#72 Exploring Lake Sagami, Kanagawa, Japan

Transcript

No more mackerel, ginger, soy sauce, delicious 7-Eleven things today. I went to 3 different 7-Elevens. No luck. But I ate two of them yesterday, so it all balances out. And I mean, I never thought I'd see that delicious item again, so I'm not complaining. If it does pop up some more, awesome. If not, know that I'll remember you.

Mando, I think my bantering ability is really atrophied. I mean, I guess that's not surprising, but all these weeks hanging out by myself in Japan, I think I've become a little less sharp, because the lady at the 7-Eleven I was at, she pointed to the ceiling, and I looked up and I'm like, well, I was up with the ceiling, but then I realized, oh, she's saying, I'm tall. And as I was walking out of the parking lot, after, let's breathe descalier, I was like, oh, you know, I could have, it would have been so easy to just pantomime a doorway, and boom, me hitting my head, and we could have had a ha ha. But, it's just so, I'm like, whoa, someone's talking to me? That doesn't happen around here. People don't talk to me unless they want me to join their Buddhist cults. So I just said, yeah, it's cool.

When I also tried a root beer, how I was saying that root beer is very hard to find in Japan, and then I finally found not one but two machines in this neighborhood that had root beer. So I bought one last night to have it ready to go, and this morning it was kind of nice to have a root beer.

But it's the same. I just thought I'd track as, who knows, you know?

Given the Eastern world's general dislike of root beer, I was like, maybe that'll have some weird cool root beer.

But it's the same. Just coming into Kamiya station. So, yeah, this neighborhood, the Airbnb itself is kind of nice. It's really late in the day. It's 130 already. But that's kind of not a bad thing. The reason I'm getting such a slow start is because I was tired and I just went back to bed. Nice and quiet, and I'm all by myself. It's just like, yeah, I'm just going to go back to sleep, which is just very hard to do.

Not only with just the general vibe of being in an Airbnb with people, but having them get up and be up and about, but then all the cleaning staff come in and back human stuff.

On many fronts, it was not going to happen. And I thought I could ramble to myself at the station again, but I just realized I'm going the other way today. I'm not on the empty side. Although, yeah, the one heading to Hajima. Once again, empty. The one heading to Hachiochi. It's quite full.

So, I guess I'll stop talking to myself for a fucking second.

Alright, I'm at Hakeyo Station. It kind of makes sense that I think about it, that the train to Hachiochi was the busy one, because Hachiochi is like a big station in a real neighborhood and stuff. Where, to me.

Oh man, I just went into my wallet for my sweet kick card. And it wasn't there. I was slightly terrified, not just because it has like 60 bucks on it. That's not that big a deal. It's that you can't get sweet kick cards right now. You can't get these temporary visitor ones. I'm just lucky that I had my old one from 2019. Oh, geez. Just went anywhere. Whenever anything is not in its right place, it was in my back pocket, my garbage pocket. Why the fuck did I put it there? That's the first time I've ever misplaced my card, but geez, put the fear of God in me. Yikes. Anyway, I was going to say Hajima Station is the one that's like... To me, that's the cool one, because that's where you get to go to Hachio Runo, or up to Ome and stuff. But I like those because they're the sticks. They're nowhere. Of course, the average person doesn't care about going there. It's only good for mountains. But anyway, it's a little confusing how to get out of Takio. I think I'm stuck here for the next 20 minutes while I wait for 15 minutes while I wait for my obscure train to leave. But I found one of these machines with all the different drinks that spits out a little cup for you. There's one that's strawberry, so I'm just trying to translate it because if it's just strawberry, I think I'll try it because that's unusual. 5:00 But if I could get one that's partially like caffeinated as well as strawberry, I wouldn't say no.

Strawberry cocoa.

Yeah, I think maybe all the strawberry ones are not strawberry coffee, because that is kind of an unusual thing. Alright, well, whatever. Let's just try it anyway. Let's try one of these and see what happens. Okay, let's see. Less sugar, please. More of everything else. I don't know what I'd always. Hot or cold? Is that what this is?

I actually don't know. It's kind of a nice day out, so I'm not sure what it's set to. I'll just take whatever it gives me.

Now it's counting down. Okay, so we could card you go back in your home in my wallet. So yeah, this place, Takio, I've been kind of circling around this where I remember I saw an Airbnb near here and it was saying like, oh, it's great for hiking on the mountain and stuff. But it was one of those, you know, more communal type places. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to stay there. And then I lolligagged long enough that it was gone. Oh, here's my drink. Looks like I got cold. Cold version. Probably better because these things come out of these machines really hot.

Yeah, I think it's just strawberry. Hot chocolate. I don't believe it's a coffee thing, but it's very tasty. That's where I'm not sure because it's not like crazy sweet. Although I guess I turned down the sugar, whatever that means for this drink, if that's even. I'm never quite sure of all the options even work for all this stuff. Anyway, very nice, but that's how I first heard of Mount Takio as I was thinking about staying near there. And then it worked out better that I didn't because instead I got the place I met now, which is a little bit more expensive. But again, I'm really learning. It's worth it. It's worth an extra, whatever, eight or ten dollars a day or whatever to not have to deal with other people.

Looking really worth it. You can't take it with you, right? What am I going to do? Get buried? Get buried with my dad's money? I could spend some of it now. And stuff like that is a worthwhile expenditure. And then Mount Takio came up again when I was looking for nature stuff to do in Tokyo when I was in the center of the city. Apparently there's an express train that comes out here that's like four dollars, but I couldn't figure out how that worked. And it still took two hours. So after that trip to Ome, I was like, that's fine. No more trips out of the city. I'll do that later. However, all that is to say I'm not doing that today. I met Takio station. I assume Mount Takio is a ranger somewhere. I haven't looked into it too much.

But since I got started so late today, it's already nearing to a clock. I think that's best saved for when I have more time to figure out what's going on. So instead I just want to go a little beyond Takio, which is what I'm waiting for now. Just like waiting for a train that doesn't leave very often.

There's a few different stops as you go. But what I'm looking for specifically, Sagamiko, which I think might be just one more stop. It's a little ways away, but there's not as many stations once you get further and further out. There's a great big lake by it. Lake Sagami Park. Sagami Dam. Sagami Resort Pleasure Forest. So I'm just going to explore that. Because if I only got a couple more hours in the day, I just want to go see a damn lake. And this is also just a little test run to get a sense for how these trains and stuff work. Seems pretty easy. A lot of transfers, but it's all pretty well labeled. Not a ton of different options. And apparently there's a cool drink machine at this station. So yeah, I think I'm reasonably certain that I'm doing this okay, that I'm waiting in the right spot for the right train. It just is a very obscure train that does not come very often. And there's a big statue in this station, like a big, weird, ony, like a devil with a really long nose. It's kind of cool just to throw that in the station. But yeah, I mean, if I had made a mistake. 10:00 J.R. East. The next departure from track river three will be the two 29 p.m. local train bound for old sea. Nice. Man, I got to say I don't hate those English announcements. They're literally just for me at this point. Nobody else. I've seen today is using these English announcements. Set me, but hey, I'll take them. Yeah, and I did walk onto a women-only train car at the last station at Hachioji. But I just walked down for a second. I saw the pink signs for women only. So I just walked right off. Not too bad. Not too embarrassing.

And it seems from out here you can easily get to Tachikawa or take an express straight into Tokyo. You can't even get everywhere you need to go from here. Ah, that's enough. Why am I trying to talk over these announcements? They never stopped. They're just endless.

Alright, I'm at Sagamiko, and it seems that Mount Tachio is between Tachio Station and Sagamiko, and it's a pretty serious customer. I'm going to have to do a little research about how am I actually meant to approach this thing? You clearly don't just wander up. There is a guy with hiking poles going by me right now. The washrooms here in the station have their little male-female symbols. Our hikers with backpacks. It's clearly what goes on around here. It seems like everybody else who got off the train is getting on a bus.

So I wonder, is it that serious of a thing? Do I have to get on a bus? I have to be taken here. I hope not. Hopefully I can just wander up by myself. Not today, but at some point. But yeah, for now, I'm just going to go see if I can take a gander at this lake. There's a little area map. There's the lake. Lake Sagami.

You are here. There we go. Mount Mago. Mount Kobatoke Shiroyama. Mount Arashi. Mount Sekiro.

Yes, who knows. Tachio might not actually be around here at all. Maybe these are more serious mountains. Maybe that's why people are getting in buses and stuff. I got the feeling from Takao just that the way they talked about it, like a casual, you know, hey, just go there for a day trip. It seems like it's pretty well set up for just tourist stop-ins and stuff. So that's where I get the sense that it's not like a real hike. Because that's all I want. I want a fake hike. A nice, sign-filled, simple hike. Where I get to experience some nature with virtually no possibility of injury or deaths. Yeah, it looks like I'm really close to this lake. That shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, my first impression is just that this neighborhood, I'm like, oh, yes, it's one of those nothing neighborhoods. Like there's nothing here, but in a good way and a nice quiet way. Because definitely what I found with the place that I'm at now by Kamiya Station. Is the Airbnb itself seems pretty good. I'm like, yeah, you know, this could be my new front runner for just Western Tokyo. Because it's not too expensive. It's not the cheapest, but it's not bad for having your own place. I got my own room. I got my own doorkey. You know, it's all just very convenient and stuff. The house is pretty nice. Nice and quiet. All that stuff is good.

And all of this Western Tokyo stuff is extremely accessible. All these train rides are pretty short, and they're all no big problem. Even this, I mean, I amazingly did not get lost. And as we've experienced recently, if I can get lost, I will get lost. So I kind of couldn't get lost here. I even noticed after all the English announcements, a Chinese announcement played. It definitely doesn't play like they go back and forth between the Japanese and the English. They're very generous with the English announcements. The Chinese announcement is definitely kind of like every few rotations or something. Because I only think I heard it once. But that's another thing like I just kind of forget about. Is they go, yeah, tourists don't just look like me. Like when I was reading about Kabuki-cho, there was saying how a lot of those scams that go on there happen to Chinese and Korean tourists. And I'm like, oh yeah, there's tons of tourism from other nearby countries. Of course, because it's nice and quick and easy to get here. It never occurs to me that when I'm looking at just, you know, a bunch of people 15:00 and I'm like, hey, I'm the only white person. But that doesn't at all mean that everyone else is some kind of local. There could be a bunch of other illiterate tourists hanging out in that group. It just really kind of didn't cross my mind.

But yeah, this Airbnb, because I mean it's nice to be right in Akiruno. I definitely enjoyed that. But now that that place has been altered so that it's more expensive. Like quite a bit more expensive. That one was over $40 a day, I think. And right next to a train line. Like that's just not a good spot anymore. So I'm like, cool, you know, this place I met now, he's been running it for like five years. He's got like three different rooms. It feels like the kind of thing that'll probably always be available when I come back to Japan. Maybe that's my new front runner. Maybe that's my home base for Western Tokyo.

Man, this will be a test of this neighborhood, is, uh, I just assumed there'd be at least one convenience store near the station. It's always one. Oh nice, there's one family mart listed. I love that they have the convenience stores on my downloaded map, that's very convenient. There's at least one family mart on the way to the lake. It might be the only one, but it one's enough. GZX, I mean, talk about a sleepy little, sleepy little neighborhood. When you don't even have convenience stores, it's fucking great. But that's the one downside to, uh, the Kamiya station, Airbnb. Is that the neighborhood itself is, uh, pretty wack. Because, like, walking around Akiruno, delightful, such a nice place to walk. This neighborhood, just immediately, it's like there's a little bit of traffic right by, right by the station. But other than that, man, it's so quiet, and it's just so calm, and it's just like, ah, just walking through some nice, quiet little lakeside neighborhood. Oh, there's the lake. I see it through some buildings.

It's a delightful little place where the Kamiya neighborhood. It's, uh, geez, I mean, this sounds harsh, but I think it's the worst neighborhood I've ever been in for being a pedestrian in Japan. Because I know I mentioned before how, if I had to pick one part of Tokyo, I don't like that much. It's kind of the area, more or less, around Hijima station, because it's so bad for being a pedestrian. It's just a lot of, uh, truck traffic, like tons.

It's the Japanese equivalent of, like, car culture time. Like, you really need a car out here. You're not supposed to be walking around. But at least it's kind of, like, bigger highways and stuff, wider highways. So there's still sidewalks alongside those. Where Kamiya is kind of the worst of both worlds, it's still total car culture. Everyone's driving cars, lots of truck traffic. Definitely not set up for pedestrians, which again is just so unusual in Japan.

But it's also not wide open. It's one of the twistiest, most constrained, most peculiarly laid out neighborhoods I've ever seen. All the streets are really small. There's almost nowhere to walk on foot. And there's no way to escape those major truck-filled streets. It's the only way to get anywhere. As soon as you try to walk anywhere else, it's just a little dead end directly going to people's houses. And that's it. And so, like, it's the definition of a neighborhood where there's nothing happening there. At night especially, like, I just can't ever imagine, like, I'll just go for a nice stroll around the neighborhood. Where everywhere else in Japan, you would do that. It's like, ah, how nice. It's a different experience. Just walk around, see what happens, soak it in. That's a little tough to do around Hijima. You got to kind of pick your spots. And it's impossible around Kamiya. There's fucking nothing except narrow streets and brutal traffic. It's, like, terrible for a neighborhood to hang out in.

So, it's the definition of the neighborhood you just wake up. You get a fucking root beer. You go to 7-Eleven. And you just get the fuck out of there. But because it's so easy and convenient to get the fuck out of there, and then you can go anywhere you want in West Tokyo, really quickly and really easily, I think it's still worth it. It's just that that neighborhood itself is just the place you go to to go to sleep. Like, right now, I mean, yeah, like, I started off the day super late. It's like, okay, no long range trips today. No big adventures up mountains. Let's take it real easy.

And I'm in a beautiful lake right now. It's like, this is exactly what I hoped it would be.

It's just like a beautiful lakeside village. I mean, there's still trucks. There's definitely trucks, because I mean, it's just the outskirts of Tokyo. 20:00 I am stopping once in a while to let a big truck go by. So, this is a little noisier in real life than it will be on this podcast. But damn, that's nice. Damn. I wonder, I have no idea what property values and stuff are in Japan and what neighborhoods cost and things, because this definitely has the feeling of not being one of the fancy neighborhoods, the same sank in jai or anything, you know, this seems kind of just like, yeah, you know, you're just, I mean, like, Japan has like the biggest middle class ever. Everyone's just middle class kind of. And this feels kind of on the lower end of like, yeah, you know, nothing too special, just a bunch of kind of older houses and just a weird sort of neighborhood out in the outskirts, just a random ass, fairly, an exceptional place to live. Except, there's a big beautiful lake right there. Like, I wonder, that's the kind of thing in North America, where suddenly your house costs an extra million and a half dollars. I wonder if that's the case around here. Or if it's just like the role of the dice, some people get beautiful lakes, some people get cool mountains, some people get both and some people get nothing. God, this is fucking, this is really cool.

There's like an actual park that I'm slowly making my way toward, but I'm just in a parking lot, just a boring ass parking lot, but it happens to be elevated up with no buildings in the way.

Or like a little row of buildings right by the lake, but you can easily see over them, just get this awesome view of the lake. Of course, there are power lines. That is also the Japan thing, there's got to be power lines, strewn across everything.

So that must be the park over there, I'm actually walking the wrong way, but if I circle around, I'll circle around to Jose Field, hit up the family mart, go to Lake Sagami Park. And yeah, a fuck dog, if this is all I do today, is this fucking great, this is fine. And then it's quite an easy ride back.

And then like I said, my actual neighborhood, kind of fucking sucks, but that's fine. Either I'll go wander around one of the more developed neighborhoods if I want to do some night walking, or I'll just go home and try to actually go to bed early for once.

Because yeah, like I said, all these mountains, mountains all around me, got to do a little research. I'm quite sure I've got a very accessible tourist-friendly mountain. Right, it's my fingertips, I just got to figure out how it works.

Man, I noticed too though, if you keep going on this train line, it goes another five or six stops, but the stops get very, very long as you go. Well, not very long, basically though, once you get to the end of this line, not sookie, I think it's called.

Yeah, it's definitely a little ways, it's 31 kilometers from here, but again on a subway, it doesn't really take that long to travel that distance. But I noticed one of the voiceovers saying, hey, anybody going out that way, or Mount Fuji, they threw in there. And I was like, wow, Fuji, and I looked at the map and it's like holy crap.

Once you get to the end of this subway line, Mount Fuji is right there, probably another 30 or so kilometers, maybe a little further.

But yeah, it's like holy crap, I don't know, I just think of Fuji as like being in a different world, but it's not that far from Tokyo. And I don't know that that information is especially useful to me, because I'm definitely not climbing Mount Fuji, because that's a hole to do where it's a volcanic, ugly nightmare, it doesn't look at all pleasant to go up anyway. And it's a big enough track that you know, you got to get like lodging halfway up. It's the kind of thing I would only do with someone else, and even then I think I would not enjoy it, and I would regret that I bothered. I don't think I will ever climb Mount Fuji. However, I wonder if, as you get closer, I mean, a view of Mount Fuji from a distance, I feel like that could be a cool thing. I got to see it once from way out in Chiba, just because I got real lucky.

I wonder if there's places, if I just, like if I can just get to a spot through the normal ass subway trains, where I'm like relatively close, and there's a cool view of Mount Fuji, that might be worth it.

Although being close doesn't always help with the view, you know, it can like make it harder to see stuff sometimes. 25:00 Oh man, and there's a bridge in the distance. Man, that is a huge bridge. From where to where, like what even is that? I assume that's also probably not something the average person is supposed to be walking across.

Looks like it's the Ketsuse Bridge, K-A-T-S-U-S-E, across the Sagami River.

Is that how lakes work? I guess if a river flows into a lake, and then that's the end of the line, then it's a lake, right? Maybe rivers can flow out of lakes as well. I don't know. I guess I don't know. I just assumed a lake meant it was like landlocked, but maybe not.

I mean, in Friday the 13th part eight, they took a fucking cruise boat, fucking a river boat from Camp Crystal Lake to Manhattan somehow. So, according to that stupid movie, apparently lakes can connect. Yeah, this is a pretty big lake, and this is extremely pretty.

But yeah, I guess the thing, too, with these subways, I'm shocked at like how far you can get on the subway train, so it just keeps going and going. But now that I think about it, there's a YouTube channel called Katie and Eric, and Katie is spelled K-Y-D-E, like Kaid and Eric.

But there are these two Americans who live in Japan, who do cool travel videos and stuff, and I remember in one of them, just as an experiment, one of them was trying to get like they were meeting up somewhere in the middle of Japan. There's like a big lake, like BY maybe.

So as an experiment, I think it was Eric. It was the dude who he just decided to test if he could get there all on local trains, because they all connect up, so I mean like, I'm amazed that I could get this close to the Fuji, but I guess I don't know if this counts as the Tokyo subway anymore. I'm not sure when the designations end, because I've heard people say Okutama is the farthest you can go on the Tokyo subway. But if I kept going on this line, I'd be further west than that. But I guess it's just because all these lines connect up and connect up and connect up. It took them like hours and hours and hours and hours, but he managed to get all the way from Tokyo to Lake Biwa. I should watch that video again, because I don't remember like how much it cost or whatever, or exactly how long it took, but a very fascinating idea. And then I remember when he tried to exit. At the end, you know, he got the bam bam bam warning. And he had to go talk to the attendant and explain what he did. Because nobody does that, you know, you might take a bullet train or take, you know, just a normal train, not like a subway style train all the way across Japan for like eight or ten hours or whatever the heck he did. But you can technically do that because the subways are all just connected, just everywhere. I assume once you get to hop in across the islands, that would become a problem. But on the main island here, you can go wherever the heck you want.

All right, so I went the wrong way from the family mart, but again, that's fine. I just wanted to explore around a little, no big hurry. But in my wandering, I found a 7-11. So I'm going to go there, grab some to eat, grab a coffee. There's a shrine across the street, Yose Shrine, Y-O-S-E Shrine. Up some mighty stairs, but hey, a while I'm here, might as well. Because I have a feeling once I get down to that main park by the lake, I mean, in a way my adventure is done. Because then what am I going to do, just stand there and stare at the lake? I have a distinct problem doing that. I'm just stopping and absorbing a scene. I want to keep moving. So let's move just 7-11. Let's move up to the shrine. Then let's move down. Of course, if I just kept going this way, it's really not that far to loop around to that big, crazy bridge. But I don't actually want to walk across that bridge. It would probably terrify me. And then where would I be? Just some other weird place on the other side of the fucking river? It's weirdly tempting, though, as bad about playing as it would be.

Alright, I got to go up the hill a bit and then over a highway to this shrine, but there's a nice set of stairs that go right over top. But as I was standing outside the 7-Eleven chow and down, I got like the little brownie-sized thing that is like vinegar trout to think this 30:00 one was on rice. So good. And the 7-Eleven premium precious moments coffee is pretty good. It is funny that premium kind of means like not completely destroyed by sugar. You got to get the premium stuff or to be a relatively nice experience to drink, but it was. It was quite a nice experience. These shrines and temples are starting to seem a lot cooler again too. I think because I kind of took a break from them. I kind of deliberately was like, okay, that's enough of those. You know, it's starting to get wigged out by all the millions of booties everywhere and it's just like, I don't know, this is starting to feel weird. So I took a break. But now it's like, yeah, they're really cool though. Just regardless of what they mean, divorced from all meaning, they're just visually freaking really cool, like even just on the way to this stairway. It's like some cool lion-looking statues and these neat lanterns, beautiful little curated trees everywhere. It's just so cool. But I was also staring at this mountain that's behind this shrine and all the mountains all around here. And it's like, yeah, they are big, especially on the other side of the lake. That's a for real mountain. But on this side, it's like, you know, as long as I can find the path, as long as I can get myself oriented to where you're supposed to be, like you could climb this thing in like 20 minutes. No problem. I'm always a bit surprised by how, how not tough it is to climb a mountain because I just didn't really grow up near any accessible mountains. All the mountains near me weren't that big. We're not, uh, easy to get to. We're not developed and we're filled with bears. So when I got out west and I started to realize like, man, you can hike up even the biggest mountains in like an hour or two. These ones no sweat. I just got to get to the proper beginning. Man, this is kind of a weird experience. So I'm walking toward this beautiful, like if there was no sound, I'm just walking toward this beautiful shrine. It looks awesome. And there's a Tory gate. This is like a combined temple shrine.

There's the Tory gate going up into the woods. But over to the left is a cemetery.

And it's really gorgeous. But as you can hear, there's the significant highway, Gaffor Lane Highway with a big divider in the middle.

And there's the nice little stairway to carry me straight across it. But yeah, it's like, it's a weird mixture. It's like, okay, don't focus on those, those cars, ignore all that. Everything else is really fucking gorgeous. I realize though as this neighborhood is soaking in a little as I'm absorbing it, it actually reminds me quite a bit of this one neighborhood in Vancouver. I think the station is called Port Moody Station. It's hard to remember now.

But there's that university up on the fucking mountain. And it's the station just to the east of that. And I just remember that neighborhood being kind of nice because it's just surrounded by forested mountains. And on a misty day, it feels like you're in Twin Peaks or something.

Although it is a little deceptively trafficy, not as trafficy as that highway, but as the rest of this neighborhood about that same level. No big lake though.

Geez, actually, I'm going to end up being halfway up this mountain and just getting to this getting to this shrine. There's a lot more stairs than I expected.

So this place, it's a pretty beautiful shrine up here. And there's like a whole bunch of smaller little shrine buildings. And there's like the one big one in the middle. It's really a shame about that highway. It's very evident still because also up here, it's a little hard to see the lake through all the trees. But when you do catch a view of it, it looks great. This made me wonder like I wonder how the upkeep of these places work. Because this place is very well maintained. You can tell somebody's been up here sweeping away leaves and making sure everything's prim and proper. But there does not appear to be anyone here now. And I was thinking like I wonder if that ties into just how people in Japan don't fuck with shit. You know that you can just leave a place like this and it won't get wrecked. But there is like a big steel drum, like a half drum, covered in some corrugated metal, like really fully covered with big rocks on it that is burning incense. And I assume it's so carefully packed away. 35:00 So it's not to start a forest fire because I'm just quite sure there's no one here, you know.

Because yeah, how would you like, there's so many of these shrines and temples. You can't just hang out here all day.

Maybe it is just that people come by to check on stuff and to clean it up and to you know burn some incense. But then they must move on to other places like they must look after multiple locations. There is like a second floor to this building. I mean this little, like sort of barren type building with an open front.

And there's a little steep stairway, almost a ladder to the second floor. And I mean, I'm pretty sure no one's here. So I'm just going to go check this out.

There's a drum up here.

If there is anyone around though, I'm sure they'll hear me drumming so I should fuck off.

Yeah, there's a bunch of drums up here.

And then old pictures of people in robes.

Wow, yeah, geez. Two of these pictures are pretty visible. The rest of them though, because this is just an open, there's just an open front to this building.

These pictures are just destroyed. You can't even tell what the fuck is going on in them anymore.

They're totally washed out. That's kind of cool though. I don't know. The idea of really trying to cling hard to the past. I think it's kind of cooler. Whoa, careful. I think it's kind of cooler to just just let it go. Let things deteriorate when it's time for them to deteriorate. It's cool to have a bunch of pictures, but yeah, so they don't last forever. Who cares?

They were cool at the time. I don't want to get depressing, but I mean all those people are dead now. So whatever, they don't care that their picture is not here anymore. We held on to it for a while. The royal way of the human race. Obviously, I had nothing to do with this.

So then from up here, there's no way higher up into the mountain, but there is a road that goes along the side of the mountain. And my first inclination was, well, I should go down there and see what's happening. There's a sign, but it's in Japanese. But the trouble is I'm on the wrong side of the highway. I got a crossback over the highway at some point, and I don't know when that could happen. I don't know if it's a good idea to start walking along the wrong side of the highway. It is like kind of an elevated highway, though I think. So yeah, surely I could go under it if I had to. I guess I'll walk for a bit and see, and it's kind of neat just observing when you stay for a little bit, like when there's no one around. So I don't feel self-conscious or anything. I can just sort of hang out here for a bit. Around the side of that building I was just in, there's a wheelbarrow, which is extremely old and rusted, but the wheel is still in fine shape. Just the barrow part itself is definitely old. But yeah, there's like logs, chopped up logs here that I guess they must use for the incense burning. And then there's all of these panels on the side of this building. Just flat, long, like imagine a ruler, but twice is wide, like a 12 inch ruler from school. And they all have words written on them. And they're covering almost the entire wall, but not quite.

And the words are similar, but they're definitely not identical on all of them. It really is like, it's like in a sci-fi story. When somebody is like on an alien spaceship, and they're trying to figure out what's going on, that's kind of what it feels like. I mean, I've cultivated that experience by not knowing anything and just being ignorant of stuff, but it's like, yeah, I don't know what those mean. I don't know what they're for. I have no idea. But that's the other thing is like I kind of, you know, obviously I don't, I'm not looking it up either, because it's like, I'm more than happy with the mystery. I guess I'll put it that way. It's like, I'm happy to just be like, huh, I wonder. And if I do happen to pick up some information at some point, that's nice, but I don't, I don't need it. Oh man, yeah, there's so many almost, I mean, the view of the lake is really good. I guess I'm saying almost because it would be a bad picture, because there's just too many 40:00 branches of trees in the way. This would look like crap for an Instagram picture. God, how shallow. Who gives this shit about Instagram pictures? But personally, for me, this is a good view. It's a very good view of the lake. See, I'm just going to walk down this road for a bit, because this is the direction I need to head to get to the park by the lake and the subway. So probably chances are good that this road will funnel me back down to the town center. And if not, whatever, I'll just fucking walk back, you know, not the worst thing that can happen.

And yeah, this is weird though. This is like the perfect place to put some headphones in, listen to a cool album or something, because it's visually, it's fucking great. Like now, I've kind of passed into some heavier trees. I can't see the lake or the road anymore, but I can sure hear it. Yeah, the, uh, that highway is not really noticeable. Down by the lake, I didn't even know it was there. But as you get up into this mountain and the cool shrine and stuff, it's pretty hard to ignore. I guess though, this is the thing with, uh, with West Tokyo in general. As much as I like it, it does seem like Akiruno is mostly, mostly seems to avoid the heavy truck traffic somehow. I'm not sure how, I guess maybe just because of the side of the Tama that they're on, maybe there's just no one's passing through there. All the pass-through routes to go to other places must be going somewhere else. It's probably not worth it, I guess, to cross over that river. Because my impression of Akiruno is that it's like pretty calm, traffic-wise. But a lot of these other places in West Tokyo, they're so good because they're so close to nature. And it's so easy to get to these beautiful, amazing places. But there's an undeniable strain of, uh, of trucking. Yeah, we got fucking eight million convenience stores. We got to keep stock.

Get those trucks rolling. Get that convoy rolling. So I guess that's, uh, that's the trade-off.

Definitely worth it overall. But yeah, like I've been saying through how each neighborhood, even though a lot of neighborhoods in Japan, they have a lot of similarities. But it's just the, percentages of different stuff, you know, kind of make them feel different. There's a little more of this, a little less of that. And yeah, poor old Kamea station and its environs. Talk about the worst of all worlds. Narrow streets, very few, through routes. Lots of trucks. No evergreen trees.

Damn, man. I'm not quite sure what that neighborhood's got going for it.

Very accessible escape routes, I guess, through the medium of the subway. It's got that going for it.

Okay, moving away from the highway. Jesus, I just noticed a tunnel that goes under the highway. I don't know, loop back around and look at that. Where does that even come out? Anyway, I walked along the road next to the shrine and it led to another overpass that crossed over the highway, but right before it, there was like metal stairs kind of bolted into the side of the mountain and then like a big metal walkway that has got further away too. I saw how big it was. It like goes way across and there's another shrine up there somewhere and it all seems really new and really sturdy. So I was disappointed to see that it was blocked off because I'm like, oh, that would be the perfect view of the lake. Maybe that's why they made the thing. And then I Google translated the sign and it said off limits to anyone but those involved. So it's like, ah, it must just be like, they're still working on it. So I didn't technically go up the steps, but the incline wasn't that steep, so I just kind of went up the side of the mountain next to the steps. I went halfway up the steps and then I got it. I got my perfect photo. It'll be the episode image for this one. My perfect photo of the lake just in time too because the sun is really going down. It's only four o'clock. I should have another hour, but because there's all these big mountains surrounding this place, the sun has 45:00 almost disappeared behind one of said mountains. Luckily this area is very small, so now that I've crossed back over, I can just head down to that park that was my original plan. And like there's, yeah, not that much around here. I can't possibly get lost. Surely I can find it. What a neat little neighborhood though. I really like this place. And once you're on this side of that highway, I can't hear it at all. Like I assume there's barriers up along these sides of it to keep the sound away. It's really like the Phantom Highway. It's just like, I have no idea that was even there.

So it kind of messes up stuff at the shrine, but at least it doesn't mess up stuff for this neighborhood. This is one sleepy little neighborhood in a nice way. And yeah, beyond the lake, just this big-ass mountain fucking sweet dude. So nice. Also as I was heading down that path, a maiden and sky drove by in one of those little mini trucks that they used in Japan. And he was driving up toward the shrine. And then I just saw him drive back down behind me. So that seems like that helps solve that mystery as well. It's not like there's monks or anything up there. It's probably just a maintenance guy. Just a maintenance guy who one of his tasks I guess is to just burn some incense in the big drum. He's like a a proxy monk, a pseudo monk. Or he is a monk just wearing a plaid shirt. You know, maybe that's possible too. I don't know. Oh yeah, there's the highway.

Now I can see it from from down here. But I can't hear it at all. And it actually looks pretty cool in the distance. Just a big highway wrapped around the side of the mountain and then the big-ass mountain above it. And most of the houses are down here by the lake, but there's some that stretch their way a little ways up to the mountain. All this stuff is very close though. It's all very small. I'm almost a little surprised that there are two convenience stores down here. But I guess yeah, this family mart that I still haven't made it to, it seems like it's right by the park. So it's the convenience store by the park. And the 7-Eleven I was at before.