#24 Komine Park and the terrifying tunnel, Tokyo

Transcript

Okay, let's do a little Tokyo test. This is the idea that no matter where you go or where you're going, you won't be alone. There will be people everywhere. So I'm on the, it's a kai chi line. It's a little before noon, I think, on a Saturday. And this is a pretty small line, really far in Western Tokyo. And it only runs five or six stops. And I'm going deeper in. I'm at Akigawa and I'm going to Musashi. It's a kai chi. I think it's called that afternoon. I'll double check when I get there. But everybody is on the other platform because that's the direction that goes into Tokyo proper. On my side of the platform, there's a few people way at the end of the platform. But they're all just really old folk. At my end, there's nobody. And I want to see. It's like, well, I can't do podcasting while I'm on the train. I shant to do it. I will not be the guy. I will not be the guy who's talking on the train. But if there's ever going to be a train car with nobody on it, except me. This is the one, man. This is the time. So let's see. So the reason I'm going on this adventure today is I stayed here in Akiruno in 2019 and I loved it. And now that I'm back, I love it. Again, it is just mountainous. Mountains all around. Just beautiful. I don't know what that is saying. Something is constantly beeping and announcing a thing over and over. Anyway, I walked along this line because I was here for a while, at least three weeks. So I walked to every stop on this, on this train line, except the final one. But I figured like, yeah, I've seen it. I've seen this neighborhood, good neighborhood. I like it. But to get on the train and travel to the final stop, you know, seems like a slightly strange thing to do because I'd seen literally everything else. It wasn't until my last day, the next day I was shipping out, that me and my friend Brad went to Osawa Falls where you have to go to the end of this train line, then get on a bus, go up through a big beautiful mountainous area that's fucking awesome. See a waterfall? That's okay. Waterfalls, not a take your breath away waterfall, but not a bad waterfall.

But I realized as we were traveling along on the train, why I had never stumbled upon the final station even when walking, even if I walked all day and walked quite far, because it's a lot further than the second to last station. And it curves through these mountains and even just the ride there. I was looking at the window and I was like, whoa, like I knew that things got pretty beautiful around here because as I walked, I did have a couple of times where I sort of stumbled into the beginning of the mountains, like into the foothills enough that I'd like climb up onto a ridge and just see mountains ahead of me. And it's like that feeling that you never get in Tokyo, you never get to the end, you never get to the edge, you know. And here if you walk most directions, it's the same way. It just continues on forever. But if you go to specific places, it is like, yeah, shit, those are just mountains. Like I'm in literal mountaineering mode now. I don't know how far that goes. Like where does that end?

So the final line, it does go through those types of mountains to get there and then it was this whole extra little little neighborhood. And I don't really know what's there because all I did was go to a 7-Eleven and grab a coffee and just plunk her down and wait for Brad. It's like a good landmark. Like, hey, I'm at the 7-Eleven. That's right across the street from the station.

And I don't know if there's anything there. I mean, there might not be. It might just be just a neighborhood with houses and stuff. I haven't really checked a map yet. What I'm going to do first. What is that? That is really weird. I've never been on a subway station where it's just constantly ringing a bell and saying stuff. That's strange. But yeah, since last time, I pretty much just got on the bus and escaped. This time, I'm just going to walk around that neighborhood because it seems so weird that I found it on my final day. And it's like, damn, the one day I do not have time to go explore this, you know? The next day I had to get up at the crack of dawn and travel all the way from Akigawa to Nareeda Airport, which took literally all day.

I noticed that the one the way out here as well, that when I took the trip from Shinjuku to Tajikawa to Hajimata here, I was just at the right time of day. There was a lot of students and stuff that I was hitting express trains. And it actually wasn't that bad. I went all the way across Tokyo with no real trouble. So I was thinking like, is it true that, you know, if you check how long it takes to get from here to Nareeda, it'll tell you like six hours. And I'm like, that certainly did not take six hours. I mean, I was only traveling half the distance, but it was like much faster than that. But then I realized, oh, it's the express thing. If you're going against the grain, if you leave Akigawa in the morning going to Nareeda, yeah, as you got to stop it every stop, it's literally like a hundred stops. And yeah, that does take six hours. So in this case, because I am heading to Nareeda, just so I can take a quick flight to Fukuoka, I got a place in the middle. I got a place in Chiba for a few days. Because it's really not bad. I mean, I don't mind traveling for six hours across Tokyo. I'll do it. But it's fine if you're heading to an Airbnb. So it doesn't matter if you get there late. But I got to get to a flight that leaves it like one in the afternoon. You know, that's stressful. That's where I'd have to get up at the crack of dawn. And I don't want to do that. I don't want to risk that I don't make it.

So yeah, I'm going to have a little place in Chiba that's like 40 minutes from the airport. And I get to explore Chiba because I've never been there. Anyway, that's the preamble. But because, yeah, this station has got the weird ringing bell that won't stop. And yeah, since it's the weekend, these trains do not run often. It could be a while before my subway gets here. There's the one on the other side. I finished the whole preamble of what I'm doing this episode. So I don't even need to record obnoxiously on the subway train. But I suspect it wasn't going to work anyway. I really don't think I'm going to get a subway car all to myself. But I guess we'll see. I'll let you know.

So it was the very height of hubris for me to even even think that there's a possibility that that train could be empty-ish because it's also a lot of times I find when I'm traveling. I'm like constantly relearning very simple easy stuff that I just forget. In this case, it's very simple transit logic, but it's like, yeah, sure, my station was empty as hell because mine's the middle one. Mine's the middle station of six. Like, I can't remember what it's called now, but there's this one station in Toronto that's famous for being the shittest station, just the station that nobody goes to. But it's because it's kind of in the outskirts a bit. And it's still a pretty busy line because everybody's going to the end of the line because the end of the line is where all the connections are and where you catch buses and you go deeper into Ontario. But if you're just some random ass station in the middle, yeah, of course nobody's getting out there. Nobody gives a sweet fuck about that station unless you happen to live there. Or there's a weird case in Vancouver where they made a train that goes to the airport, which is very handy, but it doesn't just go straight to the airport. It has stops, you know, it's still like, hey, why not? We got the train. It's got to stop places. But the little island that the airport is on, you can get off the train there, but literally nobody does accept the people who live there. So in that case, if you get off the train at one of those stops, you got to pay extra kind of significantly extra because you're paying the, hey, your neighborhood has its own sky train tax. You don't deserve to have this. There's no reason why you have this. So if you're going to use it, you're going to pay motherfucker. But yeah, this is very busy. I suppose the weekend might even make it more busy because this is probably the time to come do scenic-y shit. There's even the dreaded other white people that I see here. They're stumbling around. They don't seem to know what they're doing. But I was wondering too if my memory would hold up because sometimes it doesn't quite. Like I was saying how amazing it was at my building at the taxi cab dispatch. How much I loved in the morning walking out. I thought I was on the second floor, but actually when I went to examine, I was actually on the third floor. So an even better view. But I went up the stairs and just went to the balcony and it's like, I'm only going to do this once because why am I here? If someone does come out of one of these apartments, I can't explain why I'm standing here. You know, I'm not in one of these apartments, but I went up once just to simulate 10:00 the experience. What was it like in the morning to step out of my door and stand on this balcony? And it wasn't as good as I remembered. There is the field that I described last episode when I was standing at the 7-11. I mean, it is a beautiful field with all cool greenhouses and stuff. But there's a big building in the way and like half of the view is obscured and it wasn't nearly as good as it was in my memory. This one though, I was thinking that same thing as we were leaving the station. I was like, was I exaggerating in my mind how beautiful this last stretch of this train is and not at all? It is fucking gorgeous. If you happen to come, maybe you've listened to these podcasts and you're like, you know, when I go to Japan, I'm going to go to random ass Akiruno that I never would have went to because that fucking podcast guy couldn't stop talking about it. If you do happen to do that, it's worth coming to the end of this train line. I mean, who knows what else I'll find as I wander around. But it's literally worth just coming here just to see the view as you come in. You go across a bridge and you look down into this valley where this town is and there's just greenery and trees all over the place and it is so gorgeous. It's insane.

Like I mean, I don't know how it would ever happen that I would ever live in Japan because of my total inability to speak the language or my huge distaste for bureaucracy. I can't even imagine jumping over through the hoops. It just wouldn't happen. Maybe if I was the richest man in the world, and I could just, I don't know, throw money at the problem and let someone else sort it up. But even that would seem kind of unnecessary. Even if I was the richest man in the world, I could still come visit once in a while. It's no need to just be here forever. But anyway, this would be the neighborhood. This would be where I would want to live because this is like the same feeling as in North Vancouver. There's these amazing mansions that are like built into the cliff side. But there's also a bus that goes by. So you're just in like the most beautiful scenic place. But if you need to get into Vancouver, you can. There's a bus that still goes by, you know, all through the day. So this is similar. This place is so gorgeous and so beautiful and just such a nice, it's like a quaint little town surrounded by all these woods and stuff. And then you could take buses and go further out into the mountains and all this great shit. And there's a major train line here that connects into everything. You know, you can, if you want, come sit on this and end up in Shinjuku. So it's just everything. It's so, it's perfect. I was like, this is incredible. I love this. You know, even if I just walk around today and see nothing, it's worth it already, just to see that. And on top of that, low-brow theater, I was going to go to the 7-11 for lunch, but there's a new days here. And new days is mostly the same as all the other convenience stores, but they're a lot easier to find. Tachikawa and West of there have found. You can pretty much always find one when you hit Tachikawa. And there's just a couple little things. Like they have this blueberry cheesecake pastry thing that is not at every store, but it's so delicious. I went to Hyjimastation yesterday. I don't know, it did help decide when I was coming back from Spider-Man. I could have just walked, but I was like, I'm going to take the train because I know I can get that blueberry cheesecake pastry thing at the new days in Hyjimastation. So I took the train literally just for that, but they also have, I'm hoping they have them here, they have these bigger sushi rolls where it's like a sandwich. It's basically not a sushi roll, it's like a anonigiri, but it's like flat. You can make them at home too, it's like a really easy way to make these where you've got the nori, the seaweed, and you've got the rice just as flat as a square, and you put the fillings on, and instead of wrapping it into a ball, you just fold it over like a sandwich, and I've only ever seen them convenience store-wise at new days. I looked it up one time, it apparently is like an old timey, it's like how they used to make them in the 60s, and it's becoming a bit more popular again. So yeah, I'm excited about that too, I'm going to go to new days and see what this new days has in store for me, eat my convenience store lunch, and then I'm going to start wandering around, and I got some stuff to ramble about, whether I see anything interesting or not, but just in many directions there's trees, at the very least, to me that's interesting, that's good enough, so sorry, I'm off to get lunch.

All right, there's kind of a lot of traffic up by the station, because that's obviously the center point of stuff, but just hop down some stairs into the valley and within minutes I'm by a nice little river with some various people doing stuff along the banks. But let's do, 15:00 having that one of these in a while. Let's do a listen to me eat segment, because I got some stuff. I got minstuna with wasabi on a giri, but I might save that for a bit, because that one is not so weird. This one, Hokkaido seaweed. I like nori, I like seaweed, which is a little surprising, because I used to, I have a Dutch uncle, but as a kid he was always trying to feed me dulce, and I didn't like dulce. Dulce is like a, maybe I just didn't have fresh dulce, but to me it was very spongy, and it's got these little like, postules, these little bubbles, and it's weird. But he also tried to feed me black licorice, which I didn't like, and nowadays I love black licorice, I think it's awesome. So maybe I do like dulce, maybe I just was too young. Nori's very different, but you know, it's usually just the wrapping. Hokkaido seaweed as the main dish, as the main center. I kind of suspect I don't think I'm gonna really like this, but I just want to try it, because it's like, what is this? So let's try that first. Hokkaido seaweed on a giri. Did I ever describe this packaging, by the way? It's so neat. I think I might have, but I found a tricky at first, but it is numbered, and it has a little diagram where you pull the number one tab at the top of the triangle of the onigiri, and that separates the wrapping into two remaining parts, and then you have to kind of shimmy each of those off, but the way it's wrapped, the seaweed and the rice are separate. Because if the seaweed gets too moist, that's not a bad thing, but it turns different, instead of being a little crunchy, it becomes more of that sort of sticky, hard-to-tare, dulcy sort of thing. And if it's dry, you know, it's just like a little, it's almost like a really thin little cracker. You can eat it like a little snack, or like rice paper, I guess. So this, you kind of get both, you know, it only touches the rice just before you eat it, so it gets a little bit damp and you get the best of both worlds, and it's really cool. But I do remember the first couple of times I tried to eat one of these, it was a disaster, I couldn't even unwrap the thing, I kind of wrecked it.

All right, Hokkaido seaweed, let's give this a shot.

It's really cloudy today, by the way, super overcast, but not raining.

Pretty windy. Yesterday I had a point where I left Spider Mountain.

As the sun was going down, I had a little moment where it's like, I feel like I don't have enough layers, I kind of want to pull my arms into my coat sleeves, or I mean, pull my arms out of my sleeves and into my coat, but I didn't, I didn't have to do that, but I had the thought. So I just want to realize like, okay, waiting for the weather to have it, it's got it, it's got the ability to battle now. So today I'm wearing my rain resistant jacket, but also a thermal shirt. And I was thinking like, I hope it's not, you know, if it gets super warm, thermal shirts are a pain because I'm trying to pull them on and off, especially if you wear glasses, then you have headphones in and stuff, it's a pain in the butt.

But so far, it's serving me well. The chill of fall is finally settling in. I guess it's just the lack of sun is really the difference maker. This isn't bad, it was kind of indistinct though, I'm just not really sure what it tastes like, it kind of tastes like I think they just put some sugar in here because it seems just kind of generically pretty tasty. I apologize if my mouth starts sounding kind of sticky during this

segment because I eat more and more of this stuff, it seems inevitable. But yeah, I don't know, I don't have strong feelings about that, it definitely wasn't bad, so I guess that's good, but it also wasn't very distinct, so I don't know if I would get it again.

I've been thinking I should start exploring plum, because they got sour plum candies the other day, and they were like, they make the top of your head explode, they were so sour. Plum is a good example of kind of a weird flavor. It's not necessarily pleasant, but it really stands out, you know, so I was like, hmm, let's explore plum a little. But Hokkaido Seaweed, I'm not sure, not bad, but just a thing. So let's get a little more min-max, let's get a little more all-in-er-all out. They have the isle of miscellaneous super Asian fish stuff, and this is one I did not see it, any of the major convenience stores, it's just squid tentacles with the suckers on them, 20:00 soft, sweet, and vinegared squid. So I mean, I like the dried shredded squid, parts, shreds. So let's try one that is more squid-y and vinegared. I mean, I like vinegared too, so this one seems pretty weird, but I am, but I'm a bit confident that I might like it.

This is also the largest package, so I think my other garbage will go into this to become at least one piece of garbage rather than a million, and I'll just keep it in my back pocket until I can figure out somewhere to throw it away. Oh God, it looks so awful. It looks like a Guar music video, it's a little, little tray, and there's the squids. I mean, that's squid tentacles.

See, this is the kind of thing where I had my plans for how I could trick my dad into eating Japanese food if I had ever gotten the opportunity. You know, stuff like beef or chicken teriyaki rolls that don't even involve fish, like that would have got his put in the door. I think that would have worked, but this would have been hilarious just to put it down in front of him, and I think I could have convinced him to eat. Well, I guess the thing, I think it was me and my dad alone, he wouldn't eat it, but if I presented him something like this in front of his friends, he would eat one. All right, let's try this. God, it really just looks crazy. It's like I'm eating squidward, squidward's arms.

So, initially, you do get the vinegar helps it get it in your mouth because it's on your tongue, and you just taste vinegar. So it's like, oh, that's okay.

And then the squid after taste, which I'm not sure how I feel about squid. I mean, I do like it, but it's not like, I mean, I got a little thing like this the other day, 7-Eleven, that was vinegar tuna, just enough. It's like a little square of vinegar tuna on rice. And that was super delicious, you know, tuna, salmon, so delicious. Squidward, I'm not sure, I mean, I don't dislike it, but I don't like crave it. I am just more eating it just because it's like, when else am I going to have easy access? It's like, I just want to try things while I'm here. But I don't think I'm going to miss squid, so it's kind of right in the middle. Whereas eel, maybe I need to try eel again. But I'd ever once in a while, I would upgrade one of my, you know, like Vancouver has pretty legit sushi. And you always have to pay extra for eel, and every time I tried it, I always wished I had, you know, because I liked the just California rolls better. So I think I don't like eel, but I do need to try it again. I very much like tuna and salmon, you know, because I'm a basic bitch. Squid, I don't know, squid.

I'm on the fence about squid. But I don't hate it, so I have to go.

Okay, we'll save that. I'm going to do this in, uh, in waves. Like, too many meals.

So I had the, uh, the rice ball and some squid. Now I'll have a dessert, then I'll go back, have the other rice ball finish the squid and a second dessert. But I'm not sure I should proceed here. So I got the blueberry. It's called Unbaked Cheese Blueberry. They did have it, and it's, it's so fucking good. It's just like a little crepe with a, a little square of cheesecake stuff inside and blueberry sauce. Fucking delicious. Then they had a chocolate banana one, which I've had those before. They're pretty good. There was tiramisu. I was going to try just because I'd never had that kind. But I was thinking how, I don't know, I just don't really like tiramisu all that much in real life in normal tiramisu. So, so instead I just got custard cream. However, this is the one. I think I'll just try this now. This was the last second while I was just waiting to pay for my stuff purchase. And it's a Snickers. And that seems absurd, right? Like, why would you come to Japan and buy a Snickers? What a waste of time. But I got a reason. First off, I do think it's okay to just experiment with the very lowest of brows. Like, I've never gone to Burger King or Wendy's or McDonald's here, but I would, I wouldn't be against it just to see. I bet there's something different about it, you know, and who knows. I have not, and I probably won't, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't hold it against you. Because like, I do think in some ways it's instead of just getting like squid, you know, it's kind of neat to just go with the stuff that's nearer what you know and see what the differences are. Like, for instance, me and my friend Brad, we went to Denys 25:00 in Akihabra and he like took a picture of the Denys and posted it on social media somewhere just says like a joke kind of. Like, finally, I get, you know, came all the way to Japan and I get to go to Denys, you know. So, you know, just look how low brow we are. We're going to Denys. But the reality is, Denys turns out, Denys is radically different in Japan. It was like a legitimately worthwhile thing to go to Denys because whatever you're imagining your moons over my hammy and shit, they ain't got that shit. They got all these like rice dishes and stuff and a little all you can drink juice by our thing and it's, it's different enough that if you go to Denys every day, I might ask what the hell you're doing, but to go to Denys once, I'm glad I went. It's neat to know how Denys is different because even that was kind of interesting because we were right in Akihabra. That place was full of white people and it was funny to look at the other tables and see people. Big fat Americans, sorry, sorry to be offensive, but it's true. Those people I saw earlier today, they're definitely Americans. Say, during my fucking eating segment, you have a problem with food America. You have a serious problem with it. You need to calm the fuck down. You're drowning yourself in food. Fuckin' stop it. Anyway, it was funny to watch those people hearing at the Denys menu and it's like, it's like they don't have their glasses on. They're pulling it back. Like, this isn't Denys. How am I supposed to eat here? What is all this stuff? It's funny.

So anyway, Snickers, I think in North America, Snickers is a pretty good bar. It's, you know, it's pretty decent. But what I was really shocked by in my low-brow way is I was in Amsterdam and it's like, yeah, you know, I'm going to get strupe waffle and I'm going to get all the other stuff whose names I can't think of now. You know, the the breaded, deep-fried kip stuff. Croquet, crock, what was it called? Anyway, the licorice and stuff. I had all this stuff. I had all the Dutch stuff, but in Central Station, there was a chocolate bar machine and I grabbed a Snickers and it tasted different, like noticeably significantly different. And I think better. Both versions are good, but I just really like the Amsterdam version, the European version of Snickers. And then when I went back, I got some Snickers again and I was like, yeah, no question about it. It's better. So when I saw this Snickers, I was like, well, I have to. I have to find out. What kind of Snickers is this? I mean, the wrapper looks different. It's really shiny. It's the basic Snickers logo, but it's like super duper. This looks brand new. It's not, I don't know, it looks like our wrappers are like worn out. This one is like shiny and awesome. But is this going to be a North American Snickers experience? A European Snickers experience, or a unique Japanese Snickers experience? Fuck it. Race to the bottom with me. Let's find out.

And I also like sometimes the eat Snickers as though it's two things, like the Newgity bottom part and the peanut upper part. So I'm going to try that first. I'm going to eat the bottom part and an upper part. Then both parts together for proper science.

This is feeling North American to me. Let's try the top half.

Hmm, when the top half doesn't taste like either, it first gave me a little bit of the European feeling, but then the taste of the peanuts is not the same as either country. It's a little different. Let's try the whole thing together. Yeah, now there's settling in. It's the North American style Snickers, definitely. I don't really know how to describe it. I don't know how to say what the difference is or what it is about the European one that tastes different, but it's definitely different. It's got a weird aftertaste where this just has the aftertaste of sugar. So, okay, we'll save the other half of you for later. Alright, I'm just going to eat this minced tuna with wasabi and finish off the squid and save all of my junk food until later. Got to get some hikening, get some walking in. Battle back a little against these calories. Remember that guy? He still does stuff. I'm review bra, review of the week. He guy in YouTube would just review his fast food. And in a way, I mean, it's kind of funny. He's like dressed in a suit and he talks to these from the 1920s and he's very proper, but he's just describing fast food. But I just realized like with that Snickers thing, you can totally do that. You know, if anything, our palettes in North America were extremely trained to do 30:00 that type of thing. Like, that wasn't guesswork. It wasn't like, oh, I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite sure how I feel about squid. I'm very sure how I feel about Snickers. It's like, oh, this is North American style Snickers. There's no fucking question about it. It's not funny. It's like, yeah, that's what we were born to do, baby. Hmm, minced tuna and wasabi is good, but I do think as far as these rice balls go, tuna mayo, the basic one is just the best one. Kind of like how I still think for Mackey rolls, like a California roll is still my favorite one. For actual sushi and sashimi, tuna and salmon are my favorite ones. Like, the the basic ones, they're just so good. They're just nice to switch it up sometimes, but even this, it's still tuna, and it's good, but tuna mayo is still my favorite. But anyway, there's the eating report. I guess since I'm down here by the river, I'm just going to keep walking along the river. See what happens. Seems like a good place to start things out. Oh, yeah, I also got a coffee. What is this brand called? Because yeah, this is one. As soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, that, you see beans and roasters, cafe latte, relaxing sweetness and silky milk. It's sort of in a tall can. I got it hot, but it's getting a little cool now. But the reason this stood out is the first time I visited the way this time it was trying to find crab soup, you know, like I like to find a rare item and then keep my eye open for it in the machines. In the summer of 2019, beans and roasters, cafe latte, had a banana flavor and a strawberry flavor, and they were both very hard to find. And the banana one was okay and the strawberry one was amazing. So they were, they were my thing that every time I saw them, it was like, yeah, cool. I found the thing, and it only happened a few times. So now they just have normal cafe latte. They don't have any of the cool flavors, but it's still the same brand. So I'm like, oh, sweet, I'll buy that. All right, I'm going to get walking and we'll tune in later when either something happens to me, or if nothing happens to me, I'm going to ramble a bit about some continuation thoughts from yesterday's adventures on Spider-Man. All right, here's one of my classic ill-advised podcasting moves. I'm walking up the side of a mountain. There's these cool little steps built into the mountain where it's like two pegs of like tree branch things like, but bigger than a branch. Like a small tree trunk, two pegs of tree trunks and then the log laid out across it and then dirt packed into make steps. And this is one of the steepest mountains I've ever walked up that just has steps in it, but hopefully it's not too much bigger. It doesn't seem extremely huge, but I had to stop halfway up because I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm dying here. But yeah, I was walking around and I'm like, this is nice just walking around this neighborhood, but I wasn't really sure where I was going or what I was doing. So I thought, you know, if I'm just going to walk at random, what if I did try to walk back toward Akigawa station? So I pull up my map and it's like, this seems probably ill-advised. There's literally only one major route to it. It's like a highway. Oh, although a giro castle ruins are on it. So maybe I might see what that's all about. It's almost 230. I got a couple hours of sunlight, which is not enough. But then I saw in the map, Kumine Park. So I'm like, oh, all right, that's pretty close and I'm walking around anyway. So let's go there and so far this place is very fucking nice. It's like this nice mix of, you know, it's very natural like this, like all these little paths have been walking down are all very nature-y. But at the same time, there's like a visitor center at the bottom and midway through a little guesthouse place. So it's got, you know, still got drink machines and it's still got visitors centers and washrooms. And it's just fucking gorgeous because we're into the mountains now. And every time, you know, you can peek out through the vegetation, you can just see for millions of miles. There's little tour buses that bring little groups. It seemed to be older people. They're mostly hanging out down at the bottom, having some kind of a little picnic. They're not heading up into the mountains. Okay, it's leveled out. It's swerved around. Oh, there we go. Back up. Back up. So it's so far. I mean, this is already totally worked. I got to take the cool train ride. I got to go to new days 35:00 and buy a bunch of fun crap to eat. And I wandered accidentally into a beautiful park. But yeah, this is extra good because central Tokyo is, I think why it's the capital, if I understand right, is because it's flat. That's why it has developed so well because Japan is extremely mountainous. And apparently for long distance driving and stuff, highway tolls and things are supposed to be terrible because it's so expensive to go around or through mountains and stuff.

So I think Tokyo is good because it's flat. But not flat is much more interesting to walk around. So this is cool. I'm into a bunch of really cool parks. But this one, man, yeah, I'm like, it is severe. How steep this is and just like heading up. I mean, it's not like a Dutch staircase, but this is unusual. Usually these slopes are a lot more gentle.

Oh, here we go though. It's balancing out again.

Get a very distinct Indiana Jones feeling. I'm just going through the jungle.

So yeah, that's something I wanted to bring up. So yesterday, I was on Spider Mountain. And I was saying how those spiders do remind me of old Sega Master System games. You know, a lot of the animals in video games I played as a kid because those games came from Japan. Now I'm recognizing. I was like, oh yeah, those are the animals.

I gotta take another break here.

But I was getting pretty freaked out by the sheer number of spiders on that mountain. It was like frightening. And one of the things that was in my mind a little just knowing nothing and being so ignorant of anything about spiders and these spiders in particular is I was thinking like, okay, so if all the games I played as a kid had spider enemies and they look a lot like these spiders, another thing that many spiders do in video games is they drop. They fall from the trees onto you. And that was definitely in my mind as well. And I decided to bail out and stop trying to make my way through that mountain. But I looked it up when I got home. So if anyone's curious, those spiders, it's the Joro Spider, J-O-R-O Spider. And my mind was calmed considerably just by doing a little research. It reminds me of after hiking through a bunch of mountains in Fukuoka. It wasn't until afterward after I ran into a couple of boars and things that it occurred to me. Maybe I should be concerned about bears because there's a YouTube channel Go North Japan where he talks often about how to protect yourself against bears while hiking. And I was like, man, am I just wandering into the woods completely unprepared like a stupid fuck? But in that case, I was glad to learn. Bears are only in northern Japan. In Kiyushu, I believe is the name of that southern island that Fukuoka is on. There are no bears in Kiyushu. It's too warm. So similarly here, there are 50,000 different types of spiders in Japan. And there's only one dangerous one, the classic black widow, which is pretty easy to identify because it's black, kind of circular, with red markings on its back. And they're still pretty rare, but they are around. So that's something to be aware of. But the other 50,000 types are fine. Oh, fuck, it's still going up. Another rest, I'm just going to just stop at each of these plateaus. Oh, I guess this could go up pretty far because I'm looking ahead of me through the trees. And there's like power lines, the big super industrial power line towers. And there's a mountain much higher than that. So if this mountain is comparable, no wonder the old folk are staying at the bottom. I did pass some people like a family, I think, that were coming down the mountain with their dog. But yeah, these other spiders are not dangerous. So it's just like I was saying back home in Canada, I always like spiders. I'm glad to have them around because anything a spider is eating is something that I would prefer. I'd prefer to have the spider than the thing that it's getting rid of. Spiders are good. So these ones too, and they're beautiful. They're so pretty. They're black and yellow mostly with some green and some red. The Joro spider, give it a look, it looks awesome. And now I know I don't have to be scared of them. I think I still would have bailed out of that mountain because they were just too many of them everywhere. The webs were just in the way. It was getting unpleasant to navigate.

But at least that little back in my brain thing of like, am I just really doing something dangerous? You know, at least now I know I was not. Apparently too. It's amazing how things can spread in the world. I believe I read that the black widows they think came to Japan from Australia on ships. And similarly, these Joro spiders in the last 10 years or so have started appearing in America. And again, probably on ships, but they don't know. They don't quite know where they are and how far they've spread or what effect they're having on the ecosystem. It seems okay so far because they've only been around 10 years and it's just hard to gauge these things. You know, we take for granted all the stuff that scientists have figured out already. But the process of finding out is very slow and gradual and lacking in actual information.

But speaking of spiders falling from the sky, apparently these Joro spiders do in fact make little nets. They make little parachutes out of webs if, you know, there's like a flood happening or crazy storm or something they need to escape from and they sail down from the sky. So the video game fear of a spider dropping down under the back of my neck, like probably not going to happen, but it could. But that's cool. That's the spider update because if you only listen to last episode, it is, you know, it's like a reaper madness of spiders. These scattered spiders, oh no spiders. It wasn't that bad, but I was definitely, I was definitely wigged out. The spiders are giving me the wig.

So that's the nature news, appropriate to walking through nature, but even though I'm walking through nature.

Let's talk about the opposite. Let's talk about tech news. Again, this is the kind of thing that on the surface, I mean, is really boring. I kind of set off on this podcast deliberately, not attempting necessarily to be like entertaining. I just want to kind of chronicle what it's like to go on a little solo trip.

So I think stuff like just what you're carrying on you. I find interesting because it's so limited. You got your bag, you got the stuff in the bag, every little item is important. And you know, you need to think it through. So to me, this stuff's interesting. But I think, objectively, it's not. I'm just going to ramble to you about a tiny cord.

But that's what I'm here to do. Still going up. Oh, I remember the glory days when I used to, you know, the really deep subways in Montreal and I'd run up the stairs on purpose as exercise.

Now that I have a bad knee, I remember the day. It was in Toronto. There's this really cool in Eastern Toronto. This really cool pathway. It's like a valley, like a gorge that goes down under a bunch of big overpasses. It's quite a nice walk. You can start around warden station or so and head west from there. And I remember there's some steps there and I ran up and down them for no reason just for exercise. And then I went to Montreal right after that. I felt like the next week my knee was so messed up. I had a hard time walking up and down stairs. So now it's like I wear a knee brace and I'm just careful with it. I'm sure it's all tied into my scoliosis and the tilt in my pelvis. It's like an eight degree tilt. And my leg, my left leg, which is the one with the bad knee. If I stand naturally, my right leg, my foot points forward, but my left leg is at a 45 degree angle. I don't know why it just naturally does that. So I've like muscle memory, trained myself to walk with both legs straight. But to me, it feels like I'm duck footed, like I'm forcing my foot, my left foot inward. That's how it feels. But the result is that it's just straight and it does help a lot. It helps my knee not hurt.