I’m still not the picture of health and woke up coughing a lot. I knew I shouldn’t overdo things like I did earlier this week at least until I feel better. But it was my weekly cleaning day in my hotel room so I knew I had to be out from 10 to 2 at a minimum. I puttered around my room until it was close to 10, calling home and basically trying to figure out where to go today without coughing up a lung. I decided go somewhere odd, Kokubunji.

Kokubunji is listed in my my guide book as “A Journey to History and Nature,” but surprisingly is also where my mom worked in an orphanage and where my old co-worker Suzuki-san lives. My mom also said my Aunt Yoshiko’s brother has a house in Kokubunji. But, as my mom says, there’s a surprising amount of greenery in Tokyo and it would be a nice quiet place to spend a restful day. That, and the cough drops I finally bought (rather than the throat candy I had) were pretty much what I needed.

I got to Kokubunji without much problem but there wasn’t any sign of a “phone” or a “house right next to the phone” on the south side of the station, where my Aunt Yoshiko’s brother’s house was supposed to be.

I did see a sign right near the station that made me think this would be a good day.

The Tonogayato Gardens, a Metropolitan Garden, was right near the station and a nice pleasant place that made me do something I said I’d never do: take pictures of a bunch of trees like my dad always did.

The gardens had a nice green lawn that they were trimming with Weed Eaters which seemed like a lot of trouble, but I realized I’ve never seen a lawn mower in Japan. The Weed Eaters were incredibly quiet as well.

I’m going to post some more embarrassing pictures of nature, just because. There were bamboo gardens and streams and lots of trees.

 There were supposed to be historic sights to see so I started looking for Otaka’s Path and Masugata Pond Springs and also the ruins of the old Kokubunji temple. I didn’t find a map until a long ways into the trip so I had to follow all the neighborhood maps and I even stumbled upon some markers for the path that would have been nice to find earlier on.

I did find a bunch of signs that took a bit to read that didn’t make the trip any easier. I was getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes at the gardens and even saw a giant wood spider so the signs warning me about nature didn’t make me feel any better. Like this first one that says there are big snakes and to leave them alone.

Or the one warning me about suzumebachi, or “sparrow bee” which is the Japanese name for the Asian Giant Hornet which may or may not cause a lot of deaths per year in Japan (the intarwebs aren’t quite clear on this).

Or the one about the regular honey bees you shouldn’t annoy. You can’t see them flying around in this picture, but they were there.

In any case, I wandered around Kokubunji finding a nature preserve (with more nature), the ruins of the old temple (which often was just open fields with old faded signs) but also some old gates.

It would have been nice to find the map for all of this before this point, but this is the part of the story where I actually found a tourist map of the town.

Then, after this gate, I found the ruins or empty fields or whatever you want to call them. I wandered back and forth around the same area and must have passed the Masugata springs at least four times.

The water comes out of the rock wall at the bottom of a hill.

With the map in hand I wanted to see the final rock bridge but it was a disappointment.  

It wasn’t a complete loss because I stopped into the coffee shop next to the bridge and had an ice coffee and scones which were tiny but tasty. If you can’t tell, the red thing in the middle is a mini Hershey’s krackel and that should tell you how tiny the things on the table are.

I’d say Dream Pocket is worth the stop if you’re by that silly bridge.

I had a confusing trip back home that took some backtracking because there are a bunch of different express lines which include the “Rapid”, “Chūō Special Rapid”, “Ōme Special Rapid”, “Commuter Rapid”, and “Commuter Special Rapid” which are all written in Japanese of some sort on the outside of the train. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to be here long enough to figure it out.

The rest of the day I spent in the room taking it easy. I was watching Anthony Bordain on Discovery last night and I realized one of the things I wanted to do was sit around watching Japanese TV. I finally figure out how to get some local channels and that’s what I did this evening. I even got a ¥300 bento from the Tesco Express so I could spend more time watching the weird mysteries that were on. Yet another weird success.

I thought I was getting better and I slept pretty darn well last night, but I knew something just felt off. It was the first time this trip that I slept in until my alarm. I got up and sent some messages to my sister and I just went back to sleep. When I finally made it down for the “continental breakfast”, I tried to talk to one of the other guests and found out that I didn’t have a voice. That came back pretty quickly, but I knew I should take it easy, again, and I was coughing up lots of phlegm for the fun of it as well.

Unfortunately I found a stream of the Monday Night football game and had something to do all morning. I say UNfortunately because every game I watch this season I think, now THAT was the WORST officiating I’ve seen so far. They’re getting worse and worse.

When I finally left around 12:30-ish, I took part of the “promenading course” on the tourist map. It took me to various neighborhoods as well as the trash collection area for the special ward of Shinjuku. Basically, it was a weird walk around parts of the city.

About the time I popped back out into “city” and not “community” there was another Shinto ceremony about to begin that I’m guessing is asking for auspicious tidings for the new building. I remember this happening in the past, but I’m guessing.

There were ceremonial heads of some sort as well.

And portalbe shrines.

But I just kept pushing on. I just barely made it to a Hawaiian restaurant before they shut down between lunch and dinner, and had some taco rice. They also had loco moco on the menu and it looked like the portions were as large as I expect to see in a Hawaiian restaurant.

I finally ended up in Shinjuku where I did some shopping for things that may or may not work for me: a small battery-powered toothbrush that doesn’t seem to have much oomph and a battery that you charge so you can charge your iPhone when the battery dies. Sounds convoluted to me. In any case, that was my day. I came back to the hotel, passed out again for a bit, and then went downstairs for yet more udon. It’s not exciting, but it’s fun and different for me.

I’m not sure if I’m overdoing it, but I still don’t feel 100% and I stayed out over 8 hours wandering around Tokyo. It was a great day when I left but the air here is probably not as good as it is in Oregon. On top of all the industrial effluent in the air, Oregon has a nice ocean to clean the air before we get it. Japan has the deserts of China. I’m not quite sure of the weather here either. Portland takes a while to heat up or cool down and there’s none of that here.

The weather meant it sounded like a good day to head to Asakusa and the first picture, at least the dark part underneath the gate, probably is a familiar view to anyone who has seen pictures of Japan. It’s the Grand Kaminarimon Gate with the huge lantern that’s in all the guide books.

Monday was the day to go, too. Lots of tourists and lots of them from the US and Europe from their accents but it looked like some where using the area for more traditional purposes as well.

The streets to Sensoji Temple and Akasaka Jinja are lined by traditional festival shops but I passed by all the sweets and trinkets that they offered. I saw a lot of the sorts of things I took to Goodwill the past two weeks.

There’s another gate and then the approach to the temple.

 I got the temple confused with the shrine which was smaller and next to it.

I wandered around the neighborhood for a while before I went to for a river boat ride. I thought I might be on one of the traditional boats.

But the one for the river boat rides are a bit nicer.

Lots more views of the Sky Tree, the tallest tower something-something-Japanese-I-couldn’t-understand.

Several times they repeated that the Sky Tree was the tallest something-something-something-in-Japanese.

We went under several bridges and I wasn’t enough of a bridge otaku to take pictures of all of them.

It was lunchtime, so I had what they were selling: ice cream with the view of another bridge.

I guess Gozilla hasn’t been around for a while because I saw the Tokyo Tower as well.

After that I went for a disappointing visit to the Asahi Breweries headquarters. It’s in all the guidebooks as having several restaurants but there really isn’t anything interesting. I saw a lot of disappointed-looking (and thirsty-looking) foreigners, and I include myself in that group.

The building on the left is supposed to look like it has head on it (like a proper beer) and the gold thing on the right is a mystery to me. After that I walked all the way across the neighborhood to Kappabashi Dougai which is a street that sells kitchenware for restaurants as far as you can see in the panorama shot. There were plates and glassware as well and a couple of shops selling the food models you see in front of a lot of Japanese restaurants. I also saw a store with a giant dinosaur head in it but I didn’t want to stop to ask. There was a Coca-Cola memorabilia store with a working 1940’s Coke machine modernized for ¥150 Cokes.

What there wasn’t was a lot of real restaurants. Every time I saw an Italian menu sign, it was just in front of a store selling menu signs. Every time I saw plastic food it was just for a store selling plastic food. I ended up at Mos Burger because, well, I LIKE Mos Burger and sometimes I just need to be number 1.

It was only a couple of miles to Ueno, so I decided it was time to go on another cross-Tokyo trek. What I found was that the street I was on between Asakusa and Ueno sells a lot of home Buddhist shrines that people have when someone dies. I also found another shrine so of course I visited it. I wasn’t the only one though it was pretty deserted.

I finally made it to Ueno Station but I didn’t feel like visiting the park or the zoo quite so late in the day.

I guess I wasn’t through walking because I started off towards Akihabara. There are a lot of weird jewelry shops between Ueno and Akihabara, selling necklaces, including several stores with what I would consider odd looking south Asian necklaces. But those weren’t for me.

I just kept going and kept asking deliverymen if I was still going the right way and I finally made it. I saw a lot of iffy iPhone accessories, went to my usual mecca of small parts, and generally wandered around until I got tired and got on the train for the hotel. I finally got off the train about 6:15PM and it was POURING. I went inside to get my bearings, my umbrella, and look for the key card I lost in the morning. (I wasn’t the only one who lost his key this morning. There was a “kid” in his underwear at the front desk this morning asking to be let back in his room.)

It was still POURING when I left for dinner and so I just went downstairs to the udon shop. It was raining so hard I didn’t even want to go across the street.

Of course it wasn’t raining much at all by the time I was done and I felt a little foolish for going out to dinner when I did. If I just waited I could have gone wherever I wanted. I like udon, so it wasn’t that big a deal. I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow.

The weather was miserable today and even though I spent a lot of time and money getting myself to Japan, I figured I might just hole up again and stay inside. But really, where would the fun be if I did that? I could have gone to an underground shopping arcade, but on a rainy Sunday that just means a hot, humid, packed-with-damp-people experience that I didn’t want to deal with. But I did wake up early so I puttered around on my computer, did some laundry, and tried to debug my mom’s computer remotely. None of it went very well.

After sitting in front of the only free washing machine – one that I was quite familiar with – and looking at the other three (one was running, and two were sitting with someone’s clean clothes inside) I realized that I was using the only washing machine that didn’t have a built-in dryer. My first thought was, “Holy crap! These washing machines look like they have built-in dryers!” which was quickly replaced by, “Why the hell won’t these people come get their laundry so I can use one of the cool washing machines?” My bathroom is now strewn with my damp and hopefully drying clothes and my malevolent feelings towards those who can’t be bothered to properly time their laundry.

I didn’t want to spend the whole day sitting around hoping that my grumbling would dry my clothes more quickly so I headed to one of the Japanese food places that my sister keeps emailing me about. For Tokyo she’s sent me articles on one curry place, two burger places (probably in deference to my tastes), and two coffee shops. I’ve only been to one coffee shop and found where they relocated the curry place, so a burger place was an obvious next choice.

Even better, Fatz’s Burger was in Koenji, or about a hour’s walk away. It was too nasty to walk, so I took a quick 10-minute train ride there. The Koenji neighborhood was a big surprise to me as it had a thriving shopping district unlike many spots in outlying areas. For most of Japan, shopping arcades are just a series of shuttered stores and people go to malls to do all their shopping. I guess not in Koenji.

 Not only were there outdoor stores, but also covered shopping streets as well.

I got to Fatz’s Burger an hour early and had to kill some time walking around looking at the shopping district. I was getting hungry wandering around in the rain, so I went to floresta nature doughnuts. I guess they’re a chain, but they make uniquely Japanese doughnuts.

I had a green tea doughnut at a table outside. You can’t see it, but the seat was wet as is the street outside.

I finally made it to Fatz’s Burger and I was the first customer of the day. They told me that it wouldn’t be very busy. They even had a supply of Leinenkugel’s and I guess I know enough Wisconsonites to have heard of it. The beer was pretty good.

Now onto the burger. I had their monthly special, the “ABQ” with Tillamook pepperjack cheese (from home!) and fresh mango salsa. I can honestly say that it was one of the best hamburgers I’ve had. And I ate the burger before I even ordered the beer so that wasn’t coloring my judgement.

I sat and talked with another customer for a couple of hours, Andy from Wisconsin, a translator who has lived in Japan for seven years. After I finally left, I wandered around in the rain looking for the Koenji Temple that the neighborhood is named after. I found it but it looked pretty closed up and the weather still wasn’t any better, so I just headed back to the train and my hotel.

The tall building in the picture is the Hundred Stay Shinjuku where I’m staying. I took it from the closest train station.

I mostly sat around the rest of the afternoon and had dinner at Saizeria again. It’s convenient and easy and is unique being Japanesey Italian food. I was pretty tired and according to Andy there’s a cold going around. Hopefully I’ll be rested up for the good weather they’re predicting for tomorrow.

After my 20 hours of sleep, I felt a lot better. I wasn’t sure I was up to heading out but I felt OK after breakfast so I went outside. I was surprised at how cold it was and had to come back and put on long pants.

My first stop today was a controversial one, but not too far from where I’m staying. I went to Yasukuni Shrine, which “was established to commemorate and honor the achievement of those who dedicated their precious lives for their country,” which can be seen as a commemoration of Japan’s participation in World War II, or warfare in general. The nearer portions of Asia that were annexed during WWII aren’t very fond of it in general. Nevertheless, I wanted to see it and today I did.

There was a large police presence in the neighborhood around the shrine, but that made sense since it was controversial and also near the Imperial Residence. There are also several embassies nearby and I did see quite a few policemen around the “Korea Center”. They weren’t there to keep people away, necessarily, since the path around the Imperial residence is a popular running route and was so busy that it looked like a race was going on.

I decided to walk back from the shrine because it would be more interesting than just sitting around for another day. By google maps it’s about 9 miles of walking, but I had all afternoon. Everyone was a bit surprised when I’d ask which direction Shinjuku was, but that was only about 3 miles of the total from when I started asking. On the trip back I stopped at the Tokyo Fire Department Museum and Mos Burger. I only have a picture from Mos Burger. The tempura pork burger was tiny and I could have eaten another, but I didn’t.

I made it back to Shinjuku and looked for the restaurant that my sister wanted me to find which got me sidetracked into a dangerous neighborhood before. I was much more careful this time and had my iPhone and maps running and figured out that the planned renovation was still taking place. And by planned renovation, they tore the building down.

All that’s left is that wall. The restaurant has relocated “around the block” which was a bit trickier than I expected. I found the entrance between a couple of electric stores.

I left to find another spot my sister suggested, the Paul Bassett coffee shop, which is somewhere I wanted to go and have a cup of coffee. It was more popular than I expected and crowded even on a Saturday in the middle of empty government office buildings. I had a machiatto which was tiny and tasty.

After that it was time for the final walk home with a side-trip to the ¥100 store. I also found out that the area I’m in, which I thought was the biggest part of Korea Town, was nothing compared to the area on the other side of Shin-Okubo station. It was incredibly crowded, the signs were in Korean, and merchants were yelling out Korean phrases. But I made it to the ¥100 yen store and bought an umbrella (¥100), a bar of soap (¥100), 500g of possibly-sea salt (¥100), a wash bag (¥100), and a ceramic teapot that I’m going to use as a neti pot (¥100). OK, so I’m exaggerating and there’s a 5% tax so everything was ¥525 total.

The rest of the evening was much more uneventful. I found out that the udon shop on the first floor is a chain and isn’t the best though it is better than most of the things I get in the US and only cost me ¥550. And I figured out how to use my teapot as a neti pot, so I hope I don’t have any more repetitive dreams about having to go find a neti pot in Japan. 20 hours of sleep make for enough dreams that it can feel like you’re hallucinating.

One of the reasons I wanted to stay in a furnished apartment rather than a hotel is because I figured that would let me sit on my fat ass all day if I felt like it. I like sitting around sometimes. I suppose that makes me ridiculously boring but vacation is vacation. I got to try it out today because I woke up with a head cold and decided to take it easy. Then I fell asleep. Then I decided to sleep in all day, 10AM to 6AM. I made it downstairs for breakfast but I did nothing else all day besides playing the MacHeist puzzle before passing out.

So I have nothing to report from day 2, other than that the Hundred Stay is a nice quiet place to sleep in all day (unlike most hotels) and the air conditioner appears to be sized for a much bigger room. It’s either too cold or so hot that I’m sweating through my sheets.

I’m not sure if I’m going to be 100% today, but I plan on getting outside at the very least. Maybe I’ll cough on someone on the train as payback.

I had a couple of things on my list for Day 1. I wanted to buy the things I forgot (like toothpaste), buy an electric travel toothbrush that took batteries, buy a data SIM for my iPhone that’s ¥3480/month instead of ¥1500/day, look for my mom’s stuff (a magnifying glass and a pencil sharpener), and look for a couple of locations that my sister told me to check out. I know it’s too early to hit the hay at 4PM JST (midnight at home) so I had a very expensive cup of coffee (¥510 or about $6.50 USD) so I could rally and find some dinner. For that cup of coffee I had the right to camp out for a while in the coffee shop, but I just wanted a hot cup of coffee rather than a cold one out of a vending machine. It’s still too early for most vending machines here to start selling cans of hot drinks.

I got a bit of a late start today. I got up at 6:30 but puttered around, mostly on my computer until 10AM. Heck, most stores aren’t open until 10AM anyway and I’m on vacation. During that time I had the “free” hotel continental breakfast this morning of little tiny bread and yogurt.

It wasn’t too hot when I first got going but the direct sunlight was incredibly hot. It reminded me of what my aunt told my sister, that the rain here is different than the rain in the US. She might be right as it is a lot further south than Portland. But just walking down the street was making me happy. It’s different and I’M ON VACATION!

I walked from my hotel to Shinjuku, even after being warned it was around 20 minutes away. Meh, Mos Burger was only like 12 minutes and I wasn’t in any hurry (and Mos Burger looms large in my psyche and is only a couple of minutes from Shinjuku Station). I went by our usual hotel, the Nishi Shinjuku Hotel My Stays and decided to finally visit the Buddhist temple next to it. Coincidentally, a neighbor is the daughter of one of the people at the temple and I’m guessing it’s someone important.

Walking around the neighborhood, I saw a guy who was dressed in white going into a modern-looking building and thought it was a dentist’s office, but it was a tonkatsu restaurant! I love tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets), and I even order it in Korean restaurants in Portland knowing that the tonkatsu there will be thin slices of pork that aren’t what I’m used to. The special was oroshi tonkatsu, or tonkatsu with shredded daikon radish and I had to try it. It was great and just around the corner from the hotel we usually stay at. I was the only customer at 11AM which was good, since every table had an ash tray on it.

After that I wandered around geek shopping. I got my data SIM, I checked out the things my mom wanted but didn’t buy them quite yet, and wandered aimlessly looking for a curry restaurant my sister talked about. I ended up in the “scary” part of Shinjuku’s Kabukicho, where the people finally stopped trying to get me to come into their restaurants and were hocking girls and illicit DVDs instead. Walking back towards the train station, I saw a bunch of huge Japanese guys in the nicest suits I’ve seen in a long time, which is weird because they weren’t lightweight summer suits. They were built like linebackers and looked exactly like what I’d cast as Japanese gangsters, two on each side of the narrow street. They were talking in a friendly manner with oddly simple language to another group of big guys who were dressed in more thuggish clothing. At that point I decided I never wanted to be on that street again. I found a police box and checked the map of where I was, and it was only halfway to the hotel my sister asked me to find. I don’t think I’ll recommend that hotel to anyone unless they can find another route there.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon trying not to fall asleep (hence the coffee). For dinner I went to a Nepalese/Indian restaurant where I ate too much. There were other Nepalese people there and they were eating all sorts of things I didn’t see on the menu that looked like yakisoba and shumai. Who knows. All I remember is that it took forever for them to bring my check, not that I was in a hurry.

Tomorrow may be more shopping, or not. It’s supposed to be rainy so I may just hide out. But there’s so many things to see, even where you’re not expecting them.

What a long day. I got on the plane around 1:30PM PDT and got off after midnight PDT. Then I got to navigate the airport, then the train, and then make it to my hotel which is a lot nicer than I thought it would be but is in an odd part of Korea town. I did spend the afternoon and evening sitting on my ass watching movies, Battleship, The Avengers, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Tower Heist so it was more like a vacation than I’ve had lately.

Here are some pictures of my room:

With useless closets:

But a fairly nice mini-kitchen:

And a real bathroom, not one molded out of one piece of plastic!

And views from the window:

I walked around last night looking for something to eat but this is Korea Town and busy enough that there are people trying to drag you into their restaurants. And I bet all the restaurants are full of cigarette smokers. So I chickened out and went to a chain restaurant and got something I can’t get in the US anyway: a seafood doria.

I’ll try to be braver tonight.

Every year, come September, I am a prisoner in my house. It’s not just me; my neighbors are in the same boat. The f*cking swifts blow into town and everybody and his brother decide to come to see them.

Some of my neighbors are even more annoyed and actually do something about it. One got signs for the bottom of the street that say “Local Access” but that just meant that when the hill was full, people would stand in the street. It was nuts today.

But I did see a friend who hasn’t been in the gym since last winter, and my old General Chemistry professor from 1992-ish whose husband happens to meditate with my neighbor! I didn’t know that. I also saw some mylar balloons stuck in the power lines and called it in to the emergency number around 6PM because they were near some pole transformers. I wasn’t sure if it warranted a call to the emergency number, but a repair crew came about 9:30PM and took them down. The mylar balloons just being near the power lines caused a sizzling sound and could have cause a blackout.

I’ve been talking a lot about getting rid of a bunch of stuff out of the house and here’s a picture of my dad’s desk back shortly after he passed away in 2007. You can see all the stuff that I had to sort through and may understand why I gave up at some point.

There’s more of my dad’s stuff all throughout the house, and that’s the reason I took extra time off to get rid of some of it.

I knew I’d probably laze around and be lazy about doing the only difficult thing of my day (besides waking up), going to the gym. Wednesday I had breakfast with Megan and the combination of staying up late reading a bad thriller, waking up every time I rolled over onto my arm where I got my tetanus shot, a greasy diner breakfast, and way too much diner coffee made me feel kind of off all day. I figured, what the heck, I’m on vacation, and I took another day off.

Every day I’ve been taking furniture to the Community Warehouse and miscellaneous other stuff to Goodwill. Today I think I sorted through the crap that was in and on my dad’s desk because it was random and uncategorizable. They’re beginning to recognize me at both places. The guys at the Community Warehouse are more friendly, and one asked me if I just wanted a key so I could bring stuff in when I felt like it. Goodwill isn’t unfriendly, but just a lot more businesslike.

I have a lot more stuff to sort through, but at least I made a dent in things. The problem is that I keep finding interesting but useless things, like this menu.

It’s probably not worth anything, but it is interesting to look at.

I almost got up a little early today because my spider alarm went off. I’d call it a smoke detector but the only times its gone off, spiders have crawled out of it (plus, no smoke).It’s all a bit ridiculous if you ask me.

I also had my normal plans disrupted because of a trip to the doctor. What I thought was a problem turned out to be not much of a problem so instead he gave me a ‘flu shot. Then, just for fun, he also gave me a tetanus shot since he didn’t have whooping cough boosters without the tetanus mixed in. We’re protecting all the weird Republican/religious kids whose idiot parents don’t understand what vaccinations are for.

In any case, my arms were sore, more from the ‘flu vaccine than the tetanus shot, and I felt a bit tired so it didn’t make any sense to  miss the Monday night football game go to the gym so I stayed home tonight.

Oh, and I did get rid of 57 more books, most of which were coffee table books. I was going to get rid of more stuff but, hey, I can’t do everything at once, especially with two sore arms.

I didn’t get much done today besides going out to dinner for my brother-in-law’s birthday. I thought about clearing out some more stuff from the house, but really just ended up watching football. I got some gardening fabric down on my new dirt farm, also known as the front yard, but that didn’t take much doing.

Yesterday I got rid of some more furniture and a bunch of books. I tried to take the books to somewhere I like to take books (Title Wave Used Books) but they were closed, thanks to budget cuts I’m sure. They don’t answer the phone, the web site is useless, and the only way you could know when they’re open is to drive up to the sign in front of the door. Instead of driving around with books all weekend or carting all the books back into the house, I took them to Goodwill where they treated it all like garbage. I’m not sure why I even try taking anything even slightly fragile there. At least the Community Warehouse has been super nice and I expect Title Wave will be nice as well (they have been in the past).

Ah well, I’m on vacation.