you can see the colour of the light in these pics

However, things started going downhill when we got to the top of the gondola lift, and went 'off-piste' to find ourselves on a windy road, with no map, and no way of knowing where we'd end up. So we backtracked (back up a very steep cow field!) to try to find a route down. At this stage it was 7pm, and beginning to get dark. We tracked down what was prbably a black run, complete with many holes, bracken, walls, and bushes in teh way, then went down several dead ends. We were starting to panic a bit, when we found one of those green runs which traverse across the slope. Eventually, at 8:30pm we arrived at the bottom, with 4 very exhausted and thirsty people. Uncle Steve's restaurant beckoned. We were very sweaty and smelly, Ross and Neve were covered in spider's webs, and I'd clearly walked into a fly swarm as I was covered in tiny black flies. As there were no washing facilities at the campsite, we all used the little loo in the restaurant to tidy ourselves up! At the end of the meal, Ross yomped back to get the car - we all slept very soundly.

Hakuba - Day 1 - Sunday

We arrived safe and sound in Hakuba, found our campsite, pitched up just before dark and got to a restaurant - the place was like a ghost town, and we shared teh restaurant with one other party. It was a Mexican restaurant, 'Uncle Steve's' and did a better imitation of 'ethnic' food than most other Japanese establishments!

On the Sunday, we decided to do a bit of exploring to see what was around. Hakuba hosted many of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic events, including the Men's Downhill skiing and the ski-jumping. We decided to go and look at the jumps - they were huge! There were some guys ski-jumping on them too (wet jumping)

In the afternoon, we drove down to Lake Aokiki, where the kids camped, and spent a lovely afternoon swimmng in the lake, diving off the little boat launching pier, and having underwater swimming competitions.

The Kids Return... and leave again!

We haven't updated this in a couple of weeks!

The kids returned from England safe and sound... and in foul moods (jetlagged, tired, and realising that their parents are neither as generous nor as lenient as their Grandparents!). They had a lovely time - camping in the New Forest with their cousins, canyoning and rock-climbing in Jersey, horseriding, riding in old cars, betting on horses, eating in lots of restaurants and drinking beer (yes Nanny Hazel - Felix did sneak!!!)

Having arrived back on the Tuesday, we spent a few days trying to chill in Tokyo, which is impossibe in this heat, and had a very stressful trip to Costco, IKEA, and Sports Depot, getting things for our holidays. This resulting in much swearing at our stupid Mrs. Navi-san Japanese satnav pile of poo, and eventually shouting at the kids who were close to killing each other.

On the Monday, we delivered the kids, with 12 others of similar ages, to Shinjuku station, where they were met by Jade from Evergreen, who escorted them the 4 hours to Hakuba, in the Japanese Alps - a ski / hiking / climbing / canoeing etc. area. They had a lovely time, swimming in the lake, canoeing, BBQing, mountain biking, hiking, camping, night-canoeing to spot glowworms... and getting bitten to shreds by the mossies, and burnt to a cinder. So, after a long week at work, we picked up two exhausted but happy children who were as brown as berries (and probably rather over-cooked - still not as bad as one child who had to get sent back a day early to see the specialist skin doctor for his burns!)

Ross took the kids out to TGI Fridays, and I had a work party just down the road. It was a welcome party for 3 new people in the deparment, and we went to an Okinawan (Islands South of Japan) restaurant where we ate strage knobly cucumbers which were bitter, but tasty, and pigs ears, which were not! (they didn't tell me what they were 'til I'd put one in my mouth - nice!). Beer was free-flowing, and the boys got rather drunk, but then, at 9pm it was all over - I was just starting! Back at home, the kids gave us lovely presents - a hiking bell (the Japanese sound like Swiss cows when they walk up mountains!), a cute squirrel, and some apple candies, and then went to bed early, rightly exhausted.

I, however, was on a mish! Whilst hanging up the clothes on the balcony, for a quick turn around in time for our holiday the next day, I spotted Mark, our Ozzy neighbour, drinking wine, so I invited him for 'a quick beer'. "He'll not come" I said to Ross. Then there was a knock at teh door - and the rest is a vague memory!! The evening ended at 4am when we thought it would be a really good idea to shave Ross's head - Mark knew what he was doing!!! When I woke up the next day and looked at Ross, I cried with laughter - he had bald bits, and long tufty bits! I did what I could to tidy it up, but with a stonking hangover, it was a somewhat compromised result!!

So we packed (a rather eclectic selection of stuff chosen with BAD hangovers) programmed Mrs Navi-san, placing great trust in her hands, and off we set, back up to Hakuba for our first holiday since we got here.

Dancing Cat

Spotted in Hakuba Souvenir Shop!

Hanabi in Tokyo Bay

We went to the firework show right in the center of Tokyo. There were thousands of people there. We watched from a huge carpark in which the organisers had laid out blue mats for everyone to sit on. You have to remove your shoes before you walked on the mats. The display was superb with 12,000 fireworks. Don't worry, I didn't count them all. Here in Japan the dispalys always quote how many fireworks they have. I think this is how they sort the 'men from the boys' in the firework world.

Attached are two videos of some of the best parts of the display and I have also added a video of how the organisers get you to go home at the end of the evening (about 2030). Unlike UK they is no possibility of staying to talk and drink beer until late. The Japanese are also expert at dispersing large crowds. They place people on every corner with loud hailers who yell instructions at the crowd, even when its really obvious where to go. The roads are all cordened off so you get herded directly to the station. Its like being a sheep!

Summer Sonic Rock Festival

A week ago, our Aussy neighbours had their baby - a third daughter called Eva Grace. In true Aussy style, Ross was invited to 'wet the baby's head', so on Friday after work headed to the 5th bar on the Roppongi pub crawl to be greeted with 4 shorts and a beer lined up on the bar. Poor Ross, didn't have much choice but to join in! 13 shorts, several beers, and one chicken dinner later, Ross managed to stagger home (on the train!). My side of the story was that I was awoken at 3am by a noise and went to investigate - Ross's keys and phone were on the table, but no Ross. So I presumed he'd gone to the little local bar with Mark, but then 30 mins later I hear him stagger about the house - he'd fallen asleep on the balcony! He was very much the worse for wear, can't remember getting home, and doesn't know why he fell asleep on the balcony! Mark was made to drink 15 shots in one bar - but did get his plaque on the wall, commemorating his new baby daughter - something to show her friends when she's older! All Ross could say when he was staggering about the house was 'they're a bunch of *^$£ing nutters!'

So, when I woke him up about 8am the following morning he was a little the worse for wear, so with plastic bag in hand, we jumped on the train to Chiba to go to the Summer Sonic Rock Festival - a smaller Fuji Rock really. We had arranged to camp, so first put the tent up - the campsite was right by the beach (not a swimming beach though, as it's right on Tokyo bay, so a bit icky) but nice to see the sea! In this first pic, you can see the Marine's baseball stadium in teh backgroud - this was the biggest stage.

Then we headed through the very well managed traffic to the venue. Essentially, the festival took place in a huge conference centre, with stages in each of three big halls, and with two food, drink and merchandise halls in between. Then there was a very large venue in the baseball stadium over the road, and a really cute beach stage, which got going late at night. There was one other stage which we didn't find!

The whole set up was a bit 'music festival in a parallel universe' to me - all the essential features of a festival were there, but it was in a conference centre! They had put a lot of effort into all the decorations etc. - each of the halls was dark, with lots of pretty lights, and flags, and strobes etc.

Here's a picture of the Mountain Stage before it all really got going.

We watched a few songs from a couple of local bands, then went to buy 'tour T-shirts' for Ross and Felix.

The first band we saw was Biffy Clyro - they were very good (and came out without shirts on, which was most shocking for the Japanese!!)

Then we went over the Sonic Stage and saw Delphic (this is around 3pm!!)

Then over to the Marine Stage (in the baseball stadium) - this was a really big venue!

Saw a little bit of Nas (American Rapper - not that great!!), then saw Nickelback, who were surprisingly good. We wathced Neve's fave song 'Rockstar' but the bloodly Blackberry wasn't working so the recording didn't work (sorry Neve!)

What was strange about the whole affair, was that probably 40% of the bands were American, and a further 40% were English - so they all spoke and sang in English - the programmes were all in English too - the Japanese didn't seem to mind though!

Here's the stadium - it was very large!


We weren't supposed to take our cameras in, but we just pretended that we hadn't understood and took it in anyway - we thought it was a silly rule that needed breaking.

This was just before Nickelback came on stage

We then watched the Offspring, wondered back to the other stages and saw Pendulum, and the Smashing Pumpkins, and caught the last few tracks of Orbital and Calvin Harris

Other acts were Jay-Z, A-Ha (!!!), Richart Ashcroft, 30 Second to Mars, and Eels - what an eclectic selection!

On day 2 (which we didn't stay for as you had to buy each day's tickets separately) was, amongst others, Stevie Wonder, Jason Derulo, Sum 41, Taylor Swift, a Tribe called Quest, Hole, Pixies, Black Rebel Motorcylce club, and deadmau5 - once again, a bizarre selection!


By the end of the evening we were starving as we'd not really eaten all day (apart from beer, which isn't very nutritious!) and we found a kebab stand, selling proper donnah kebabs with proper chilli sause - it was like manna from heaven!

Whilst we were sitting on the 'grassy chill our area' ( having obediently removed our shoes!) eating said kebabs, someone was taking a yoga lesson, which many of the Japanese found to be a good idea. We just watched and ate kebab!

Then we went back to our tent - it was only about 11pm at this point, and many caught the train home - we'd assumd that the gig would end after the trains, which is why we'd booked the camping, but actually it was lovely - the camp site was lit by hundreds of little latterns, and there were bars and food places, hammocks, and a small stage playing what sounded like the Japanese equivalent to Jack Johnson. So we wondered along the beach a bit, with a lovely cool breeze (it's still about 30 degrees at night time) and then crashed in our tent.

...We then woke up at about 7am drenched in sweat (unfortunately you don't get air-con in a tent!), so the day started rather earlier than we'd planned!!!

Hanabi (Fireworks)

July and August is Firework (hanabi) season in Japan. There are a number of very big displays that take place in Tokyo with between 12,000 and 20,000 fireworks and the displays last for 1 hour.
They take place mostly by the rivers were there is lots of open space. 10,000's turn up for each display often wearing yukata which are the lightweight summer kimono's. They all sit down with beers and picnics and watch the display.
They have some fireworks that we don't see in the UK. Keep your eye out for the smily faces in the video. This was the Adachi Fireworks dispaly and took place at Arakawa River Bottoms

Sunrise on Fuji-san

This weekend we decided it was time to experience sunrise on Mount Fuji. The Japanese refer to the mountain as Fuji-san which on first translation appears to mean Mr Fuji however san is an alternative pronouciation for the mountian Kanji, yama. I think I like Mr Fuji best!





To get to Mr Fuji we took the bus from Shinjuku station to Kawaguchi-ko-guchi go-gome which is the fifth station. If we were really hardened walkers we'd have started at the very bottom but this makes it a two day walk which didn't fit with our plans. The bus leaves Shinjuku at 1930 and delivers you to the start of the walk at 2200. We had a bit of a stressful time finding the bus. Shinjuku bus station is large and the booking was made by one of my team at work so we just had a print out of the booking which was mostly in Japanese. After a lot of asking and following of walker looking types we found our way the correct bus stop (no 26 for future reference) and waited whilst 3 buses were loaded with intrepid walkers.






This is both of us getting ready at the start. It was 30 degrees C when we left Tokyo but the 5th station is at 2300m so the temperture was already much lower when we arrived. 1st step was therefore to put more clothes on! We also needed torches for the walk. We weren't very organised so we had Felix's toy headtorch, pink pig rechargeable torch from Neve and a torch that cost 100 JPY from the supermarket. Could we see where we were going? No. Not a problem as I will explain shortly.











Part way up the walk I remembered that I have start of the art bike lamps that can be headmounted so we could have blazed a trial of daylight up the climb.





When we left we figured that our three buses might be the only ones arriving at the 5th Station. How wrong. The road up to the 5th stattion was lined with parked cars and a coach park that must have contained 25-30 coaches. I'd put the estimate of people climbing the mountain this night as 10,000. This is after all peak climbing season, if you avoid July and August I think you can have the mountain to yourself. If you looked up or down the mountain you could see torch lights as far as the eye could see. After about 5 mins I turned my torch off and relied upon the fancy torches of the people that constantly surrounded us on the walk. One thing you soon learn about the Japanes is that if they take up a hobby they will purchase all the correct gear. We were soon surrounded by people dripping in new North Face gear.



Rather arty picture showing snake of lights coming up the path below us. The blue streak at the bottom was a fellow with flashing traffic directing batton strapped to his rucksack. I think he walked all the way up completely un aware that he was tatolly dazzling all the people behind him. Of courde everyone was too polite to point his out to him.





This was no peaceful walk in the dark. We were constantly surrouned by people and sometimes were caught in traffic jams. The Japanese are a nation that enjoys queuing more than the British. A lot of the walk was a little frustrating as the Japanese formed orderely queues patiently waiting behind old dears and people who's level of fitness really wasn't up to climbing a mountian. Julie and I soon became expert at pushing past and exploring the limits of the marked paths. At one point it looked like we might not make the summit before dawn which just wasn't going to be acceptable. This is a photo of the crowds at the summit. They have all night stores that sell souvenirs and food. We contrasted this with Snowdon summit where you probably wouldn't find anyone at night except perhaps the most hardened walkers and you would have no chance of buying a beer, noodles or a souvenir badge commemorating your visit.

Some thing else that left me sniggering each time we saw it was the Japanese using oxygen whilst walking to the summit. In my book oxygen is used by mountaineers to reach the top of Everest and not by tourists walking up a 3,779m peak in the middle of summer. So the air gets a little thinner as you go up but anyone in normal health can cope with this. The mountain stations sold 1500 jpy cylinders of oxygen with a little cup that fitted over your mouth and nose so you could inhale a shot of oxygen when ever you go a little out of breath. The 'whoosh' noise each time they did this was really obvious and left me giggling each time I heard it.

We arrived about 20 mins before dawn so settled down to await sunrise. It was cold, which is why Julie looks a little odd in the picture. The temperature was close to freezing.

















These are the picture we took of the Sunrise. Time is around 4am





































Once we had watched the sun come up we set off to walk around the rim. Fuji is a volcono (no longer active) so has caldera in the centre.

This picture shows the highest point on the rim which is 3779m. Note the snow still around on much of the summit. This is start of August when temps in Tokyo often reach close to 40 degrees C

More sunrise pictures

Obligatory Japanese style photo!

This is the Caldera. The bottom was just full of rocks. No lost world or long forgotten dinosaur colony!

As we were walking around the rim we caught site of other mountains. I think one of these mountains is kumatori-san from which we viewed Fuji-san a few weeks ago.

This had to be the highlight of the route down from the summit. We left by a different route, the Gotemba-guchi track. Part was down the track you exit right and follow the Suna-bashiri trail.

This route follows directly down the fall of the mountain and is deep in sand and scoria. I think in UK we'd call this a scree slope.

Every wondered what would happen if you ran as fast as you can directly down the side of a mountain, well you can find out on this track. The soft sand has just the right texture to absorb your impact and let you launch your next stride. It was amzing you could run as fast as you liked taking massive strides and some how manage to stay upright. If you really went for it you could leap 3-4 m down the the slope each step.

This is action sequence of Julie running past me.

Don't be decieved by the photos, Julie is running full speed down a steep mountain slope. Only thing you had to watch out for was other walkers 'just walking' and the occaisional boulder in the middle of the slope.

The white line on the right of the photos is the edge of the path. The width of the scoria field which extended in both directions as far as we could see.

It took 2.5 hours to descend from the top of the mountain to the carpark at the bottom. A total drop of 2000m.

At the bottom we caught the bus to Gotemba station and from here we could get the train back to our house. All in all, we were walking for about 11 hours - from 10pm until 9am - an exhausting but enjoyable night!