#84 Walking from Tachikawa to Akiruno, Tokyo

Transcript

Alright, now that we're into mid-January, I've finally upgraded my little flat-cap dealie to an actual winter hat because the the creepy fingers of the cold wrapping around my little baldy bald head. It's not too bad. You know, now it's like noon or whatever. I don't know what time is it. I never know what time it is. It is noon. Look at that. But yeah, there's enough of a chill in the air that I could get away with it now. Little uncomfortable on the dome. But once the sun goes down, it's going to be wicked cold, man. Got my extra layer of gloves too. The gloves that were abandoned on Mount Tachau, so I gave them a good home in my pocket. But yeah, it seemed to have gotten away with huge amounts of hiking yesterday without exasperating the mystery injury that I had.

And it's like, man. And man, I just know I'm going to look back on these days when I'm a legitimately super old person. I'd be like, ah, remember when I was just middle-aged, a mere middle-aged man? And I would have a mystery pain, but it would just kind of go away after a couple days. Those were the days. It is still a little weird though. It's not like, I don't really, I don't really feel anything wrong with my leg. It's just that I have an awareness of it. You know, optimally, you want to not have any awareness of your limbs at all. I can feel on that leg just something different, just something different about it, but hey, whatever, so far so good. I am going to do some walking today, but no actual mountaineering, so it'd probably be all right. Hmm, I wonder, there's a very small river near my Airbnb. I always just walk across this and go to the machine to get Zelda coffee. I've never walked down it before because it's, ah, there's not a lot of water in it, and it's not very pretty this time of year. All the, ah, foliage down there is pretty dead. So it's not the nicest walk in the world, but what the heck is this thing? Where does it go? This is the Yaji River. Hmm, yeah, it appears to go to a golf course. Not fantastically, ah, inspiring, but then it goes up toward Akiruno to that Tokyo summer land place.

Hmm, I'll keep this in mind as a potential way to get home today. Probably won't take it, but, but I do intend to end up in Akigawa. I'm never quite sure, so like the neighborhood or the, the general vicinity is Akigawa, but then Akiruno City Hall. Okay, no, Akiruno is the larger area.

Akigawa is the more specific one. But yeah, I thought what I might do today as a relatively easy adventure. This was not high on my list of stuff to do, but, ah, in fact, I thought I might not get around to it at all, but it was just like, hmm, what idea sparks joy in me today? What can I do this not that big of a deal? That's not a big mountain hike. So back in 2019, my second to last night in Japan, I was at the Skytree with my friend Brad, who was visiting from Fukuoka, and I was staying in Akiruno at the time. And I didn't leave the Skytree early enough to make it all the way, because you know, it's all the way out here. It's way, way westerly. So I took the train to Tachikawa, and Tachikawa was shut down by the time I got there. They were just ushering people out, and there was no taking anymore trains from there. And it was pretty late at night at that point, you know, midnight or something. So Tachikawa is a station I did a little previous exploration of, and I didn't really find much around there. It reminds me quite a bit of Hachioji station here here. It's just the big local station, the place in the sticks that feels like the city for a little dollop, you know, but then as you get away from it, it really quickly devolves into just just suburbs, just houses. But I'd at least spent enough time walking around, just exploring the different directions to kind of confirm that I couldn't find much going on around those parts. That I was like, you know, I think this is all right. I think I can walk from here. I think I can figure this out. And because I didn't have proper location services on my little super cheap phone at the time, it felt like an extra level of adventure, you know, of just like heading off into the darkness. Pretty sure I knew where I was going. But there were also Wi-Fi at all the convenience stores in 2019. So I could stop in at convenience stores and recalibrate once in a while. But it felt like a surprisingly epic adventure just to walk from Tachikawa to Taki Gawa station. Down the streets 5:00 through the dark and then, you know, it started off being kind of more just like normal suburbs, but very quiet because it was nighttime. Then passed a big highway, which was weird and scary at night. These huge trucks and stuff. Then across the Tamariver and into Taki Gawa, which was just straight up the stick. Suddenly, it's like super quiet. Like you're in the countryside. And I don't know. It took a couple hours at least. I wonder. Two hours, three hours. I don't know. I mean, it felt like forever. It felt like I was just traveling through the void. But it was really cool. I felt a little proud of myself that I pulled that off. So I thought I might just go do that again in the daytime. Just go to Tachikawa station. Just walk that route. But it's just so different feeling. Not only because I know a lot more about all these neighborhoods now. I'm a lot more aware of how they are all laid out. But just having the proper little blue dot with the high level of fidelity and trustworthiness on an actual smartphone, it just changes everything. I mean, like I'm thinking of when I first went to Ome. And I literally just walked into the woods because I could tell where I was based on the little blue dot. It's like, you know, this feels like the woods. It feels like I'm walking into the woods. But the roads right here, the garages right here, the shutdown, honey bee fucking farm is right here. If I keep going, I'll connect up to a major trail system. And I did. You know, like you can just kind of just do whatever. And it's not a big deal. Or like I used to always go scout out my Airbnb's ahead of time to make sure I knew how to get there. And I just don't need to anymore. Just follow the blue dot wander around. You'll get there eventually. So that's the kind of into the fucking wild blue yonder adventure that I'm not going to have anymore. It's just not going to happen. But it's probably for the best. And that is not going to happen. Because the reason that walk sticks out in my mind so clearly is that it could have gone wrong.

I could have fucked that up for sure. It was still a lot easier than the pre smartphone days, the pre internet days where you literally just were walking around and had no idea how to navigate. I was a big step up from that. But I was a big step down from where I am at now. And you know, I think it's okay to not go back to that world. That That was fun in its own way, but it's wild that you're responsible. But yeah, I thought today maybe I'll just go do that. Just see what that route looks like in the daytime. Just one last little dose of random nostalgia around these parts. I'm at the Zelda machine. You know I was pontificating about 100 yen machines. Like what the margins must be to charge so little. But maybe it does work because there is a machine nearer my Airbnb that has the Zelda coffee for 110 yen. And then I was I don't even know where I was somewhere the other day where it was 130 yen. Where I did see someone come distinctly stop their car at this specific machine. No doubt because it's so cheap. And I buy these Zelda coffees every day now. That I found it. I bought two of them yesterday. I didn't even drink it this morning. It's still at my Airbnb. I was like, I'll just continue to save this because I can buy one as I walk. I'll save that one as a backup because it's not just the Zelda coffee. It's a whole bunch of this stuff that's 100 yen. Yay. And then there's stuff that's 110. Some high ticket items that are 120. Then at a nowhere there's the monster. Giant monster energy drink is 190. No deals there. But everything else is 110, 120. And it has stuck in my mind. I mean as far as this neighborhood goes, this little walk I take every day to the station. I always stop at this machine now. It's the combination. It's the two things. I guess the 100 yen price tag by itself wasn't quite enough for just random products that I didn't have any specific attachment to, but finding the Zelda coffee on top of that and being like, wow, it's so cool because it's just fun to buy a little can that looks like Zelda shit. And it's actually tasty coffee. And it's only 100 yen. All those things together every day I buy one or two of these things. So I mean maybe it really does work undercut the competition. Even in the land of millions of drink machines, it is the only one on this route that's this distinctly cheap. Maybe it's worth it. Maybe you can just grind out them margins, man. But anyway, yeah, I'm heading to Keita Hegeoji. Then from there it'll be to Hajima 10:00 and instead of Ome or Akiruno or the normal places I go, this time I'm going to go to Tajikawa. Then I'm going to walk. Then I'm going to walk from Tajikawa to Akiruno. And then potentially, I just, you know, just added this piece to the puzzle right now. But if I did walk down to Tokyo's summer land and cross the bridge, I could follow that river right back to my Airbnb. So I might do the whole loop, but that's the other beauty of a trip like this is it's next to rail lines the whole time. I could bail out at any time if I had to. But what else am I doing today? This seems like a pretty good plan. And then if I've got my timing right, I think tomorrow is my last day in West Tokyo. So that might be one more time to go hit up Ome. That Ome route between Ome and Akiruno, that seems like that might be good. That's the tentative plan and then escape. Man, imagine if they put it would obviously make the price ludicrous, but imagine if they put a little sound chip in the Zelda coffee here, this open this bad boy.

Ah, very nice. But imagine if you opened that and it went that would be sure it would cost $4 for one can of coffee, but it'd be really cool.

Man, I just experienced a subway station magic trick where I got into the subway station and this station doesn't uh trains don't go very frequently even though holiday hours I believe are over at this point it's still pretty pretty slow station and I saw people on the platform some like all right I'm somewhere in between trains let me just hop in the washroom and take a pee and in that one minute that it took me to go in and pee somehow a train arrived unloaded everyone got the new people on and left and not only did they demonstrate insane efficiency I didn't even hear it I guess I had headphones in to be fair but yeah I came out of the bathroom and I looked down the stairs and I'm like oh that person that I saw standing there before is gone then I walked down the stairs and everyone was gone and I checked a little sign and it said 1243 which was the exact time that it was was when the train was coming and I was like what the how and the and then it's just one of those things that like who cares I don't care I mean it's a bit of a weight it's like like half an hour till the next train actually it's a pretty long way between trains here and I don't actually care but but it's like you got to let your mind diffuse because there's that stupid part of your brain that it's like I deserve to be on that train I cannot believe the exact perfect timing I arrived at the exact wrong moment how it how I missed the train that was promised to me in timing memorial down through the ages but even though I don't care and I like hanging out at this station in fact it's kind of nice I've said that many times but you can't talk yourself out of your your little lizard brain sometimes you just got to sit there for a couple minutes and let it dissolve on its own because then once it did yeah just sat there I just did a little writing on my novel with which is something I've been very much neglecting once I leave Japan I'm in a ramp that back up you know the travel podcast is gonna slow down and the writing a novel thing is gonna ramp back up I assume in in South Korea it'll just be occasional updates it's not gonna be this like daily stuff I've been doing in Japan so it was a good thing I sat here for half an hour well 25 minutes because now I'm recording this and I got a little bit of work done it's like there's literally nothing wrong with that but it's just funny to just be like so entitled feeling I can't believe I missed my train but it was actually kind of nice I mean this is one reason why working on my novel is going so so not well in Japan is because I spend all day and day walking I don't have enough time just sitting and I mean once I get to Tachikawa that's the plan walk walk walk and then walk some more and then walk a little more so it was a good thing but it was quite an amazing sleight of hand I mean I guess this train is really quiet I mean there's a train across from me that just arrived to compare I'll even hear it but yeah that was like tada magic everyone's gone from the platform 15:00 they've all disappeared it's like what the what the heck anyway train's gonna be here in like two minutes I wonder what the longest weight is on this system I mean out at Okutama it's definitely a bit long but half an hour feels pretty long that feels like about as long as you're ever getting a really weight for a train in Japan and man it goes by fast

Alright, I'm at the south exit of Tachikawa Station. It is actually kind of neat to be back here just because I don't know. It's just generically big and bustling. It's like a pedestrian overpass and you know, just tons of signs and whatever. Just crazy shit going on. See, I remember up here, there's a 7-Eleven if I go cross at this intersection. And I always remember that one because one night a drunk Japanese guy tried to talk to me while I was standing outside eating some Onigiri. And I guess because he was drunk, he really stuck with it. Even though I couldn't talk to him, I couldn't say anything. So you know, still it was kind of a, it wasn't unpleasant. It was like, oh this guy's trying to talk to me. Didn't work. Didn't work. I would not call it what we had a conversation, but it was like sort of fun in a weird way. Made that place stick in my mind. And then I know if I hang right from there, there's a park where in the summertime it was full of just old, old men hanging out. And they used to have these drink machines where you could get, I haven't seen it at all on this trip. It was this kind of cool thing where it was like a macha tea, but the macha tea powder was in the cap of the drink separate from the water. So you'd press down on the cap and the powder would drop into the water and then you shake it up. So you get brand new super fresh macha tea. I don't know if that's a summertime thing or they just don't make it anymore, but I've not seen that at all that they had it at that park. So that's the direction I want to go. Now there's the 7-11. Because then if I just walk that way straight on till morning, you know, it's basically just following the train line toward Hajima. So this big journey that I took in 2019, I mean it was quite simple. It wasn't complicated. It just felt crazy because it was so late at night. And the price of failure would have been large that I would have been wandering around lost at night. So it should be extra easy to do today. But yeah, despite though that it is nice to be here and it's just kind of cool, there's like a monorail here. The monorail definitely makes the neighborhood stand out a bit. But this neighborhood in general, it was one of the first times I really felt a little stifled. Like I came here just because it was quite a famous neighborhood and all the trains passed through Tachikawa in this part of Tokyo. So I was just curious what it was. And you get that big initial blast of activity and of stuff going on. But then when I went north, there was some kind of park that you got to pay to enter. So maybe it's nice, I don't know, but I did not pay. And I couldn't find much else around there. I just went to the local convenience store and hung out there. So it's just weird how dumb little stuff like that will stick in your mind. I just remember that 7-11 very clearly and I remember standing outside. It needed stuff. So in this shallowest, stupidest way, I still had an alright time exploring north of Tachikawa, but that's all that I found.

And then here to the south, I wandered around this neighborhood a bit too or I guess to the east specifically. A lot of French restaurants, that kind of a vibe. So nothing that really stood out to me necessarily. And now this way, heading west, it's going to pretty quickly just turn into suburbs, which again I have sort of fun memories of just from walking home at night through them. But this was one of these neighborhoods where I felt a little stifled by it where I'm like, I just don't quite know why I'm here. I don't quite know why I would go to Tachikawa. It just kind of seemed generically big, generically full of all the stuff that you might need. But besides that monorail, I'm not sure what makes Tachikawa stand out necessarily.

Which is why this wasn't high on my list. It wasn't like a big plan to come back to Tachikawa. But once I'm back here, this is kind of cool, just a swing by. 20:00 Just a stop by real quick, purely just for the nostalgia of going back to a place that I've been to before. That's all. And then now that I'm away from the central bustle, it really does evaporate super fast. It seems so big. And so like, whoa, big time fucking station. But it evaporates quick. Yeah, now that I'm away from that story of my life, but I got to start going to be a little mindful not to walk too fast. Because yeah, I don't feel any pain in my leg, but I do feel just tightness. There's definitely something in my leg that does not feel like I've completely healed.

So the epic version of this fucking journey that I theorized earlier today of walking all the way to Hajima and then all the way over to Akiruno. And then all the way to Tokyo Summerland and then across the bridge to that river and all the way back to Miami and B, maybe not. Who knows. If I have any problems with my old leg, we just won't do that because it's a pointless journey anyway. There's no need for that. I could bail out of here anytime. Many subway stations are on the way. Man, already, already just walking slightly west to Tachikawa. It does feel different. Daytime is a different world from nighttime. But it does also remind me of, I mean, this has been a fantastically mild winter. But I definitely get these little memories of like even if it was cold, even if it was kind of miserable. Just how miserable the summertime was that this does seem like this would be better even if this was a bad winter. I mean, who knows. Maybe I'll be here during a bad winter sometime and change my tune. But I remember when I was walking this route in the summertime and it was like midnight and it just wasn't remotely cold. It wasn't cold at all. And that was by the end of my trip. So it was like, man, July? Maybe August? I think it was July. Anyway, it was right in the middle of summer. And then I remember it rained really briefly, not enough to cool anything down. In fact, it just made everything very humid. And I remember because it was the middle of the night and no one was around. You know, I'd taken my shirt off on the mountains here and again in 2019. Another thing I never even remotely had to do this time. But you know, that was on a mountain. I was all by myself. This was the only time I ever took off my shirt in Tokyo proper. But it was just so humid. I was just fucking dying. It was so unbelievably humid and hot. And again, that was like past midnight. Like what crazy weather, man? Tokyo in the summertime is totally fucked. I definitely don't miss that. This weather's a little bit chilly and finally having to upgrade my wardrobe a little. But yeah, just, it's so easy to pack on extra layers. It's not a big problem. I mean, very worst case scenario. You could stop in a convenience store and get gloves and neck warmers and all kinds of stuff. You know, if you're really desperate where you can be as desperate as you want to escape the heat, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing. And again, you know, if it's like the middle of the day, that's one thing. It's just those times when it was like the middle of the night and it was still incredibly hot out. That's where it's like disturbing, disturbing levels of warmth that I'm glad to avoid. Ah, and here's this park. It is Suwa Nemori Park, SUWA NOMO RI Park. So this was the farthest I had done my random exploration. And then that night I had to get home. It's like, all right, I've been that far. Let's just go to that park and just keep going. Just continue. Just continue on. On into eternity. And I suspect it's probably not even all that long of a walk, but I guess we'll see. Just felt long when I was, you know, no one was around. It was all by myself in the nighttime, just traveling and traveling into the wild blue yonder, or the wild pitch black yonder. And I guess it sticks in my mind so much because I was needing to rely on my own navigational abilities, which it's very obvious, I think, from this podcast. Do not exist. My ability to piece together travel plans and map things out of my brain is terrible. It's just terrible. But it worked in this case. And I was so proud.

Man, the washroom in that park didn't have any toilet paper. Talk about the Japan equivalent to being on skid row. Do you know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby. You're going to die. Luckily, I had tucked away, stashed away in my day bag, a little package from 7-Eleven of toiletry stuff. It's only enough for one, one situation. I'll have to re-restock it, but perfect for situations like that. And now my leg is feeling better, but I suppose I should just stop just one of those things. There's no point in constantly updating who cares. Something goes wrong, something goes wrong. Generally, I think my exploration for this trip is basically over. I think I did it. And I think it has been a great success. Because when I visited Japan in 2019, despite the fact that my bank card expired and that I lost my passport, it was actually quite stressful. Overall, it was still just such a wonderful trip. I was like, man, what a magical little adventure. So much so that that's why I wanted to do this podcast. I wish I had done a podcast last time, just to chronicle this little stuff of just wandering around Japan and the stuff that you see, the things that happen. And I feel like this trip has gone, you know, if I had to plan it out, if I had to chart out what I would hope to happen on my second trip to Japan. And after being delayed because of the pandemic and all this stuff, I mean, I feel like this basically went perfect. Because this time, I did not lose my passport and my bank card did not expire.

Nothing too seriously wrong happened. The weather is just insane. The weather gods had my back for sure. This is just, like, it's like I'm cheating without good the weather has been. And I've gone so many places and seen so much stuff and just filled out so much of the map and just added so much to my knowledge of so many different parts of Tokyo and West Tokyo and Fukuoka. And even though wandering around by myself is really all I'm here to do, I even squeezed in meeting some people in Chiba. Again, not what the plan was. Not something that I was like, oh, I should really start seeking this experience out. Just walking around by myself is still very much what I like to do. But I sure didn't hurt. It added some texture to the trip. I mean, everything went so well that, like, all right, we can just wrap it up now, put a bow on it. I consider this, I mean, you know, on a pass fail fucking system. It's pretty fucking perfect. What, when? What else could I have asked for?

So if I do end up with a gamey leg right now, it's not like it happened two months ago. It's not like it happened when I was right in the thick of things. If it happens right now, that's fine, dude. Right now we're just kind of tidying up. We're just preparing to exit.

But yeah, that's another thing I certainly could not complain about with the amount that I pushed myself on this trip. It's like it's ludicrous. I took things so much slower in 2019. And a lot of that was just because of the weather, because it was so hot. I had lots of days where I just was like, I'm just going to stay in today. Or I'm just going to go to the mall in Akigawa. Fuck all this. The amount that I've been pushing it on this trip is a bit silly and I basically got away with it.

You know, this really, this does not feel even a little like it did walking down these streets in the middle of the night in the middle of summer. I would never guess that this is the same place, you know, if someone just dropped me here. I was like, hey, recognize this, remember this? And that's a journey I thought back to many, many times, because it was one of my go-to things if I was having a hard time falling asleep. That I would count down from 100, basically like reverse counting sheep. And just to keep me focused on the task, I would pick like a route somewhere I'd been in my life. And just walk through the beats of it. So in this case, it would be like start at the sky-tree. Go into the station. Get on to the train. Ride the train to Tachikawa. Head out to South Exit. Go to the 7-11. Go to that park. 30:00 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Each one counting down, like take a deep breath, count down. And the starting at 100 thing, the idea is if you ever get to zero, just get up and go do something else because you're not going to fall asleep. But you'd never get to zero. It's like you start losing track of numbers and you have to start repeating stuff and it gets fuzzy and you fall asleep. It's actually a pretty good technique.

But I used this walk in that capacity dozens of times, so I really tried to forge it into my brain. But yeah, if someone just dropped me here right now and said like, you recognize this, I would not. It doesn't even seem a little bit the same. Which I guess would be another reason to potentially bail out of this particular walk, because what am I doing? If this is a nostalgia run, this one ain't working. This is too different. The whole context is completely changed from the dark midnight adventure.

But man, speaking of my leg falling apart, my clothes are falling apart too on this journey, because I have so few things, you know, so few clothes. One of my pairs of jeans has a hole in the pocket, which is just slightly annoying, because I would keep my phone, my good phone with the GPS in my pocket. But now that there's a big hole in the pocket, I don't want to ditch the whole pair of pants just because of that. But I got to figure out what to do with this phone, so I guess I just squeezed it in my day bag. I just got to pick a location to make sure I always put it there, or I will lose it.

But the main thing are my jackets, my various layers that I have not really needed. But I got this one hoodie that's like my crappiest thing, because it's just an old hoodie I had that doesn't even have a hood on the hoodie. And the zipper's broken on it, so that one, I don't quite know how to get rid of clothing around here, but I'll figure something out. Because that one was my worst thing, anyway, just not worth holding on to. But then my for real winter coat that I only used once or twice, it has like a tear in it, where every time I put it through the wash, it gets the stuffing starts to come out of it and gets on my clothes.

But again, I didn't need it at all here, and it was in fact just a hand me down coat that I got from somewhere. There's no need to hang on to it. But I keep hearing about how cold South Korea is. So if I can just hold on to it long enough to take it to South Korea, and use it there if need be, and then when spring comes, then I can abandon that one. You know, no matter what, once the weather gets warm, I'm going to be abandoning these things anyway. But the choice is turning out to be very easy. It's very easy to determine what stays and what goes, because some of my stuff has just fallen apart.

And I just walked by a vending machine that had a couple of unusual items in it. But yes, star vending, man, star vending with the brown sugar latte. I have never seen one of those outside of that one neighborhood south of the Skytree. Although I guess it's similar with Hachioji is the machines that have root beer in them. I only found two with those both in Hachioji. But I mean, I've bought like three or four root beers at this point. It's just like, ah, cool. It's just such a weird thing in Japan. Turns out it's kind of nice to have a little root beer once in a while.

But anyway, there's the leg update. There's the my various layers of winter clothing update. There's the, this feels like a completely new adventure. And it's not at all reminiscent of the last time I did this walk update. As it always is with this podcast, just random shit that nobody asked for. That's what I do here. That's the plan. You know what I should maybe do, because this is just, ah, this is the definition of, ah, just a walk through a very generic neighborhood. It's not really doing much for me. It's not spurring my fucking, either's. I'm coming up to Nishi Tachikawa, one whole station away from Tachikawa. Maybe I should hop up there, get on that train, because this again is just going to be a walk, walk, walk, walk for another four stations, but then I'll kind of skirt around Hijima. But that part's skirting around Hijima to cross the Tama, especially unpleasant, because that's where all the heavy truck traffic is. So basically I've got like two hours of relatively unpleasant walking ahead of me before I get to Hijima, where it's nice. 35:00 So why don't I just go jump on the train, hop over to Higashi Akiru, which is the first station in Akiruno. And then I can walk that part of it, which is way, way nicer. Yeah, so it's basically, it's basically this same loop. But let's just skip all this Tachikawa stuff, because, ah, because no offense, Tachikawa. But what I was just saying about how I felt about the station, that it's a bit, ah, just generically, a station. It's like, alright, it does have stuff that one might need. It's, ah, certainly not a bad station. That's kind of how I'm feeling about this entire surrounding area. In the middle of the night, just because things tend to be cooler looking and prettier in the middle of the night, it felt cool and pretty.

In the daytime, who can say, or like I'm coming up to a Lawson's here, this looks a lot like, like I definitely stopped at a Lawson's. Yeah, I'm quite sure this is the one, where I stopped in and I bought a coffee, because even though it was the middle of the night, I was pretty exhausted and I knew I had a long walk ahead of me. So I bought a coffee and, ah, and I did definitely get the vibe that the guy working there found it a little strange that I was showing up there. The guy who can't speak Japanese in the middle of the night, probably a little bit unusual. Or maybe it's just my imagination, maybe he wasn't thinking shit, I don't know. But again, like, yeah, I'm quite sure that's the place. But even walking right by it, the two experiences just are not connecting in my brain. They do not feel related. They just feel like two independent things that happen to me. So, hey, some adventures you can't go back to.

Wow, this park, by the way, the one that I did not pay to go into, it looks pretty fucking big. Maybe it is good.

Showa Kennen Park, and the Polar Science Museum is here.

Hmm, although part of the bigness is one of these defense forest camps. I don't know, what a weird neighborhood, whatever. The other nice thing with all these trains and just hopping on them, hopping off them. This whole ride was like 250. So, hey, whatever. Go hop back on the train, take another little ride that'll cost like $1.50. Cut out this part of the journey. So, I'm gonna do that.

Alright, took the train to Hajima, and I think this was a good idea because the sun's heading down anyway. Not a ton of time in the day, so to chop out that little bit of the journey, seemed like a good plan. And I got some ice cream at the station. Because I guess the common, well, I was gonna say the two common ways, I guess the three. You can get ice cream from those little pouches, which is pretty cool. And there's just ice cream cones. But there's also these ice cream that are, it's so cool, but I've only ever seen them in Japan. Where it's basically like an ice cream sandwich. But the sandwich part is like an ice cream cone that fully encases the ice cream. So you can just hold this thing in your hands, and this time of year, it's not a big worry that it's gonna melt. But in general, it's an enclosed ice cream sandwich, which is just convenient as hell, man. You just hold it, and you just eat it, and it's fucking great. It's delicious.

And then as I left Hajima, I left the other side from where I went the other day. This time it was toward the Tama, toward Akiruno. And I saw a freaking Fuji again. I had no idea you could see Fuji from there. But again, I guess because dusk is setting in, I mean, there's a couple hours to go. The sun is still way high in the sky, very bright, exactly in the same direction as Fuji. But despite that, if you peer through the blinding glare, I was like, man, there's Fuji just poking out above everything. That's fucking cool.

But I thought I would get out here instead of on the other side of the Tama. Because this was one part of the journey that I thought might be actually kind of fun to have it dissolve in the daytime. Because by the time I got here, I sort of skirted around Hajima. I didn't go straight there. And I crossed this big, awful highway, which I just crossed. And yeah, in the daytime, it's not that bad. I mean, it is giant and awful. But in the daytime, there's other people crossing. You just wait for the lights. It's like whatever. It's not that big a deal. 40:00 But in the middle of the night, man, it felt oppressive. After walking through these quiet, empty neighborhoods, then getting to this big, rumbling, awful street, it was like, whoa. But yeah, it certainly doesn't feel the same in the day. And this bridge I'm coming up to was also weirdly scary because it was so fucking dark. And I'm not sure if there's actually any lights on that bridge, but if there are, there's not many. And I just remember walking out into the gaping void, the giant black maw of walking onto the bridge. And it's not that high up of a bridge and it's not that large of a river. But underneath me was just darkness. And it just felt like floating in space. And then across the whole horizon, I could see even those in the middle of the night. I could still see the big, scary mountains on the horizon because they were even more dark than the seemingly perfectly dark sky. But yeah, just the darkness of everything, the dark beneath me, beneath the bridge, the darkness on the bridge, the darkness in the distance, the darkness of the mountain silhouettes. Everything was just like freaking me out. So I'm coming up to that bridge. I think I got one more street here to cross. And yeah, let's just cross it in the daytime. Let's just cross it when it's no big deal at all. Let's just wipe away all of those memories and replace them with gentle daytime ones. Or it'll develop into some kind of weird amalgam in my mind where the two memories mix together. Or maybe this memory won't stick at all. And I'll only remember the dark. But yeah, this little stretch, I was saying in Tachikawa how I was having a hard time connecting the two memories. It seemed too different. But this one is just, it's very distinct. I remember this road. I remember heading down this way. I remember that feeling of like I'm getting quite close to home. I'm getting closer and closer to the neighborhood that I'm familiar with.

But not quite. You know, I passed the death highway. I still got across this fucking scary bridge. I was not quite there yet.

It's kinda neat too. We're back then. I didn't even know this river was called the Tama. I have upgraded because of Google Maps and my fucking knowledge of what things are called. A million fold. I didn't know what anything was called in 2019. I had no idea what this river was called. And the way I learned is I was doing this thing during COVID times. Where there was this one channel in particular that would post walking around Japan videos. And there's a bunch of channels that do that. But this was one of the more obscure ones. And I think partially it's because they posted all their information in Japanese rather than in English. And the people during COVID times who were searching YouTube for walking videos of Japan were probably not Japanese. You know, if I had to hazard a guess. But I stumbled upon that channel because I was looking for some obscure outskirts area. And they posted like all over Tokyo. And it was an extra bonus that their video titles were not in English. So I could click on this thing and not know exactly where it was. So what I started doing because they posted every day is I just copy and pasted the name of the location in Japanese. And I would put that into Google Maps. And then I would play a little game with myself to see how long it took me to figure out where the place was. From the initial area that came up. You know, and it would just be a small area around wherever the starting station usually was. So then I would click zoom out and see if I recognized anything. And then click zoom out and see if I recognized anything. And if I was lucky, I would recognize something I distinctly knew the name of. But sometimes I would just try to piece it together based on the fabric of what I was seeing. Like if there was a super density of convenience stores, it's probably central Tokyo. And if there's hardly any, maybe it's like Saitama or something. And just a fun little game to play. It certainly wasn't great at it. But just to see how many zoom outs it would take. And inadvertently, I would start learning the names of stuff. So one of the first things was, was this Tama River. Where I realized, oh, that's that river. 45:00 Which I'm looking at right now. I've just gotten to the river. Man, yeah, I remember this for sure. There's a little lodge-looking place here that's probably a washroom. There's a little park down there, which yet today there's people on their bicycles. Just people chilling hanging out where, yeah, when I was here before, it was so dark and so frightening and no one was around. Because it's not that big of a river, but it's quite a large river bed. So it felt a lot bigger at night. Certainly a lot more traffic.