Prohibitive Arrival - Week 30 (December 9 - December 15)

Prohibitive Arrival

Week 30

This week DRRAAAAGGGGGGGGED by!

I was waiting with baited breath for a major arrival on Monday night, so the whole week pretty much involved me worrying about it, cleaning things, and planning. By the time Saturday night rolled around I was happy to do the usual couple of extra hours of paperwork before going home and passing out.

Sunday was relatively slow also. I spent most of the day cleaning and preparing before heading to the park at around 8 PM in order to take advantage of a nice confluence of celestial events that had caused the moon to appear about 30% larger than it normally did. Hefting my tripod, can of hot cocoa in hand, hoodie pulled up high and (unfortunately) gloveless, I wandered out into Koganei park. After taking many pictures of the moon with my telephoto (which didn’t turn out nearly large or clear enough to be satisfying) I started wandering around looking at other things. As the night got cooler a deep fog began to roll across the park making for some excellent photographic opportunities. I took advantage of this and spent about 2 hours wandering around in the freezing air with my camera set to a 30 second exposure speed and a low ISO. I think the results are pretty good! (see above)

After getting home and warming up my hands, I finished preparing my apartment for tomorrow’s arrival.

And up I got the next day ready to take the train out to Narita to meet one Sophie Wolski, University Student, high school friend, brown belt in Shotokan Karate, World of Warcraft prodigy and overall good friend. She was coming overseas to escape the chaos of Canadian life by unwinding in Japan for a month.

Her flight came in at 3 PM and unfortunately, due to a mistake on my behalf as to whether or not one can board the Narita express without a reserved seat, I was about 30 minutes late...and went to the wrong exit from customs (there are two in Narita Terminal 1, North and South).

Sophie eventually called me from a pay phone and I managed to track her down in the lobby outside the South exit. She was very happy to see me but of course also totally exhausted, having been unable to sleep on the plane or during her layover. 30 hours on planes and in airports will tear down the resolve of even someone like Sophie.

So we went outside so she could smoke and we repacked her bags for the 2 and a half hour trip back to Koganei. Got home after a long trip discussing the flight etc., got Sophie unpacked, managed to keep her awake until a reasonable hour and then promptly sent her off to bed. Next day was, after all, a work day for me.

The adventures of Wolski and Cantello begin next week!

Check it out, our names sound like a hard-boiled 1920s detective agency!

Hostingly yours

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Pictures: 1. Kichijoji Christmas decorations, 2. The moon from Koganei park, 3-5. Koganei Park. Additional credits: Picture from November 25- December 1

Surmounted Vista - Week 29 (December 2 - December 8)

Surmounted Vista

Week 29

Ahhhhahahahahaha! Finally, something new!

HIKING

Felt damn good to get back into the groove for this. Lemme break it down.

The inspiration of this trip was germinated a few months ago when I ordered some books from Amazon about photography. One of them mentioned that the best time to take landscape shops, the ones that are clearest where it seems as though you can see Mt. Rainer from K2, are taken in the winter. The cool, clear, low humidity days usually provide excellent photographic opportunities. So I’d resolved to save this hike until I had the opportunity to go early in the winter, hopefully before there was any major snowfall thereby making it a more dangerous proposition.

So it was that on December 7th someone with a particularly sharp eye might have noticed a certain GEOS teacher trekking to the station wearing a very loud, red baseball cap with some kind of C-oriented design in the center. A more observant witness would also have noted the slightly sun bleached gray American Apparel hoodie beneath an old Nike windbreaker that he wore, as well as the hiking boots and shitty jeans.

Pretty early for me too. I hit the station slightly past 6 AM having gone to bed at about 11 the night before. Nice to get the early start and very cool to see the mountains in the early morning light from the elevated platform at Musashi Koganei station.

Shortly after boarding the train I was struck with a bit of irony. The goal of this trip for was for me to climb a relatively small mountain near Mount Fuji named Mitsu-Toge-Yama. The latter is renowned for its superb views of the former and I figured that the cool weather and crystal clear day would lend itself to some good views of a mountain that I’ve never seen, but have climbed to the top of. Yes, very true. Thanks a lot low lying cloud cover I was completely unable to see the mountain itself, only climb it. (see Fuji Posts, mid-August, 2008)

The ironic bit of this was, shortly after leaving the station looking out the window to the north west I noticed a gigantic white mountain rising above the range of foothills on the horizon. Fuji made itself known pretty early on in the trek.

What followed was two hours of waiting as the mountain got larger and larger out the windows. A couple of hours and a few train transfers later I was off the train and on my way to the mountain.

Except that I wasn’t.

I had gotten off at the wrong stop and although the town was laid out in almost exactly the same way as the one I was supposed to get off at (Mitsu-toge). it took me nearly a half hour to realize my mistake. Back tracking quickly I managed to catch the next train and make it to Mitsu Toge for 9:40 AM, a little bit later than I wanted, but still okay.

It was already a beautiful view of Fuji just from the station. What was a bit more foreboding
though was the view of the mountain I was about to climb.

The summit of Mitsu Toge Yama is a collection of three rocky outcroppings capped by a few TV antennaes. Unlike most of the other mountains I’ve climbed though, the height difference between the beginning and the end involved a pretty decent vertical rise of 1200m. To make things even more interesting, this takes place over the course of about one and a half horizontal kilometres.

After starting out walking up a road through the mountains and discovering a field that had been jacked up about 4cm in height due to pillars of frozen ground water just beneath the top layer of soil, I left the road for tougher trails.

The main trail itself began by winding up through a steeply switched back area for about 45 minutes of climbing. This was, at times, more difficult than the Fuji climb though not nearly as exposed or rocky. After this 45 minutes though, I had already tackled most of the ascent. I took a small break at a rest stop near 88 child Buddhas, pushing up the final, much flatter section of the climb towards the top afterwards.

This section of the trail wound tightly along below the three cliff faces that compose the summit of Mitsu Toge. I ran into a couple other Hikers here on the way down and many pleasant "konnichi-wa"s were exchanged.

This section of the hike was also actually pretty hair-raising at times. Due to the much colder weather up at this altitude, the cliff face was actually covered in icicles. Problem was, as the day started getting warmer, so too did the hanging ice. So it was that numerous times I froze and suddenly craned my head upwards to look for an incoming (but fortunately phantasmal) rockslide only to realize that it was only pieces of the icicles falling down the side of the mountain. I was still very careful though, as I am from Canada after all, and know that a good number of people have been deep-sixed by a liberal application of plummeting solid-state H-2-O.

Just before the final 5 minute hike up to the summit there were a couple huts where I ran into an incredibly sleepy dog and found the time to purchase a wonderful tallboy of Asahi “Super Dry”. This final climb was not that pleasant, as the thawed ground water had turned much of mountainside into slurry of mud and ice. Navigation was eased by the remnants of what appeared to once be steps that had been washed out by rain or some such. I struggled on though and by 1PM had reached the summit of Mitsu Toge-Yama.

It was quite the beautiful view, and many photos were soon taken. Fuji of course filled most of the vista with Fuji-Yoshida and Kawaguchi-ko nestled between the mountain and its surrounding lakes. The Tanzawa range was nicely displayed to the south while to the north I got my first view of the Southern Japanese alps, a destination for later this year.
I spent about 40 minutes at the top of the mountain, resting up, shooting a few hundred photos, drinking my beer and recording a small video (see below) before shouldering my pack once more and heading off down the ridgeline towards the end of my trip near Kawaguchi-ko station.

The trip down was relatively uneventful. I paused for another 20 minutes or so close to the bottom in order to get a few pictures of the sun setting over the valley. I also had some difficulty charting a course off the hill that would take me to the station. I ended up clumsily butt-sliding down an embankment and into someone’s back yard, from which I quickly extracted myself.
The most remarkable part of the descent happened about an hour after leaving the summit. While stopping to take a shot of a particularly beautifully brush-overhung section of the path I suddenly saw movement about 30 yards ahead of me. To my incredible surprise, a Japanese Macaque jumped onto the path from a tree it had been resting in. It quickly ran off down the path away from me. I guess I startled it. How’s that for a wildlife sighting though? Pretty cool, huh? Unfortunately, I could only get a couple of blurry Bigfoot-like pictures due to my wide angle lens happening to be the one that was attached to my camera at the time. Too bad.
I left Kawaguchi-ko station at around 6 PM and arrived home shortly after 8. What a day!

Monday was pretty simple though. I merely started preparing for the arrival of a visitor who was to come a week in the future.

Overall I was only somewhat satisfied with the pictures I got from the summit of Mitsu-Toge-Yama. It may have actually been TOO clear a day, and it was a bit too warm also. Although I started the day wearing the wind breaker, by the time I summitted I had stripped down to my hoodie. The air was therefore a bit less clear than I would have liked.

Ah well, otherwise it was a success. And hey, you Fujiyoshida people, I’d be happy to lead you out on that hike anytime...after winter. Might be dangerous right now.

Alpinely yours

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello

Photographs: 1. Looking East from the platform at Musashi Koganei, 2. Fuji from just past Mitsu-Toge station, 3. Mitsu Toge Yama (the three peaks in the center. The descent off the mountain was along the ridge to the left), 4. Frost in the fields on the way up, 5. Fuji about 1/2 of the way up the 45 minute stretch listed earlier on, 6. Grade during the 45 minute section of tough hiking, 7. One of the Buddhas at the rest point, 8. Looking down on the rock face of Mitsu Toge, 9. Me and Fuji!, 10. View of the south alps, 11. Summit of Fuji...note the switchbacks on the left. That's the route up to the summit, 12. Last shot from this hike, Fuji at sunset.

Anachronistic Poetry - Week 28 (November 25 - December 1)

Anachronistic Poetry

Week 28

And just like last week, this one was totally unremarkable.

So here. I composed this over the course of this week.

crimson canopy

archer flares in the midnight

paving falls away

The amount of time I’ve spent running recently started to reduce greatly during this week as well. Just net enough time generally speaking.

More exciting things next post.

Wishing he could run with more ease...

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello

Tranquil Recovery - Week 27 (November 19 - November 24)

Tranquil Recovery

Week 27

As my students often say, nothing special.

This week was really not amazing. Getting back into the rhythm of teaching and putting off unpacking and cleaning the apartment until the weekend. I did start a little tradition that has remained more or less intact since this week, which is having a small bottle of wine and Matsuya curry at some point during the week.
Not particularly impressive I know, but still very good.

I figure I need to get a better feeling for vintages etc. I really do enjoy red wine, so this kind of gives me the opportunity. Unfortunately, a normal sized bottle of wine I find is generally far more than enough to get you philosophical and let’s be honest, one can only take so much philosophy before becoming confused and despondent. Or comatose. One or the other.
Yep, cleaning up the place and relaxing. Have I mentioned also that it this point I was in the middle of working between 45 and 50 hours a week at my job? Most of this unpaid overtime (about 10-15 hours worth) was stuff that technically I was not responsible for, but needed to be done to prevent the school from imploding into some kind of paper-strewn black hole.

It’s an uphill battle...

Nothing exciting to report!

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello

Bulleted Aggresion - Kyoto (November 16 - November 18)

Bulleted Aggression

Kyoto

Well, before we hit the actual post here, let me just quickly explain my recent lack of posts...Well, not really recent. It’s been two months after all... I guess the best way to excuse myself is just to say that I’ve been too busy at work. Nights that end at 11 or later are not conducive towards anything besides more work the next day. Japanese businessman style.

So I’ve been spending most of my nights aimlessly social networking or messing around With random crap on TV. Anyways, excuses aside, here we go.

Kyoto

The week leading up to this particular trip wasn’t all that spectacular. It went by pretty quick of course, because I was excited about the upcoming departure from the Kanto plains region and all. Melissa and I had booked off the Tuesday in order to give us a three day weekend, in theory plenty of time to see all the sights in Kyoto, with a small stop off at Nara on the third day.

Unfortunately, the trip started on a bad note. I was a bit late leaving the house (surprise) and also had the misfortune of not being able to catch a rapid train into Tokyo. The upshot was that I made it to the station in Shinagawa with only about 10 minutes to spare. In an even greater twist of misfortune, I had never been to Shinagawa station, and it happened to have multiple entrances to the shinkansen (bullet train) terminal.

So, while I was running around trying to find Melissa, she was waiting about 10 meters away from me at the opposite gates.

Well...

Yeah. We missed our train.

Which was unfortunate, but ultimately really didn’t change anything at all. Apparently I’d been put under the false impression that it was absolutely essential to get reserved seats on a shinkansen. Not so much. Too bad we spent an extra 5000 yen on reserved seats for both the trip there and the trip back. Could have saved us about $100 each.

Melissa and I caught the next train, absolutely no problem, lots of extra space. We had no trouble finding seats and spent the two and a quarter hour trip chatting away about various things...mostly life in Japan and future plans.

So we made it into to Kyoto station about half past twelve. Despite a bad choice on station exits, we made it to our hotel no problem, Ikoi-no-ie, a very nice little place that, oddly enough, is fairly similar to my apartment in design and layout if not size...

Cameras in hand, backpacks abandoned, we headed out.

First stop was the Kiyomizu-dera, a beautiful temple situated on the side of hill beyond a MASSIVE cemetery. As soon as we got there Melissa and I knew we’d picked the perfect time to come. The leaves were absolutely beautiful...which is kind of odd to say. You’d think someone that grew up in the Gatineau hills would be pretty much inured to coloured leaves by now. Such is not the case, although I still think that generally, fall in Canada is a bit nicer. Still, wow. Japanese maples add something to temples which is impossible to quantify.

For the record, this trip is definitely one of those “pictures worth a thousand words” type of deals. I’ll refrain from describing things too much.

After wandering around Kiyomizu-dera for an hour or so Melissa and headed back down off the hill into the city. We wandered through a number of smaller temples on the way to Yasaka shrine, our next destination, which is pretty impressive given the fact that it was only about 8 blocks away. Dodging groups of kids and Chinese tourists, we whiled away the time until sunset poking around at the various sights that Eastern Kyoto had to offer.

As the sun fell low in the sky our hunger began to loom high in our stomachs. Wandering back down towards the river, Melissa and I chanced across Gion, the section of Kyoto traditionally associated with those oh-so quintessential symbols of Japan, the geisha.

While we were wandering down a random (and very storied-feeling) street, we were surprised to see a pair of Maeko-san (geisha in training) dash out of a house beneath a hail of camera flashes and into a waiting car where they were quickly driven from the scene.

Whoa

It was like watching the paparazzi hound some D-list cocaine riddled actress or singer. Amy Winehouse basically.

Shortly thereafter we found a nice little place to eat and enjoyed some excellent yakitori (chicken on a stick). A couple of beers later we were out and wandering back towards the station in order to meet up with Ryan, who happened to be in Kyoto at the same time. We meet up with him in the Starbucks outside the station and before you can say Caramel Macchiato we were upstairs in the same building sitting down for a second dinner at an Izakaya.

It was good to see Ryan again. Last time I’d seen him was the trip to Thailand, so it had been a month or so. Things were going well with him, and he was actually meeting up with a girl he knew later that night. Conversation and booze flowed for a couple hours before he exited stage left and Melissa and I waltzed back to the hotel to get ready for the next day.

Day two was the main sightseeing day for Kyoto itself as it turned out. Mel and I caught a quick breakfast before taking the bus out to the North end of Kyoto to see Kinkaku-ji, meaning “Golden Temple”. It’s also maybe Kyoto’s most popular tourist sight. Absolutely beautiful, especially with the autumn leaves framing everything.

Unfortunately at the same time we began to run into the inevitable groups of elementary school children out on field trips. Like herds of feral weasels, they moved like a human wave through the area, stripping it bare of foreign tourists, dragging them along as inevitably as the tide turns rock to dust.

It wasn’t THAT bad.

After Kinkaku-ji Melissa and I took a more leisurely tack on the activities. We bussed slowly towards the West end of Tokyo, stopping at the odd temple to gawk before eventually ending up in Arashiyama, which is famous for its river and bamboo forested hills among other things. Again, the hills were stunningly beautiful with all of the Japanese maples in the midst of their colour change.

We took a short hike up a small mountain to what acts as a sort of protected zone for some wild Japanese macaques. We had a nice little confrontation just before reaching the summit with an aggressive male monkey. He sort of dashed at Melissa, scaring the crap out of her, before a handler chased the offending primate away.

After that, no real problems. Tell you this much though, Japanese monkeys are a hell of a lot less endearing than their Thai cousins. They make this super spooky hooting noise too...*shiver*

Day three was definitely the most ambitious. I woke up early and went hiking at Fushimi Inari, a temple noted for its 11,000 Torii gates. It was a very picturesque walk despite my hiking handbook totally failing me and a 2 ½ hour hike quickly becoming a 3 ½ hour hike due to poor directional choices. This is why I need a compass.

Following that fiasco, I met up with Melissa back at Kyoto station and we took the train south for about 40 minutes to Nara, the capital of Japan before Kyoto was the capital.

Nara was, in my opinion, the finest part of the trip. Most of the sights the city has to offer are localized within Nara park which is populated by a couple thousand little Japanese deer (shika in nihongo). These guys are really friendly and quite tame, but we had the opportunity to see a few startle and bound past the temples beneath the autumn canopy.

The park includes a few notable things, like Todai-Ji, which is the largest wooden building in the world, although the current iteration of the temple is in fact smaller than it was previously.

Truly a beautiful city though, at least within the park.

After a few hours Melissa and I wandered back to the station and headed back to Kyoto. From there we took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo and arrived there, exhausted around 8. We split up and went our separate ways.

My trip home was surprisingly eventful though. On the Yamanote line my train stopped suddenly between stations, which is very unusual. Methinks a suicide perhaps. After about 5 minutes we started moving again.

Finally, on the walk from Musashi-Koganei station to my house I was stopped by a bike-mounted cop. He asked to see my foreigner card and asked where I work. After nodding at my answers he said “thank you, thank you” and hopped on his bike and drove off.

Close call.

And that was Kyoto!

Hopefully I’ll be back posting again soon!

Returning to you most unpunctually...

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello

Pictures: 1. Pagoda at Kiyomizudera, 2. Large cemetary enroute to Kiyomizudera, 3. Kiyomizudera main temple complex, 4. Lanterns at the Yasaka Shrine, 5. Kinkaku-ji, 6. One of the many pagodas we visited in Northern Kyoto, 7. Path through bamboo forest on the way to Arashiyama, 8. Bamboo forest in temple complex near Arashiyama 9. Macaquees on Arashiyama, 10. Boats on the river near Kyoto (top 10 best pictures I've taken), 11. Torii gates at Fushimi-Inari, 12. Shrine at Fushimi-Inari, 13. Todai-ji in Nara park, 14. View of Nara city from a hillside temple, 15. Nara park deer.