Oh! A camera...
On
Monday we headed out on a train. To get around to where we planned to
go we had to take some odd train rides. We headed along a line we'd
not been on before then when we got off the station there we had to
leave the station and walk to another station altogether just to
catch the next train. By this point we were already far from the
centre of Tokyo and as a result we didn't see any other foreigners
for the rest of the day. Now Lucy had been telling me that people
stare at her... but I didn't get any of that. I think that is due to
the large beard I had grown, the long black hair and the rough look I
naturally seem to have, oh and I'm taller than them tee hee.
Taiyaki pitstop
Anyway
we had to walk down this street and reach the other station, we
rolled on for a few more stops and then walked the last bit to the
forest. The heat was picking up that day, although it wasn't sunny it
was humid and so the heat didn't escape you. We decided to walk from
the train station to the forest and that meant that we got to see
some lovely more remote scenic parts of built up Japan. The tall
buildings were all gone and there was a lot more green and open
space, I say open space. I don't mean like Perth I just mean there
isn't a building everywhere. There were some very pretty places and I
loved that little walk. It was amazing as well to come through to the
forest at the end and be surrounded in trees instead of buildings.
A more remote area of Tokyo, the suburbs if you will. Oh look a vending machine.
Something
that I should have expected but was surprised by the in the end was
that there were bugs and things in the forest that I've never seen
before. Weird and wonderful things like the long yellow worm with a
spade head. I realised too just how far removed this place was from
Perth, so lush and green and mud and things. There were some black
butterflies flying about. We walked to the end of the forest and
found ourselves at the border between Tokyo and Saitama, interesting.
When we left the forest for real we walked across a very scenic
square of grass and I thought it was really nice and typical of Japan
with the bottom of a small hill leading straight to another hill, its
hard to explain what I mean.
Couldn't be further removed from the dustbowl that is Perth.
On
walking round there we started walking up to... what turned out to be
an amusement park, at first it seemed to be some abandoned fun
village of sorts, there was no one around and all the ticket booths
and things were closed. There was no one on watch either and it just
felt like you could walk aimlessly into the place without much care.
We decided against this and wondered around the edge of it in search
of an elusive lake on the map. I say the map, the truth is we didn't
have a map... hmm... so we could have ended up very lost indeed ohoho
the fun of the fair ground.
We
stopped at what appeared to be the actual entrance and bought a Peach
flavoured fruit nectar, I really love fruit nectar :3 and watched
four women with children leave the park. Then we head on round the
park some more and found the park. Something I noticed on the road as
we walked was a guy who had stopped his van in order to eat lunch,
but he hadn't found a parking space he'd merely stopped on the kerb
and people had to go round him, I got the feeling that he wouldn't be
able to do that in Britain, or Perth. We made it to the lake, it was
a man made lake with a dam at one end, but the sort that powers
anything or lets water through, there appeared to be no stream or
river passing down the other side. So we walked along the top of
there in the intense sun hughhppth, and then we wondered down towards
the grass and the nice park area down there and the shade of those
trees -_-
We
probably didn't spend a long time in that grassy park which is no
good, not good to rush. On the way out we noticed a sign that said
'See You Again' we thought it was rather funny. Then we headed out
from there across to the train station hidden amongst the houses. It
was a station with only one platform side, as this was the end of the
line, and another platform at the end of the station for the Seibu
metro. We, after getting on the train one stop along and
reconsidering; so getting off and waiting for it to come back,
boarded the metro and took it round past the rail entrance to Seibu
land and on round to the large Seibu owned baseball stadium. The
stadium is a large shiny bowl inverted and makes an odd scene on the
landscape. The station and the area outside the stadium was deserted
and made this place too seem like a ghost town. We headed over the
road and up along the road to an even more remote area of the
prefecture of Tokyo. We finally got to some places were there was
without a single letter of English and it felt very good to finally
be there. There was a very old shrine which we couldn't enter and was
built on a hillside. All the buildings were lost in the trees. We
followed the path along some more and found a different shrine, more
public and there was still without anyone there. The tourist board
there telling about the place was completely in Japanese too and and
it felt like we had come somewhere foreign tourists do not come.
The
shrine was a lovely place to visit and it was definitely something
new, plus that Pagoda we found at the back made things more awesome.
I still have no idea what they are used for ohoho. But it's big, it's
red and yellow and it's there, and it's awesome. Among other things
we found up there were these dragon like statues that they had
trailing about the area, interesting and I took no photos of them
despite the fact that I should have. We also found a patch of bamboo,
the key to this is that this was the only place we found bamboo and
I'd always wanted to see some growing. I found an odd chalky paste
over the outside of the trunk, if you call it that, and of course I
decided to draw myself in it. In hindsight I have no idea why :S
Also, I reinforced that bamboo is indeed hollow, but also it has
sections and at each section there is a disk giving it strength.
We
headed down a small amount of steps which may or may not have been
graves, well there were graves there anyway and I don't mean graves
because in Japan they cremate instead and so there were little tomb
stones. There were two people there, the only people, and there was a
nice blowing of incense. Then we headed back to the train
station...which was deserted except for one train and Lucy didn't
want to get on it. Continuing my trait of not even attempting to
figure out the Tokyo rail networks there was a reason that I didn't
know of for why she didn't want to board it and in the end we did get
on it... I was confused too. As we headed back we realised that time
had been catching up with us and we might be about to wade into
commuter congestion on the Tokyo train lines. We managed to get back
before though but we did see a lot more people and school children
walking about all over the place. It was still pretty awesome to be
swept up in the typical life of the area but we were also pretty
tired by this point.
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