Whoa! I have not updated this thing since the search for the Rabbit Island in August. I apologize and in a plea for forgiveness I present to you a very small blog post for your bathroom reading pleasure.
I actually don't think I ever posted about The cherry blossoms in the spring, but the Japanese love that time of year -- a perfect excuse to come up with seasonal Starbucks lattes, drink lots of alcohol under the guise of viewing the cherry blossoms (called "hanami"), and possibly writing haikus if you're into that sort of thing.
This post is actually about the fall version of hanami, called "koyo". It's when tons of people travel all over to take pictures of the colorful foliage in the fall. Some places further away are thought to be better than others, but I chose to go more local and in November I ended up going to the Hachioji Ginkgo Festival. In this part of Tokyo the streets are lined with ginkgo trees that shed beautiful golden leaves ALL OVER THE PLACE. If it weren't for the thousands of people trampling them it'd be a pretty awesome ground covering goldness extravaganza.
I don't know if any of you have read Watership Down by Richard Adams (like I have, *sniff sniff*), but it's a great novel about a bunch of anthropomorphized rabbits who escape their home (which is in the process of being destroyed by mankind, how rude) to a new home. People, I've found that place and its name is Okunoshima -- if you want to get real literal it's Usagi Jima, or "Rabbit Island."
Please see the below videos as proof:
Yes, you just witnessed a woman caught in the middle of a dangerous stampede of cuteness and a man being engulfed by rabbits. Yes. Just let that sink in there for a moment. It's okay, I'll give you some time.
You back? Okay. I hope you can understand my immediate desire to visit an island where I could potentially be covered head to toe in rabbits. I'm not sure why I had become so obsessed with being overrun with rabbits since I've never really had a particular fondness for them, but mine is not to question why. To quote a passage from Watership Down:
"A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel."
Okunoshima is a small island located just north of Hiroshima, and despite its penchant for housing hundreds of adorable rabbits it actually has quite a dark history. You see, it used to be where the Japanese stored and produced chemical weapons (primarily mustard gas) during World War II. To hide its presence, Japanese officials wiped its existence off all Japanese maps and the people who worked there (mostly Korean forced laborers) often died due to exposure to the toxic fumes and harsh working conditions. The remnants of those buildings can still be seen today, but in popular Japanese fashion they've managed to downplay that part and up-play the rabbits!
How did so many feral rabbits get on this island, you ask? Two main theories abound:
1) They were released when the lab was destroyed after the war
2) They were released by visiting Japanese school children (why they would have bunnies to bring to a remote island, I'm not sure)
You're also not allowed to bring cats, dogs or even cars onto the island... the rabbits must survive! Choosing to focus on the positive of the Island, I made my way down to Tadanoumi Station from Tokyo, as images of thousands of rabbits attacking me with cuddles filled my mind. Never mind Tularemia ("Rabbit Fever"), I wanted to literally be overcome with rabbit love! Okay, maybe not literally. More of the figuratively kind.
Once at the station, I made a right to Tadanoumi Port and purchased one round trip ticket for approximately 620 yen. You can find the ferry schedule at this website: Ferry Schedule
A short fifteen minute ferry was all that was between me and my beloveds.
I made it to the port, took a picture of the sign...
... and hopped (ha, I crack myself up) on a free shuttle to the one and only hotel on the island. At the front desk I was able to purchase some rabbit food for 100 yen (I had neglected to bring carrots) and I made my way. It was rather late in the day and hot, so I thought maybe the relative apathy of those few rabbits I saw was due to that. Still hopeful and optimistic (ah, naiveté), I made my way along the trail.
I did run into quite a few rabbit warrens but they were mostly limited to five rabbits at a time. They were not particularly interested in my rabbit food but they also wouldn't say no to it. However, the rabbit stampede I had dreamed of never came to reality... I later read that winter was the best time to come because they're a little hungrier and less fed. Ah well.
I will use this time to start a new blogging idea of mine: the GoPro montage video. I know I'm behind the curve (cue the horrified gasps of 14 year old girls everywhere), and this video is literally and figuratively shaky at best, but you'll take what I give you and like it, damn it!
Yeah, clearly not the song I gave credit to in the video... I guess YouTube doesn't like it when you use copyrighted songs. They gave me a list of pre-approved songs and I chose from the list. I guess that'll do, Pig, that'll do.
There were indecipherable signs about what to do with the rabbits. I guess they're not allowed to become vagabonds or smoke. Seems quite right if you ask me.
I found the mutant albino one!
I thought I'd get artsy fartsy and capture the juxtaposition of the rabbit with the old, abandoned poison gas factory but I think I missed that class.
Without the rabbit this time.
Moments before the thing tore off my hand.
The abandoned, overrun poison gas storage facilities reminded me a lot of Iwo Jima. It's quite interesting to me how something so significant in Japan's history is essentially hidden.
What blog post about rabbits could be complete without the famous scene from Monty Python?! NONE. None post!!
To get there from Tokyo: 1) Take the Shinkansen to Fukuyama, then switch to the Shinkansen to Mihara Station 2) From Mihara Station, jump on the local to Tadanoumi Station 3) Take an immediate right and follow the road until you see a bridge, take a right on the road prior to the bridge. You'll see the Tadanoumi Port building. From there purchase a 620 yen ticket (blue button) for a round trip. Give yourself about five hours transit time.
To climb Mt Fuji... apparently one of those things that someone who lives in Japan just has to do. Me? I'm not much of a mountaineer/hiker, unless you count a strange fascination with Mt Everest as a criteria. Perhaps not. Regardless, I had to mark it off my Japan list now since I would not be able to climb it again -- officially, the climbing season for Mt Fuji is during the summer months because otherwise you're dealing with life threatening gale force winds and plummeting temperatures.
Mt Fuji is Japan's highest mountain, weighing in at 12,389 feet (for comparison, Mt Everest is 29,029 feet) and has vast cultural importance in Japanese art. Up until now, my experience with Fuji included all of the following:
1) Admiring from afar
2) Admiring it in art or cute Fuji-san cookies
3) Flying over it in a Growler
4) Flying next to it in a helicopter
The short 15 minute flight, if that, to get to the summit may have colored my view on the ease a bit. As far as I know, I don't possess the power of flight so that meant I would have to join the common folk and climb that thing.
I've heard that Mt Fuji "isn't that bad", but I suspect that this is stated by people who wear American flag print boxers (fact -- I've seen them) or a lady I saw wearing work slacks and a fashion scarf. Others, more worldly in the way of climbing, alerted me to the fact that I should probably wear actual hiking boots and maybe buy those trekking poles. Internet sleuthing also alerted me to the fact that things cost at least four times more in the Mt Fuji universe than they do in the regular Tokyo universe (100 yen coffee now costs 400 yen).
Seeing as I owned nothing related to climbing (refer to my first paragraph), I promptly purchased two trekking poles, a pair of expensive hiking boots, canned oxygen, a weird Japanese jelly drink, a sun hat (I saw a lot of people in clinic who had massive sunburns) and rented a few sherpas.
Traditionally, you are supposed to climb Mt Fuji overnight to witness the sunrise (please google for lots of awesome photos), but since I was alone I figured climbing during the day was acceptable.
Thus prepared, I parked at Fuji-hokuroku parking lot, hitched a bus, and started my journey to the summit along one of Fuji's four most popular trails, the Yoshida Trail. The bus actually helps you cheat a little since I was promptly taken to the 5th station, where I posed for this photo. My passive expression makes it seem like this was the "after" photo.
Despite owning a DSLR, I decided I didn't want to take on the burden so I used my iPhone for about three total pics. Don't worry, I'll ruthlessly steal from other people's photos to give you an idea of the suffering I endured or I'll just describe it in cliche agony for your own reading pleasure.
The first portion of the hike is incredibly easy... imagine a lovely stroll through the neighborhood with your significant other after a particularly filling dinner of pesto and red wine. Within twenty minutes I made it to sixth station. Piece of cake, I thought to myself, allowing only a brief moment of doubt as I looked up and saw the endless switchback trails to the top obscured in clouds. No matter.
The route between the sixth and seventh station was a bit harder. Now I was dealing with a likely 30 percent incline in not-so-solid footing of volcanic rock. However, my trekking poles did me well and I passed by everyone with ease. The landscape was becoming more volcanic with each step -- the green forest was slowly transforming into a uni-colored vision of gray rocks.
I made it to the seventh station by about an hour, impressed with my speed and thinking rather arrogantly that I would probably summit by three hours if I was slow (there are nine total stations). For those not in the know, the average summit time is about six hours -- it's approximately 6km. I'm too lazy to convert that into miles.
After the seventh station I realized a sad fact: the rock climbing portion had begun. Though I was not required to utilize my non-existent belaying skills, I was required to crawl my way up a path randomly decided amidst the hardened volcanic lava from years past. Maybe it was getting a little harder, I thought. I looked upward to see a rather depressing amount of switchbacks still leading into a layer of clouds. Ughhh, I groaned silently.
Around the eighth station I used my portable oxygen bottles. Though I think the altitude sickness I experienced was mild at best, I mostly wanted the oxygen to gain some of my breath back. The effort it took to walk about ten steps seemed to raise my heart rate up to about 180 beats per minute. Oh how I wish I had a portable SpO2 monitor!
The picture below is some weird sign that makes it seem like you've climbed to the summit, but a quick look upward reminds you that no... you've only yet begun your journey. Sucker. My forced smile is evidence.
Eventually I made it to the 8.5 station. Why is it the 8.5 station? My only guess is that it's used to demoralize you because you're told it's only 900 meters left to the top... but this is a magical 900 meters that somehow quadruples to a 3600 meters. I was also beginning to get slowed down by tour group hikers, and as I began to imitate a hunched over 90 year old Japanese woman by walking approximately one step per 30 seconds, I thought hard about quitting. The loud boom of thunder next to me from a gathering storm further turned my mind against me. The only problem was that I had nowhere to go except up. Literally. The way back down was treacherous. It recalled memories of an Officer and a Gentleman.
So I took it one step at a time and eventually I made it to the summit in about 3 hours and 45 minutes!
Just as I was sitting down to enjoy some pretzels, a cloud of snow, wind and pain was wrought upon us. My fingers were already going numb so I made the way back down as quickly as I possibly could. I wanted to go to the "real" tallest point, but the pain of the wind, sleet and limited visibility was too much.
An interesting note about the way down... it was literally just as one would imagine climbing up Olympus Mons on Mars would be. The redness, the volcanic stones, the pain and torture of just wanting to get home... all things that remind me of Mars (not that I've been there). To clarify, the way down is different from the way up.
I made it back down, with a total trip time of a little under 6 hours. Granted, I did not purchase the tourist gimmick of the hiking stick to get stamped at each station and because the weather was bad at the top I literally could not see anything (also, losing my fingers to frostbite wasn't an acceptable outcome), so these things may have contributed. Otherwise, as the old saying goes, "He who climbs Mt Fuji once is a wise man, he who climbs twice is a fool."
When I first decided to come to Nagasaki, the main reason was because it was the second city in Japan that we used the atomic bomb on. I realized that barely anyone I knew had gone to their atomic bomb museum, but almost everyone had been to Hiroshima -- when most people think of the atomic bomb, they think of Hiroshima, not Nagasaki. Who can beat the classic picture of the A-bomb dome? In this way, Nagasaki is essentially the city victim to a "forgotten" atomic bomb despite the fact that the bomb (nicknamed "Fat Man") was more powerful than the one used in Hiroshima.
Nagasaki... probably one of my top cities, if not The Top City. I don't know if it was the fact it is on a harbor or its rich cultural heritage, but I toured the crap out of this place. I even visited multiple museums! I am not usually a museum person so this should say something. The people of Nagasaki are among the nicest I've met in Japan -- seriously, don't hesitate to ask them for directions.
One thing I picked up regarding traveling was to buy the one-day tram pass at a JR station (or hotel, supposedly). It cost 500 yen and provided unlimited travel for one day (or more... if you're unscrupulous).
I was originally going to divide Nagasaki up into multiple tours (as they were outlined in a tour book I bought), but I thought that it might be easier if I divide it into more of a linear historical way instead.
Hashima, otherwise known as Gunkanjima (which translates into "Battleship Island" due to its similar appearance to a battleship), is an island currently uninhabitable by humans unless of course, you're Raoul Silva and planning to destroy the world in the James Bond movie Skyfall. Then the lack of water and electricity (maybe he used a generator?) wouldn't bother you. Despite the movie's trick into making you think it's not too far from Macau, it's actually right off the coast of Nagasaki.
I was able to get a see it via the tour company Gunkanjima Concierge and was even able to get on the island! Our tour guide was sure to wear a little construction (coal miner?) hat to complete the tour.
Hashima was purchased by the Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha to take advantage of its coal in 1890. As coal became the next big thing in energy production, the population of Hashima grew until had a population density greater than Tokyo. It was here that Japan's first reinforced concrete high-rise apartment buildings were built -- the concrete was used because the island had little protection from typhoons.
The above apartment building was for the rich people; each apartment had its own bathroom.
Coal mining was dangerous work... the miners (not to be confused with "minors") would ascend the stairway (seen below on the right) up to an elevator that contained no walls or roof. To get to the seabed coal reserves took them down 1,000 meters below sea level where they'd experience extreme temperatures and humidity in addition to the possibility of gas explosions. Controversy exists today because Mitsubishi forced Chinese and Korean laborers to work in the worst parts of mine and in general austere living conditions.
Returning from their work, they would wash in three different types of baths (two of which were salt water) in the brick building known as the General Office building. The bathtub was said to always be a pitch black from all the grime.
In the next photo, you can see the remains of the conveyor belt that would transport coal to the storage facility... it almost looks like a bunch of goal posts.
In the below photo, the white building is the quarantine building for patients with dysentery. The building immediately on the left is the hospital.
But what happened here? It actually had nothing to do with the atomic bomb.... it was simple economics. When Japan started to prefer oil to coal, the city was simply shut down in 1974. Though I do always love a good tragedy, I think it makes the island less creepy and more enjoyable.
The Japanese are nothing if not punctual. If a train is coming at 11:41am then it is coming at 11:41am. If the Nagasaki Lantern Festival is over at 10pm, then you better believe that the lanterns will be off at 10pm. On. The. Dot.
I'm not joking about that… I was merrily taking photos of lanterns and then they just went dead. Off. Dark. I pulled out my phone and lo! It was 10pm. They don't mess around here, people. Because of a slight delay in my flight due to the Great Snow Fall (part 2) in Tokyo, I was only able to catch about 45 minutes of this amazing festival when they shut it down until next year.
Before I show off my average photography skills, I'll throw a little info your way regarding what the Nagasaki Lantern Festival even is. If you didn't realize it (and I didn't), Nagasaki is actually very close to the rest of Asia and was an excellent port for trade. As such, there are a lot of different cultural communities in Nagasaki -- Chinese being one (and is actually home to one of the three biggest Chinatowns in Japan with Yokohama and Kobe). Initially started by Chinese residents in Nagasaki Shinchi Chinatown as a "Chinese New Year Celebration" (or Shunsetsu Festival), this festival has since grown in popularity and also in generic name ("Nagasaki Lantern Festival") since 1994.
Apparently, it is believed that the spirits can be seen flying through the sky and since people are nosy, they decided to use lanterns to ensure that they saw the aforementioned spirits. I don't know, seems kinda creepy.
Because of my tardiness, I missed most of the shows that were put on, but I was able to "be entranced" (as the pamphlet put it) by the 15,000 Chinese lanterns and even sneak a few photos of two of the main areas before they rudely decided I'd seen enough and turned off the lights. If you'll excuse the fact that I still haven't mastered lantern photography, enjoy the below!
This sorta made me think of Game of Thrones… but it was a prayer type place though I wasn't able to get to the bottom of all the pig heads.
Year of the Horse!
You could get on this thing and take a photo, but I felt like too much of a dork asking some random stranger to take one of me.
Everyone (in Japan) knows about Sapporo's Snow Festival, but not as many people have been to Otaru's Lantern Festival. The city is located about 45 minutes by train outside of Sapporo and is worth the visit if you're there during Sapporo's festival. The city itself is known as the "Venice of Japan", because of a canal that runs along the coastline. At any rate, the city folk light up a bunch of candles to make their city oh-so-romantic. There are apparently two major sites, but I could not find the second one located in the area Temiyasen (apparently runs parallel to the Otaru Canal) which is a shame because I think that one was actually cooler. Instead I focused on the area right next to the canal known as the Unga Kaijo area. It's about a ten minute walk straight down the main street toward the ocean from the station.
The atmosphere from the candle lit frozen flowers, wax bowls with leaves, and snowball lanterns made for a very romantic setting. Just to drive home the point, many of their sculptures centered around hearts. If you were single, then you should probably leave this area feeling sad.
Sapporo Art Park is an outdoor modern art park that was created to allow enjoyment of art in an outdoor setting. The park is truly meant to be enjoyed during the summer and spring, but the Japanese know never to miss out on an opportunity so they temporarily open it in the winter. It's free (normally it costs 600 yen) but the trick is you have to wear snowshoes. Additionally the usual warning of "don't rise to the work" (AKA - don't touch the statues) is null and void during the winter time.
Luckily there was an English pamphlet that instructed me on the correct application of the snowshoes. I thought I had it all figured out, but it turns out that I had no clue and was literally soaked when I was done because the snowshoes either didn't work or I was wearing them wrong.
Seeing the statues in the snow was actually pretty awesome, my favorite part being all the naked people enjoying their time in frigid outdoors.
All right, so there is quite a bit to do in Sapporo beyond staring at snow and ice sculptures. For one thing, we ate a lot of awesome food -- chief among which was known as Genghis Khan. Why would a food be named Genghis Khan you ask? Well it's certainly not after the Star Trek movie.
It's that time of year when Kelli must venture out into lands covered with God's frozen tears, so profuse that it sometimes hides bikes from their owners...
... and is used to create giant ice and snow sculptures, just for fun (and maybe some tourism). That place was Sapporo during their 65th annual Snow Festival (site is here). To quote their brochure, "Welcome to a world plaza that evokes a pristine snow fantasy."
