Little Dudes on a Hill (Day 6)

My last day in Tokyo! …er, at least until four days from now, the 24^th, when I come back to Tokyo. But, it has a better effect if it sounds climactic. I had my first breakfast at the hotel restaurant this morning, with them serving me toast and a corn salad. The corn salad was very good. Other days they would substitute corn for tuna.

I ventured over to Hino at about 10:30 to meet Jean and head towards Mt. Takao for a good old-fashioned hike. Well, ride up, hike down. This was the plan, but we got lazy and rode the chairlift both ways. We are just street like that. Here is what I believe to be a Thai temple (correct me if I'm wrong) and a cemetery at the Takao station:





The chairlift was really cool – you get on this conveyor belt and the bench swings around behind you and scoops you up, up, and away! Oh, and no bar in front of you…scariest of Jean's life!






It's a long way up…


But we've already come so far!

We finally reached the top which was pretty dead except for some early-morning hikers and a guy and his dog who peed on every lamppost and statue along the walk (at least it seemed that way).


Magical Tokyo in the smog.











I kind of felt like I was in that Jared Leto video.

We decided to stop for lunch at the only place that seemed to be open and a delicious bowl of soba, staring out over the forest, and in the distance, suburban Tokyo.






The pasty-face strikes again!

We had enough energy to then continue our tromping up to the monastery.






Again, the hand-washing station.






Little dudes on a hill

While we were wandering among the incense and milling with the other temple-goers, a long horn was heard and all of a sudden a processional appeared with the horn heralding the arrival of…well, I'm not sure, but it was cool to see.





After that, we headed towards "hiking' back down, but got side-tracked with regular things…


It was Suntory Time! Or not.


It was, however, necessary to grab a chocorate bar on the way down because the mountain was practically sponsored by Meiji chocorate.




Wheeeeee!

Me and Jean then decided to part ways briefly before meeting up to head to Kichijoji, so I did a little shopping at my newest and favoriteiest store, Swimmer.


Kawaii desu, ne!





After re-teaming at the train station ("the Spot" by now), we jumped the next train to Kichijoji. Upon our arrival, we decided to use the toire, so I decided to show you the cleanest squatter I could find (which ended up being not very…clean, that is)


This is a Japanese toilet. Basically, a hole in the ground you squat over. I've heard (can't speak from personal experience, believe-you-me) that having a stomach *issue* with a squatter is generally not a pleasant thing and can get quite messy. I'll leave the rest to your imagination (not that anyone wants to imagine that…)

So upon heading into the shopping arcade in Kichijoji, we stumbled upon a noisy accessories store called 'Lattice'. Everyone was shouting "irashai masen!" which means "Welcome here" in Japanese (they shout this EVERYWHERE by the way, no matter where in Japan you go…and very loud and quite whine-ily sometimes to be sure.) So I found this really pretentious giant crown necklace and a hair comb and decided to buy them…so I went up to the counter, and this cute Japanese boy was ringing me through. He was exchanging the necklace I had brought to the counter for a new, non-display version and Jean commented, "Oh! He's cute!" out loud, in English, assuming he couldn't understand. He then smiles and explains to me that he's just going to give me a new necklace so I don't get the one that was on display…in English. It then got a tiny bit awkward and when we walked out of the store, it at least gave me a good laugh. Ah…good times.


Us just wandering about in Kichijoji.

We did some perusing in the shopping arcade and I bought Marty a hoodie, me some more jewellery, and Jean snagged some souvenirs. We also ate a sketchy underground restaurant with a completely non-english speaking staff and went for a walk through a nice park. Later we decided to head to OIOI for some dessert (since most department stores have bakeries, natch)







We decided to make it a somewhat early night and headed back to our respective stations because early tomorrow I leave for my four-day side-excursion into Kyoto and Osaka…funnest! This means bullet trains, geishas, more temples, and okonomiyaki! I'm so Japanese…no big deal.