Since I was going to be off from Friday to Friday, I decided to travel somewhere for at least a few days. I immediately ran into a problem, which should come as no surprise if you’ve actually been reading this blog.
The problem this time was that I couldn’t make hotel reservations online because I didn’t have a credit card. Let me rephrase that. I had a credit card, but it had been canceled. Why? Well, in accordance with some apparently divine plan to mess up everything I tried to do to come to Japan this time, my credit union had merged with another credit union and all cards had been canceled and reissued.
The problem was, no one bothered to tell me about it. I had gotten some information in the mail, I found out later, but of course that information was sitting on the kitchen table 5,000 miles away.
It took some time to get straightened out, but I had the card activated and put in the mail to Japan. However, the numbers wouldn’t work online for some reason. I didn’t really want to venture too far without a reservation or even a credit card. When I think about that, I realize how much I’ve changed. I once slept in a circus tent and lived on sausage and hard rolls for three days in London waiting for my flight home after I had overstayed my budget. I arrived back in L.A. without enough money to make a phone call for someone to come and pick me up. Come to think of it, that may be why I don’t want to do that anymore.
Anyway, there was plenty to see and do on day trips around Tokyo and I made my plans accordingly. On Saturday, I went to a huge book fair in Kanda, the used book store area of Tokyo. I buy and sell books in California in my spare time, so this was just great for me. I bought a nice book on Japanese art and culture from 1940 and saw a few tons of other books and had a nice day at it.
On Sunday, some friends took me out to an Italian restaurant for lunch and when I mentioned having gone to the book fair, they insisted on giving me a set of 12 ukio e (an old style of Japanese art) books that they were going to throw out. Throw out! I spend a lot of time trying to find books like that. There’s a different trash/recycle mentality here that I’ll have to get into at a later time. Anyway, that was another good day for me.
On Tuesday, I undertook a train trip to a place called Mt. Takao or Takao-san as the Japanese call it. It’s actually considered part of Tokyo, but it’s three-hour train ride for me - each way. There’s an online trip planner for trains in Japan, so it was relatively easy for me to figure out how to get there.
I got off to kind of a late start mostly because I don’t like getting up early, so I didn’t arrive until early afternoon. Let’s see - walk, train, change trains, change train, wait, change train, change train, wait again, change train, walk, cable car, Mt. Takao - yeah, about three hours.
The first thing you see from the mountaintop is a tremendous view across the Kanto plain all the way back to Tokyo proper. It really is an amazing view. Pictures can’t do it justice.
Mt. Takao is known for its fall scenery and since it’s fall and Tuesday was a national holiday as well as a day off for my university, it was a bit crowded. There were even a few gainjin (foreigners), which I never see in my home area. On the mountain, the main destination is a temple that’s been there since forever, I guess. I wandered around until I found it and was duly impressed. After that I just took off walking to see what I could see. I wasn’t worried about where I was because I realized long ago that you can’t get lost if you don’t know where you’re going in the first place. That’s been my philosophy of life. You may think that sounds a bit shallow, but it’s worked out for me so far.
So I walked and walked and thought about turning around and going back the way I had come and heading home, but I kept wanting to see what was around the next bend. That’s a corollary to my personal philosophy, by the way. Well, what I found around the last bend was the picture you see on this page.
I didn’t even know I was anywhere close to Mt. Fuji (Fuji-san) and was rather startled to see it off in the distance. What a reward for a long walk and a long day. The picture was taken with a telephoto, but the color is what my camera recorded, unaltered. It was just before sunset. That’s what gives the mountain its shine.
It was beginning to get dark so I turned round and headed back to the cable car. As I walked down the steps back by the temple, I noticed a group of people standing in the middle of the walkway with their cameras out. When I got to where they were, I saw what had stopped them. There was a full moon rising over Tokyo.
It was twilight on the mountain in the trees, but still daylight on the Kanto plain. What the combination of dark and light and city and moon and trees and mountain created was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. It was surreal. I took several pictures, hoping to capture the scene, but when I looked at them later, none of them had come out. Something with the distance and the differing light caused bad exposures
and longer exposures which I hadn’t kept still enough for. I was very disappointed, but the picture you see here can give you some idea of what it looked like. This one was taken further down the trail when it was getting darker. It was still beautiful, but I missed capturing that golden scene at the first stop and I’ll always regret that.
Well, as I said, it was getting dark. Everyone was leaving the mountain and there was a wait for the cable car to get back down. After that, it was the train ride in reverse and three hours later, I was walking up the five flights of stairs to my apartment. Not quite like climbing up to a temple...
The next day there were still no classes. I went to school in the afternoon to start to get ready for Friday, but it was still an easy schedule for the last couple of days off.
The thing about living in the midst of a different culture is that every day has the possibility of showing you something new. My week off showed me the magic of the unexpected and made me realize. I live in Japan.
