Kawagoe and Mitake
But first . . .
Friday night was spent with the traditional “all you can eat” activity. Important difference between our way of doing this and the Japanese way of doing this is that they also offer an “All you can drink” to accompany this food. So for 2000 yen we got all the meat you can eat(and in Japan this is usually quite expensive, having no cows of its own). But for a mere 475 yen we had all the beer/sake we could muster for 2 hours.
!!!!!! FOOOOOOOLS!!!!!!!
Let’s just put it this way, our little Italian female friend we took along made her way through twice that in raw material costs alone. And that’s not counting the Irish-guy we had along or the huge Hungarian. By the end of the two hours we were getting significantly dirty looks by the waiting staff. That may have been due to the food/drink we were knocking back, or it may have been due to the loud drinking game . . . probably a bit of both.
Aaaaaaanyway. Kawagoe is known for 2 things (as far as I know anyway): Little Edo, which is the preserved old city from feudal times, and the Kawagoe Festival.
The first is always there . . . the second was last weekend. Perfect chance to see both then. The festival would start at 10, and Kawagoe is 90 minutes away . . . . so I had to get up early even though it was weekend 
. The things I suffer for a nice place to see.
I arrived when the festival consisted of getting the floats in place. The floats look a lot like this. And some of you may know that the average Japanese street looks like this.
I’ll give you a minute to work that out.
The combination of these two will get you a lot of this, this, this and this. Amusing for me though that was. Almost made me forget that they use forced child labour to fuel this festival.
The finished products can be seen at some of the other pictures in that folder.
Different aspects of Japanese Culture became apperant to me during this Festival though. First of all. they take drama very seriously. You can be a fair lady if you truely believe you are a fair lady. Also, next to child labour they’ll allow animals on stage. And most disturbingly, they feed these animals live on stage. Perhaps Japan isn’t as developed as I took it to be.
Apposed to that though there’s beautifull buildings, great temples and gardens. And most appealing to me: a cure for premature hairloss.
The festival lasted till well past sundown and after that there was the 1.5 hour return trip. All in all, it was a grand day. Accented by the fact that some of the people from my program showed up at 4 seeing a couple of floats and some dark temples/snigger. Though I imagine they weren’t driven as nuts as I was by the highly repetitive music.
Sunday I had to rise equally early to do my first solo-hike in this country. Otake-san was the object of meander, but that would start me off from Mitake. So, to get to Mitake I had asked some people of the railroads I had to go to Shinjuku, take the chuo line till it ran out and then take the line that moved on from that. This would take two hours. An hour and a half into this trip I passed the station which served as end station to the line I live on. So whereas I had spent 30 minutes getting to Shinjuku and then going north-west . . . I could’ve taken a train straight down my line due west and pay less and travel less. Unsurprising to me, as I already know the Japanese have no concept of maps, the information person at my station was not aware of this however and sent my by way of shinjuku anyway. Suffice to say I now own a map of the complete Kanto train system.
Arriving in Mitake I set out right away, a bus up to the cable-car and then the cable-car up to a small extention of the village below. Having seen what Japanese maps (note the complete lack of usefull details such as, other trails and height indicators) look like beforehand I can prepared with an actual map. Now maps here are a lot purer than back home, meaning that while they look completely similar to ones back home they often come accompanied with roadsigns. Usefull ones that is. Upon arrival to the top of the mountain, into an environment where tourists outnumber residents on any given day with 5-to-1 the roadsigns indicated . . . . the postoffice. So . . . map and compas it is. Half an hour into the hike, and 25 minutes past the last building I did find a bit of wood with the Kanji for the next mountaintop on it though. Not at an intersection . . . just on the trail, but it was nice to know I was going the right way. With the book saying a round-trip-time of 5 hours (this is the same book I quoted at the sendai weekend btw) I was surprised to find myself at my destination after little under 2 hours of hiking. I was greeted by the sight of an old friend.
While the way up was a solitary journey I chatted away happily to other people on the way down as I stuck with them. It is nice to see my Japanese has improved to the point that I can have a regular conversation . . . though it’s still not enough to read that kid’s book.
So, I made a new friend, had a nice climb and found a faster way back then the way I’d come.
All in all it was a nice weekend
==========================================================================
Quote of the day:
Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by places and moments that take your breath away
-Anon