Jingu Gaien
The street leading to the Jingu gaien is lined by well manicured ginkgo trees that would make this an amazing spot to visit when the autumn colours come out.

The middle of the park is dominated by the Kaiga-kan. The Kaiga-kan was built to honor the Meiji Emperor in the second half of the 1920 and is used to house a number of paintings depicting historical events that were important during the reign of the Meiji Emperor.



 

The area is now also home to a number of sporting stadia including 2 full sized base ball stadiums, an outdoor field that can host 4 baseball games at the same time and the rugby field where the Wallabies played the All Blacks late in 2009.


 
There are also some very well organised homeless guys here, including this guy who managed to find some coat hangers to keep his cloths on.
 
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Aoyama cemetery
After returning to Tokyo I needed a little walk around town just clear away some cobwebs and headed to the Aoyama cemetery, a 45 minute walk from home, to check out an area that lots of people had told me I should visit. It was a great day with typical spring weather and the road through the middle of the cemetery would be amazing when the cherry blossoms come out as the trees line every metre of the road.

The Aoyama cemetery was Japans first municipal cemetery and was opened in the 1870’s. There are also a number of foreigners buried in this cemetery.

One thing the Japanese really know how to do is build shrines and monuments to those that have passed on. The Aoyama cemetery had some huge pieces of inscribed stone bearing testimony to the lives of those that came before.

The families of the departed tend to the graves and all of the graves were amazingly maintained. While I walked through the cemetery I saw people pruning trees, sweeping up leaves, and leaving offerings of beer and cigarettes.


In an Alfred Hitchcock moment a huge flock of crows started circling the cemetery and calling out to each other. They then began landing on some of the monuments, eyeing me intently – I decided that it was time to depart – the cemetery.









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Tama river fisheries
On my recent trip to the mountains I came across a popular fishing spot on the Tama river. It costs about 3500 yen ($45) to fish in this stretch of river for the day.


I headed up river from where I first saw the river intent on seeing if I could spot any fish in the river. The first clue of what was coming was the banner across the bottom of the river “beat”. As you can see from the river it looked a lot like some of the water you would see in the New Zealand mountains, just not the same wilderness experience.
 
Upon rounding the corner in the river I was greeted by the sight of about two dozen guys fishing in the series of beats up and out of sight around the next bend in the river. From looking at the website of the “fishery” it is apparent that the section of river is divided into a number of areas dedicated to different methods of fishing. The fisheries office also has some storage pools that contain any number of 1-1.5 pound rainbow trout that were placed in the river during the course of the day.



In an almost sacrilegious occurrence these guys lump spin fishers in with fly fishers. The top section of the open waters on this day was reserved for people practising traditional Japanese long pole fishing. It uses equipment very similar to coarse fishing equipment (long multi-piece carbon fibre rods with no reel and a fixed section of line on the end).
 
 
There was a mixture of water that could be fished from some beautiful looking pocket water to so long slow pools.



Spin fishermen were by far the most prevalent and were catching a number of fish from the slower pools using small red spinners. As the fish were still in their spawning colour I can only assume that the spinners were the fly fishers equivalent of a globug.


One guy pulled out about 8 fish (all uniform colours and size) while I watched and then just packed up – picked up the fish headed back to his car and drove off. A nice 30 minutes of fishing if you can get it.


While it was good to find this spot as a potential fishing destination and having it within 2 and a half hours of home is not such a bad thing the one major drawback is the lack of any sort of experience. I have seen photos of this particular section of river during summer time where you could fit another person onto the bank. I might have to give it a miss and try and find somewhere a little more remote.
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Truely refreshing drinkability
Continuing my research into Japanese beer I was standing in front of the beer fridge at my local supermarket and noticed the smallest can of beer in the world – why bother? So Asahi comes in 135 ml (perfect for the kids lunch boxes), 250 ml, 350 ml and 500 ml cans.

All this and it has "truely refreshing drinkability", what else could you want?


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Tsunami
I managed to get back to Australia for celebrations in the beginning of March and was looking forward to nothing more than escaping down the beach and having a bit of a swim. Unfortunately Japan had followed me to Australia and all beaches on the east coast of Australia had been “closed” following the earthquake in Chile. Prior to moving to Japan I probably would have gone for a swim at the beach anyway but now I must conform…
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Mountain walks, temples and Yamame Part 1
The weather on the weekend was sensational and having been in Japan for 6 months it was time to get out of Tokyo proper and go for a walk in the mountains. Looking through the Lonely Planet guidebook “Hiking in Japan” I decided on a walk from Mt Mitake to Oku tama. The mountains on this walk are covered in cedar and cypress forests, around 1000 meters above sea level and overlook the Tama river valley.


The Tama river valley is 2 and a half hour by train from Tokyo and I actually got to get very close to some of my fellow travelers. One guy sitting beside me went to sleep as soon as he sat down and spent a lot of his time leaning against me snoring his head off for 30 minutes. While this was going on the guy on the other side of me decided that a moving train would be a great place to clean his ears with a 6 inch wooden skewer. Every time the train moved I tried hard not to bump into his elbow. I wasn’t too keen to be responsible for piercing his brain with the skewer. After catching a bus from the Mitake station the final part of the journey was by cable car.



On the way to the mountains I remembered the snow we had in Tokyo on Tuesday wondered if this may make things a little difficult given that all of the peaks I was going to traverse were over 1000 meters.


From the top of the cable car you follow a trail through the cedar forests to a mountain top village.



I visited the information centre to see if the track was still open and was told that, given the state of the track, it wouldn’t be a good time. One thing I have begun to like in Japan is the one word on each side conversations that I manage to have – I said where I was going, the guy said Crampons, I said no and he made this wonderful sound that is so Japanese – never say no just make this sound. To make the right sound put your teeth together, draw your lips back like you’re grimacing and then draw your breath back in quickly – that’s the no don’t think about it sound. When I heard this sound I took it for what it meant and decided to do another walk.



While on the mountain I visited the Mushimitake shrine. There has been a shrine on the top of this mountain since before Christ was born. It is in a great location facing almost due east, supposedly to protect Tokyo (and the cities that have sat in the same location through history). Until 1874 the shrine was both a Buddhist and Shinto shrine, now it is solely a Shinto shrine. You climb what seems to be a never ending number of steps to get to where the temple is located.

 
 
 
 
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Mountain walks, temples and Yamame Part 2
After finding out that the walk I wanted to do was out of the question I asked for a recommendation and was told that the “rock garden” would be a possibility but that some places were a bit steep and maybe a little bit hard.

The walk starts off on the cedar forests and drops down to the side of a stream that winds its way through the forest. The beginning of the walk descends very quickly through the forest and I did pass some great windblown ice on trees.




After a little walking I came across the stream at the bottom of the valley and while I’m sure that it is very pretty during autumn when all of the leaves will have turned great autumnal colours it was pretty spectacular covered in snow. On more than one occasion I thought that I should have brought my cross country skis with me.




One of the things I wanted to do when I came to Japan was to catch a Japanese trout, or a “Yamame”. While walking up the valley I glanced into one of the pools beside the track and managed to catch a glimpse of a Yamame (against that wall just above the stick in the water).


At the top of the valley is the Ayahironotaki waterfall. The water from this waterfall is used for lustration ceremonies (purification) at the Mitake shrine. I guess it must have been the ceremony that accompanies the water because I don’t feel much different. Maybe I should have used the other lustration liquid available on the mountain? It was on the way up from the waterfall that I had the only moment on my walk when about 10 meters above the ground I slipped down the ice and managed to grab a bush on my way back down into the valley.




Walking down from the bottom of the mountain I came across a Yamame farm. At least I know that if I get to the end of my time in Japan and don’t manage to catch a wild Yamame I can sell my sole and go to the farm and catch one here. How may lustration ceremonies would it take to make me feel clean if I did this?

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Let it snow let it snow
Apparently it is not a common experience but snow does happen in Tokyo. I woke up this morning and found that it had snowed overnight.
 
 








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Searching for plastic food

I read an article in a guide book that gave details on how to get to an area of Tokyo that produced plastic replicas that restaurants put in their windows to let customers know what their food looks like. In a lot of cases the plastic food in the window looks a lot better than the food that is served.

Unfortunately the guide book wasn't as complete on its directions as you would hope and I ended up in another area completely.

The weather was very cold - it snowed on several occasions during the day and I managed to find a covered shopping street.







The restaurants in the street had some special window dispalys including a replica temple.


It was so cold I went looking for a coffee but I couldn't bring myself to go into this cafe.



or this "traditional" Japanese tip top diner.




There was also a wedding party being taken around the streets (check out the snow).


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Ahhhh - My precious time
I have been looking for some dark beer in Japan, brewed by a Japanese brewer, that may become my beer of choice. This beer from Kirin caught my attention because the creamy foam will enrich my precious time.



and it did....

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