立石公園の体験
Although, our children totally played in, like, the pool immediately under the cursed waterfall. Like, yay! Let's skip stones!
We are back! I'm your host Mayu. Last week, Siscon and I talked about our awesome road trip in Japan.
And this week, we're gonna keep talking about it and then finish all of them.
Alright, let's do it.
A lot of people probably know about the anime movie, Your Name. And that's one of my favorite anime movies of all time.
Whenever I watch it, I cry towards the end. And it's really, really good.
And this time, we found this park, Tateishi Park, in Suwa.
So, you go up to the hill, and you can look down the whole pretty view of Suwa, which is, like, totally the same from the movie.
We also happened to go right at sunset. So, of all the times to be at that park, I feel like we picked a really popular time to be there.
And then, I wanted to stay until we see the sunset, but it was, like, not lightning, but thundering.
Yeah, there was probably lightning behind us that we weren't seeing. But yeah, a storm was moving in quickly, and it felt risky to stay.
Yeah, so we decided to leave before we get struck by thunder.
By lightning, but yeah. Or rained on, or, you know, just made to feel uncomfortable by being there.
It was gorgeous, though. It was really worth it to go to.
Yeah, it was really pretty. You can see the whole city, town, and it was just like from the movie.
The town of Suwa looks bigger than the town in Your Name, but the view from the park of the town definitely looks familiar.
And I recall seeing someone else in the park holding a guidebook, a Your Name guidebook, being like,
Oh, somewhere out there, there's somebody telling people to come here because it's a place that was used in the movie.
Well, and one of the things that's interesting about the construction of the park is that it's almost like an amphitheater where the stage is the city and lake.
Like, it's got a kind of rounded shape and a bunch of big, you know, widely set apart stone steps to sit on.
And so there were a ton of people there all sitting on the steps just watching the sunset.
It was very cool. Like, even among just parks I've been to in general, it was a very cool park.
Yeah, and then it looked like it's like a great spot to see fireworks over the lake.
For sure.
I'm sure people get super competitive and get the spot, but we missed the time for fireworks.
But they were about to have some kind of fireworks festival when we were there.
Yeah, that's right.
妻籠宿の歴史
So the following day we woke up and went along the Nakasendo, which is one of those paths that was used by travelers during the medieval period in Japan to go sort of through the mountains and valleys in central Japan.
And so we stopped by a place called Tsumago-juku.
Like Ochijuku, it's a preserved town from the medieval era.
I guess really all the way up through like the early 1900s, right?
Like, they had like a post office there that would have been...
The post office is like a modern post office, but it had lots of examples of post office boxes from the Meiji era and a lot of history about that.
And the town itself, like all the houses are of the same style as they were back in the 1800s.
And that place was very cool.
Yeah.
Again, not tied to any specific anime, but you kind of feel like you're back in, you know, I don't know, the era of the Tokaido or the Nakasendo in this case.
Or like, you know, it felt cool to be there and it wasn't anywhere near as crowded as Ochijuku.
Especially because we were there early.
That's true. We were there early in the morning.
There were three different parking lots for it, right?
But we happened to be there at a time when there weren't many other people.
So that contributed a little bit to the effect of like only some people visiting.
A lot of Germans, though.
I don't know if this was a movement that started in Tsumago-juku, but at some point someone in the town kind of made a conscious choice to be like, don't sell or rent your house anymore.
And let's keep them all the same.
And I think it was an astute choice for the prosperity of the town because it did not have a lot of other stuff going on other than this.
But it didn't feel quite as commercialized as Ochijuku did.
It felt authentic and interesting.
Yeah.
滝の美しさ
So a little bit farther on from Tsumago-juku, we stopped at the Odaki and Medaki Falls.
These places are written with the characters for male and female waterfalls.
And they're both gorgeous.
And they both feed into the same stream.
And you can encounter them by walking from Tsumago-juku across the border between Nagano and Gifu into the next juku on the other side.
And we saw a number of people doing just that.
But we drove it, and it was a lot easier that way.
It was really hot.
Very, very hot.
Yeah.
So those were beautiful.
I really like this.
Cafe Londonでのオムライス体験
And then, so we were in Gifu for a little bit.
Right.
Like a very, very edge of Gifu.
And it was time for lunch.
And then we found this place called Cafe London.
And then the restaurant is famous for their omurice.
Yeah.
And it looked great on the pictures on the Google Maps.
So we went in, and it was waiting.
But as soon as we sat down, it started filling, and then people were waiting outside in the heat.
That blew me away.
I mean, this is a cafe in the middle of nowhere.
There is no other structure, I think, even visible from this cafe.
If it is, it's like a farm shed or something.
And yet, there was a line out the door to eat the omurice at this place.
And it was that good.
It was definitely the best omurice I've ever had, and very creative, and they had lots of different flavors.
It was astounding.
I was not prepared.
It was cheap, and then filling.
Yep.
Yeah.
The portions were not what I consider Japanese portions to usually be.
They were huge.
Yeah.
When the waitress asked us, are you sure you're going to be okay?
They're small size for omurice.
We were like, it's Japan.
We can handle the regular size.
But it was actually big.
They were big, yeah.
Yeah.
It was great.
I would go back there.
Omurice.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
It was great.
So after having some lunch, we kept going down south into Aichi-ken, and then over eventually
into Shizuoka Prefecture.
竜ヶ水洞窟探検
And in Shizuoka, we visited a cave.
This was our first of several caves on this trip, the Ryugashido Cave, which I think,
well, there are a lot of interesting parts of this cave, but one of the things that really
stood out to me was that as you're going into a cave, there's a dude standing in a room
filled with red lights, covered in bats.
Like, bats crawling all over him, flying around in the room.
He's standing in a protective suit, right?
With fruit in his hand, feeding them, and they're all over him.
And I think for many people, that's just terrifying.
Yeah.
He looks like, I mean, you know, it's like how Batman conquered his fear or whatever.
But yeah, that was wild.
And he's like giving you a talk on like all the good points of bats.
Right.
Well, he was saying he had to kind of, you know, train or like get used to with the bats.
So like, they don't usually like get fed from hands.
Yeah.
Because he's been with them for a long time.
Right.
He said if any normal person went into that room, the bats would all fly away because
they're usually scared of humans.
So I guess that's like comforting thought that like the bats don't want to just mob
you and cover your whole body with their bodies.
But like, yeah, it was still, it was a weird experience to see that.
That was very memorable.
Yeah.
The cavern itself was also really pretty.
There's a waterfall inside the cave that was kind of bizarre, but also pretty cool.
Yeah.
And yeah, there are like steep stairways again.
In every cave in Japan, there's a steep stairway.
You just take that as a given when going to a Japanese cave.
There's going to be a lot of steep stairs.
Yeah.
But it was exciting.
Like, it's like as if you're exploring.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the story of how that cavern was found was one of my favorite parts that basically
some people like, like the cavern was not excavated and people did not know it was beyond it.
And they just basically crawled through and excavated it by hand.
Like they didn't use any machines.
And then eventually found this waterfall and were like, wait, this is a great tourist opportunity.
We should build a thing here.
And then really expanded it from there.
But yeah, it was cool.
And then after the cave, next day we went to...
白糸の滝の美しさ
To Shiraito Falls this day, which is a series of waterfalls near Mount Fuji.
I think of all the waterfalls we saw, this one had like the biggest, grandest scope.
Because it's really not just one waterfall.
It's like dozens of waterfalls all next to each other in the same place.
And the water is just, you know, super clear, very beautiful, lots of rainbows.
It was awesome.
Yeah.
It's a huge place and it's very well paved.
Yeah.
The path around it is not very long, pretty forgiving, lots of tourists, and gorgeous.
Yeah.
And then after that, we went to...
More caves.
Yeah, right.
I mean, we were driving basically around the base of Fuji-san.
And so we drove through the, you know...
What is it?
Aokigahara.
Aokigahara.
Aokigahara.
The sea of trees, a.k.a. the suicide forest.
Right.
But we wisely did not get out or explore at all.
風穴と氷穴の探検
And instead, we just kept driving until we got to the Fugaku Wind Cave.
Which is in the Jukai.
Which is, yeah, in the middle of it.
Yeah.
You have to walk.
You pay some money.
You walk a little bit through the forest of trees.
And then you go down into the earth in this cavern.
The two caves we went to next to each other, the Fugaku Wind Cave,
there's still parts where you have to crouch to get in through particular spaces.
And this really stands out to me as a contrast with American caves.
I feel like all the American caves I've been into are just naturally bigger
or have been kind of excavated in order to make walking through them
just easier and more accessible for people.
And Japan obviously does not have an Individuals with Disabilities Act
because, number one, there are no elevators.
Everything's stairs.
And they're punishingly steep stairs.
And then you get into the cave and it's like,
oh, you can't bend down and make yourself two and a half feet high
or crawl through this tiny path.
Sorry, you can't come in here.
That was crazy.
Was there a warning about that?
No.
It was just like, sorry, you're just going to have to do this.
I mean, we saw numerous elderly people struggling to get back out of the caves,
just being like, yeah, no, well, that's your problem.
Yeah, that was a real moment of contrast for me on this trip.
Yeah, and it was freezing cold.
It was pleasantly cold inside the caves.
Not pleasantly, even in the hot summer.
A lot of people wore jackets.
Yeah, I loved it.
I went in T-shirts and shorts and was like, oh, finally.
But it was quite cold.
Both of those caves that we went into, the Fugaku Wind Cave
and the Narusawa Ice Cave, which is basically right next to it,
both had ice at the bottom of the cave used to preserve stuff during the summer.
I think especially seeds.
Just preserved seeds and kaiko.
Yeah, and silkworms.
Silkworms.
Wait to germinate the silkworms.
The right time.
The right word is.
But yeah, wait for the right time to let the silkworms do their work.
They were practical in addition to being really interesting to explore.
They're not that long, though.
Both of them are pretty short in terms of exploring them.
But they were cool.
And they were a great choice in the middle of the hot summer.
Yeah, definitely.
But make sure to bring a jacket.
That's fair.
We drove by some of the Fuji Lakes.
富士急ハイランドの絶叫アトラクション
But the next day, we decided to go to Fuji-Q Highland,
which is an amusement park next to Mount Fuji.
Yeah, that was my first time.
That's kind of surprising, right?
But my image of Fuji-Q is scary roller coasters.
I'd say that's pretty accurate.
And that was accurate.
Yeah.
And I understand.
For me, as someone who grew up near Six Flags Magic Mountain,
scary roller coasters were like my bread and butter as an adolescent.
I really liked going on them.
And now I'm kind of old, and it hurts a little bit to do that stuff.
But I still went on some pretty good roller coasters at this place.
We got in at a really good time, right before the opening.
And we got on Fuji-Q.
And I had no research.
I didn't do any research.
I had no expectation.
I was like, okay, I'm just going through a roller coaster.
And it was terrifying.
Especially, I decided to close my eyes the entire time.
Yeah, I don't think that was the right call.
It wasn't, because I didn't, you know, because I was not looking.
I couldn't prepare what was going to come next.
So my neck was like, I thought my neck was going to fall off.
Fall off?
Fall off.
Like your whole head would fall off with it?
Yeah, because I couldn't, like, you know, prepare myself,
or like holding my muscles or whatever, holding my head.
So I thought my neck was going to break.
Oof, that sounds terrible.
So I don't recommend riding a roller coaster and close your eyes at the same time.
Yeah, I agree.
We didn't ride one of the roller coasters, right?
A couple, yeah.
I think just one, actually.
Really?
Well, I guess I rode them all, except for the one that flips you around as you ride it.
I can't remember what the one is called at Fuji-Q,
but I have ridden that type of roller coaster before at Six Flags.
I think it was called X2.
And you can't prepare yourself for anything on that one, either,
because the seat just rotates for no reason in the middle of the ride.
And I remember getting off that roller coaster
and explaining to the person that I rode it with
that it felt like I had just been attacked by a group of people with a bat.
So that factored into my decision not to ride that coaster at Fuji-Q Highland.
ジェットコースターの体験
But yeah, I think we can confirm that it's better to ride a roller coaster with your eyes open
as a result of your experience.
So I decided to try again, not Fujiyama.
I had enough of Fujiyama, which went up like 70 meters high or something.
Right.
And it was long.
It was really, really long.
It was very long.
It was quite a long ride.
But I actually enjoyed riding Zokkon, which is pretty new.
It goes really fast.
And then one particular part, you go backward really fast, too.
But I still like the roller coaster the best.
Zokkon was an interesting experience
because it felt like the concept of the roller coaster was riding a motorcycle.
The way you sat in the seat kind of felt like you were on a motorbike
and you had to hold on to handlebars and stuff.
And that was sort of new for me.
I'm sure there are other ones like it.
But yeah, I found that interesting.
It wasn't as thrilling as some of the other roller coasters,
but it was definitely a unique experience.
And then we did the water roller coaster,
and I soaked myself because I didn't want to buy the rain jacket or poncho.
Yeah, the poncho was a good call, I think.
Yeah, you wore it.
I wore one.
I was like, it's summer, I can get wet.
And get wet you did.
Yeah, I was soaking wet.
Yeah.
And you tried the Takabisha.
I did.
Can you explain about that?
Sure.
So I guess when it was constructed,
this roller coaster held the Guinness World Record for greatest angle of drop
in that it has a 121-degree drop,
which doesn't really sound like it makes any sense
because it means it's actually going kind of backwards,
which is what's happening.
And the weird thing about that coaster is
most roller coasters, the very first drop of the roller coaster is the main drop.
And Takabisha is a kind of regular roller coaster for most of its length,
and then it kind of stops, turns you 90 degrees directly onto your back,
like takes you straight up into the sky,
then does 180 degrees so you're facing straight down,
and then continues to rotate so you're kind of upside down,
facing at like a downward slash,
I don't even know what direction to call it,
like upside down angle,
and then that's the drop.
And it's the last thing in the ride,
which was just bizarre.
It was a very weird choice to make that the end of the ride as opposed to the beginning,
but again, very unique.
I'm not sure it was more scary than other roller coasters for me personally.
It looks really scary for me.
I think it looks scarier from the outside than it is to actually ride.
Or maybe it's just that you've already been through several loop-de-loops
and other crazy roller coaster things by the time you get there,
so you're just kind of like,
whatever, this isn't that much worse than the other stuff you've already put me through.
The going straight up with 90 degrees on your back,
I think is probably the most nerve-wracking part,
but you can't really see how high it's going to go.
There's not enough of an angle to see the top of the roller coaster.
You can't see the top, yeah.
For what it's worth, riding X2 at Magic Mountain,
on that ride, you're taken up with facing the ground,
so you actually cannot see how far up you are or how much farther you're going to go.
That gives you the impression that you're just going impossibly high up in the air,
and I found that to be substantially scarier than going straight up on my back,
where it was like, oh, you can't go that high.
And you can't see the ground,
so you don't have a really good sense of how high you are, actually.
Although I guess you can look around at the rest of the park and be like,
I'm pretty damn high.
I wouldn't try it.
Anyway, yeah, it was exciting.
We also spent some time in the Naruto section of the park,
which was interesting.
There is a ride that feels like a very blatant ripoff of the Toy Story ride at Disneyland,
or California Adventure, rather.
But that's cool.
I love that ride in California Adventure,
and the Naruto one is just as good, even though it's exactly the same mechanics.
And there's also an area to walk through where you can take pictures
with different characters from Naruto,
and we had a good time with that.
Yeah, I had no idea.
Looking like an enormous story.
I mean, you read Naruto, right?
I did.
Yeah.
I also watched portions of it, but not the whole thing.
So you understood what you're supposed to do for photo ops.
Correct. Yes.
And I'm like, okay, I guess that's cool.
Real human-sized figure that you can interact with,
but if you don't know anything about it.
Who they are.
八王子を訪れて
Who they are, like what I'm supposed to do,
like what I'm supposed to say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
So you want to know.
Yeah.
It's definitely for Naruto fans.
Right.
I think we can say that easily.
Yeah.
I was sad that we didn't eat at the Naruto ramen restaurant.
Overall, I was not sure if I should get up the Olin Pass,
because I was not sure how many rides I was going to.
But in total, I think I rode and experienced enough.
To make it worth it.
Yeah.
I agree.
Yeah.
That was pretty much it for our road trip part.
Right.
And then after that, we moved on to Tokyo,
kind of like suburb area of Tokyo.
Yes.
Can I say that?
Yeah, I mean, it is technically Tokyo,
but I think even for people who live in Tokyo,
they're like, that's not really Tokyo.
We were in the farthest.
Hachioji is like, yeah.
You can say Tokyo, yeah.
I think Hachioji we could call suburb area of Tokyo.
We were on like the absolute limit of the suburbs,
like still in development level of suburbs.
Right.
Like last stop on the bus line suburbs,
not even a train station in that part of town suburbs.
I don't know.
I'm not going to say.
Oh, you feel like I'm hating on it too hard?
I mean, I'm from really, really countryside.
So to me, it looks like a thriving town.
Yeah, you're right.
As someone from LA, from a suburb of LA,
I mean, technically part of the city of Los Angeles,
but a part that people acknowledge is not the center of the city
and kind of a suburban part.
Like we were in the equivalent like of Chatsworth,
like the most remote corner of Chatsworth.
That's where we were in Tokyo.
Okay.
People go there and be like, how is this still even?
Just take my word for it.
All right.
It was like that.
But we enjoyed being there and we saw some cool stuff.
Yeah.
Like the Hachioji castle ruins.
Yeah.
AKA H castle.
The H castle ruins.
Yes.
So my internet sleuthing helped us put together
that this was a location from Dark Gathering
and we went there in the daytime
and saw like the potentially cursed waterfall and stuff.
It was real.
Yeah, it's real.
And the stories about what happened there are all real stories.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess actually perhaps not even stories, true events.
It didn't feel that haunted to me,
but we were there in the middle of the day.
Do you want to explain about the story?
Oh, sure.
So Hachioji castle was built by the Hojo clan.
They built it because their previous castle sucked
and was indefensible.
And so they built this very cool,
supposed to be well defended castle in Hachioji.
And then when push came to shove and they were getting attacked,
the main Hojo people just peaced out to Odawara castle instead
and left their wives and children behind
and were like, hey, a couple thousand peasants,
please defend this castle, which they obviously couldn't do.
It was taken in like half a day or something.
And all the wives and children were like, well, if we get captured,
they're going to like use us as bargaining chips to get our husbands to surrender.
So instead of like shamefully getting manipulated,
we'll just all kill ourselves.
And so they supposedly burned the part of the castle that they lived in,
then slit their throats at the top of a waterfall and the creek
and waterfall ran red with blood for three days and three nights.
So unsurprisingly, it's cursed now.
Although our children totally played in like the pool immediately
under the cursed waterfall like, yay, let's skip stones.
Yeah, I don't really believe in ghosts, but I got scared a little bit.
I kind of believe in ghosts, but didn't feel a lot of ghostly presence there.
Not that I can, but I didn't.
So I was fine with it.
That was my first time visiting a ghost spot.
So that was a very interesting place to visit for sure.
Yeah, I liked it.
There were a lot of people. I guess it was Obon.
It was Obon. It was like maybe one of the first days of Obon.
So other people were going on like little mini vacations and stuff.
I don't know. It was neat. I liked it.
And then on the same day, we went to Tsutaya.
I'll put in a plug for Tsutaya.
Tsutaya is like a video DVD and manga.
Can you rent manga at Tsutaya? I feel like maybe you can't.
Maybe not.
Well, you can definitely rent DVDs and movies and music.
And this is a real difference from America.
You can't rent CDs anywhere in America because I think they're pretty aware
of what people will do if they were allowed to do that.
Which, I'll just stop right there.
But like in Japan, it's fine to rent CDs.
And so I always rent a bunch.
アニメに関する旅のスタート
I think Tsutaya is also kind of like maybe its own kind of holy ground
for otaku who want to watch anime and use it as a place to go get new anime DVDs.
Yeah.
So yeah, we did go to Tsutaya.
We also saw the Shinsengumi Hometown Museum,
which felt pretty anime to me because there's a lot of anime and manga out.
I'm sure. I've never read. I've never seen any of them.
But I know there are a lot about their story.
Yeah. For me, the entree is Rurouni Kenshin because, you know,
Saito is a member of the Shinsengumi.
And he was a real person and actually did survive the revolution
and went on to be a cop and then a museum security guard or something.
He had an interesting life.
So this museum talks about all the members of the Shinsengumi.
It's located in Hino City because many of the members of the Shinsengumi
came from that particular town, including our favorite.
Ijikata Toshizo.
Yes. And so there are pictures of him throughout the museum
and a lot of information about him,
including letters that he wrote back to other people.
And that was neat.
And I think the biggest draw of the Shinsengumi Hometown Museum
is that at the end of checking the museum out,
you can put on Shinsengumi style, like, you know,
and get some, like, fake katana and take some pictures,
which is hugely popular with anybody who likes dressing up
and holding a katana, which I think is just average.
The Ijikata Toshizo appears on Golden Kamui,
and then he died in Otaru?
Yeah, well, no, no, no.
He died in the Battle of Hakodate.
Hakodate.
He was shot in the spine.
But on Golden Kamui, he didn't die.
Yeah, it was all faked, and he went to jail and escaped.
So the story goes on.
Yeah.
So that was really cool.
That was cool.
And then on the next day...
I think it was actually two days later that we checked out
日本のアクティビティの楽しみ
the Tabayama Roller Slide,
the allegedly longest roller slider in Japan.
It was cool that they gave you some, like, foam boards to ride down on
because roller sliders can be really painful.
And given how long this one was, they were extremely necessary.
Unfortunately, it's not as fast as you kind of...
Well, I was going to say as you want it to be,
but one of the things they tell you on the roller slider is, like,
whatever you do, don't use your feet to brake
because you will just snap your ankles off, essentially.
Instructions.
A lot of instructions on how not to hurt yourself
and a lot of warnings about people hurting themselves constantly,
which sounds about right.
And I guess the only way you can get away with this is that Japan
is not a litigious society the way the U.S. is.
Because in the U.S., this place would have been sued out of existence
a long time ago.
And instead, it's still going strong.
And it's quite fun to ride down.
Yeah, and then when you go, you see a lot of Demon Slayer displays.
Yeah, the operator of this place loves Demon Slayer.
Oh, really?
That's not the reason why.
Hey, this is allegedly where Tanjiro's from.
The official Demon Slayer book introduced a mountain.
Abayama has an entrance to the mountain.
So people say, oh, it's where Tanjiro's from.
Where Tanjiro's from.
Okay, well, that makes sense.
So they're sort of hyping that connection.
So the whole village is trying to have more people from Demon Slayer.
Well, they did have some cool replicas of each of the Hashira's swords.
That was maybe my favorite part.
That they had these replica swords of each of the different types.
And that was pretty dope.
Yeah.
洞窟探検の体験
Well, on the way back from Tabayama Roller Slider,
we decided to go to the Nippara Limestone Cave.
And the road to get there is very narrow.
And the parking there is very limited.
And there's no reservation system.
And nobody's counting the cars.
So you wind up in this traffic where you're just in a line of parked cars.
Yes, that's true.
So it was the peak season for Japanese people taking vacations.
But nonetheless, we just ended up in a line of parked cars waiting for someone
to exit the parking lot so they could let in like four more cars at a time.
I think it took us probably over an hour and a half to get a parking spot here.
And you're waiting in a line where you don't know how much farther it is to get to the caves.
And you can't turn around because it's like a one-way road.
And you're just stuck.
So I'm not claustrophobic.
But if I was, even being in this line of cars would have triggered me, I think.
I almost felt like it was natural disaster.
Yeah, it was terrifying.
I didn't really like it.
When we finally got into the caves, the caves themselves are awesome.
洞窟探検の体験
Yeah.
The path through the caves is very confusing.
You are not given a map.
Well, yeah, they don't get a map.
And there are maps posted around, but not very frequently.
And there's like loops and dead ends and like not really well marked.
I kind of liked it.
Yeah, me too.
The experience of feeling lost in a cave was kind of cool.
The cave is a little bit more forgiving in parts with the headroom.
And there's one big open cavern in the middle.
And there's a lot of up and down and like narrow places.
And I don't know.
I think it was my favorite of the caves we went into, actually.
Yeah, it was huge.
And then there were like lights on with colors.
And there was one small place you can go in and have to be quiet to listen to the sound.
Like water drops makes and it sounds like koto.
Yeah, that was cool.
Which was difficult because there are many people talking and walking.
But we heard it.
Yeah, it was neat.
高尾山の登山
And then next day, I think, we decided to go to Mount Takao.
I was not sure about this because it was hot.
And I didn't want to do hiking.
But when I went to the website, they were like,
drinking party thing.
So I was like, okay, still people go during summer.
And I was not sure if we're going to come back to this place anytime soon.
That's fair.
Maybe we should do Mount Takao.
And so we did.
But we decided to take a cable car on the way there.
Not all the way.
They don't have all the way cable car.
But partially you can ride.
And it was really cool.
It was very cool.
I think it's the steepest cable car in Japan.
Right.
I would bet it's in the top five steepest cable cars anywhere.
It's very steep.
It was, yeah.
It starts off and you're like almost at an angle like lying down.
And by the end of the cable car ride, that angle has flipped and is the other way.
Which is just wild.
It was a cool experience to go on that cable car.
We eventually then hiked to the top, which was manageable.
And then chose to hike down without using the cable car.
Going down is easier than going up.
But it was really long.
Yeah.
I think the path we chose was for people who are used to climbing.
Hardcore mountain climbing.
Yes.
I would agree with that.
It was paved.
It was like grovels.
It was water flowing.
Yeah.
I can't even begin to imagine going up that path.
It starts off like a regular kind of steep hike.
Then all of a sudden you're just in the middle of a creek.
And then you're like, oh good, the creek's finally over.
And it's just like hundreds and hundreds of stairs from there to the top.
It would have been just brutal to be going the other way.
When I went there for the first time, maybe 20 years ago or something,
I took the easiest way.
It's the same way back.
And I was like, this was easy.
This was like almost nothing.
That was my thought.
Hot youth.
Going back from what was number six, I think.
Number six.
Number six path, yeah.
It was durable.
Yeah, it wasn't that hard to hike down.
Yeah.
But we felt really bad for the people going the other way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then Mount Takao appears on the encouragement of a climb.
Yamanosusume.
Okay.
Which sounds interesting and which sounds similar to Yuruken to me.
Right, yeah.
I agree.
Yeah, but I'm sure it's good.
I think that's it.
Yeah, those were our major things.
I'll put in a last plug.
横浜のバーとラーメン店
We got stranded and spent another week in Yokohama that we didn't intend.
But there's a bar.
I don't want to give too much away here because I can't stand the thought of this place becoming really popular.
But there's a bar in Yokohama called Dude.
And it's the best bar.
And if you are into One Piece or the idea of Japanese bars and or guys with pompadours who look just like total badasses, you should find this place and go to it.
Because the master is one of the coolest people alive and it's a great bar.
And I got to go and it was great.
And that was the best part of being delayed for another week in Japan.
All right, I'm done.
Wait, wasn't there one more thing?
Kempachi?
Yeah, sure.
We also went to an awesome ramen place, also in Yokohama, not that far from Dude, called Kempachiya, which is I think it might be the busiest ramen shop I've seen in a otherwise not very busy kind of suburban part of Yokohama.
And there's almost always a line out the door and people sitting waiting inside.
And then like, you know, it's all just bar stools.
Like everyone sits at the bar.
There are no tables, just eating like delicious ramen as fast as they can.
I think they have three varieties of ramen.
Right.
And they do taste different.
And for my money, the best one is just the regular old straight up ramen, which is extremely like thick and rich and fatty and unbelievably delicious.
So we also got to go there and that was worth it, too.
Yeah.
I lived in the area for a few years and then had never been until I met you.
What a shame.
Yeah.
I was like, I guess I can go.
I was curious, but like neither of the place was like kind of place that, you know, young person, young female to go.
I mean, Kimpachi has like a sign on their window saying even single women can eat ramen comfortably.
They changed it.
They didn't have that when I lived there.
That's new.
Yeah.
Got it.
And I've seen like, okay, I hesitate to call them young, but I've seen like not really old people in Dude.
Not really old people.
Okay.
I don't think I've ever seen any college age girls in Dude.
That's probably true.
But I definitely have seen women in like their late 20s in Dude.
Okay.
All right.
I'm glad now I know.
And I was always curious coming back from like some drinking at like Yokohama Station in Tokyo.
Yeah.
Never had the courage to go in.
Well, it does have a skull with a pompadour on its sign.
So I understand it taking a little bit of courage to walk in.
バンジージャンプの経験
Oh, I also went bungee jumping.
That was the best part of your trip.
That might have been the best part of the whole summer for me.
Was pretending I was in Assassin's Creed and doing a leap of faith off of the underside of a bridge with a bungee cable attached to my feet.
Yeah, it was fantastic.
And it was in Ibaraki?
It was in Ibaraki, yeah.
Ryujin Ohashi.
It's the second longest bungee jump operated by this particular company in Japan.
Oh, okay.
It doesn't seem like Japan has a ton of bungee jumping.
They were asking me to sign a petition to allow bungee jumping in some other prefecture where it's currently not allowed or something.
And the jump I did was only 100 meters or 300 feet.
But yeah, I would do it again.
I'm going to be honest.
I really liked it.
Don't make me go.
I won't.
All right.
I think that was all.
アニメ関連の旅
And in total, as far as we know, we went to 12 anime-related spots.
So it was very interesting.
And if there's like other opportunity we travel in Japan, we'll definitely look into more.
Maybe Tokyo area.
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
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