Climbing Mount Kanuki

Mt Kanuki is Numazu's local peak. It's a modest 193 metres high, and there's a road at least half way up it and the rest of the climb is on a well-cut path, but lest you think this is complete cop-out hiking, it's very steep. (OK fine, it's complete cop-out hiking. I'm just unfit. There, I said it. But it is steep.) Anyway, the views of Numazu and Mount Fuji to the north are pretty nice, especially on a clear sunny day like the one we had. We rode our bikes... oh all right, Craig rode his bike with Cassia on it, while E and I walked our bikes to the half-way point, and then we walked the rest of it. And yes, I walked it, and yes, I was carrying Cassia in the Ergo and yes, I complained. A lot. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the views. Well, here are some of our photos.


This says "rakusekikiken atamanouenichuui". I'm sure there are meant to be more spaces in there, but I don't know where they go, and I don't know what it means but I'm guessing something along the lines of Warning, stubbing your toes on the falling rocks will cause a nuclear explosion and you will find yourself saying "Ichuui!". See I told you it was a tough climb.


This is the view about a third of the way up. You can't quite see our apartment here so I won't bother pointing it out to you.


At the top. That's Numazu down below, and Fuji-san in the background, in case you weren't sure. It's the side of the mountain you never see in postcards, partly because there's that other big hill obstructing the view, but also because the old crater from a previous eruption interrupts its aesthetic symmetrical beauty. Or something.


This is from the viewing tower at the top of Kanukiyama. I was being a bit arty-farty.



This is another picture from the third-way point. You can see our apartment in this one. Look at the building just to the right of centre. (The brown one.) Look at the very top left corner of the building, then trace down three levels. That's us!! (Yeah, OK, I realise you probably need to see a full-screen version of this photo at full resolution, but that would take way too long to upload. So you'll just have to trust me. We'll leave a bright red towel hanging over our balcony next time to prove it.)

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How to get to Kanukiyama by bike: South of Numazu station, take a left and then right onto the next main road. Cross over the river and turn immediately to your left. Ride along the river to the next bridge, then turn right. Follow that road down til you see the sign photographed at the top of this post. Alternatively, post me a comment giving me your email address and requesting a map, and I'll send one to you.

My Ring bike shop

If you happen to find yourself in Numazu during your travels around the most exciting and happening places of the world and in need of a bicycle, go to My Ring bike shop. The man running the store speaks English and is very nice to deal with. You can buy or rent a bike (hire fee 300 yen per hour, which is peanuts), or get your own bike repaired there. My personal experience today was that I took my bike in for a repair, he fiddled with it for a bit and then said he'd need to order in an extra part for it which would take four days and I could borrow one of his bikes while mine was out of action. He didn't ask for a deposit, or to see my passport, or anything for that matter. I was very impressed. The Numazu Traveler has said everything else there is to know about My Ring so you can find more useful information including how to get there here.

Shosenkyo Gorge

Last Sunday we took a trip here. Go on, click on the link, just to see the photos. Then you can come straight back and continue reading this post. I'll wait...

waiting...

still waiting...

Done it yet?

OK, so you would have seen that the photos are very beautiful and make you wonder what sort of colour enhancement feature they used in Photoshop. They say that the best time of year to go is late October to mid November. We went on the 23rd of November, so we only missed the "best" window by a week. Here's a snippet of what we saw (and I promise that none of these photos have been enhanced at all):













Pretty noice, hey?

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To get to Shosenkyo Gorge from Numazu, take the Shizuoka train to Fuji, and then another train from Fuji to Kofu. Buses leave outside Kofu station to the gorge. There are more details about the buses (and trains) on that website I posted a link to.

Lions and tigers and bears

Going through this blog I realise that I forgot to mention an outing we took a couple of months ago to Fuji Safari Park. I'd include a link to the website except it's all in Japanese. Anyway, a picture tells a thousand words, so here are a few:


Ummm.....


Oookaaaay......


Are lions perhaps the most impressive animals on the planet?


That's a piece of fruit at the end of a giant pair of tongs. Craig's hand was at the other end.


Now WE did it the fun way. The poor suckers who drive through this place not only are not allowed to open their windows or get out of their cars, but they're not even allowed to stop and drink in whatever spectacle happens to be before them (lucky they don't have to pay extra to drive through).




It's a hard life!


Are meerkats perhaps the funniest animals on the planet?


Can't get away from 'em even in Japan! Well, I guess no-one in Australia wants albino kangaroos anyway.


The quintessential Japanese scene in the background... with some quintessential Australiana in the foreground.

So, how do you get to Fuji Safari Park from Numazu? You take the Kozu train to Gotemba, and from there a bus right to the front door of the zoo. The train takes about half an hour and the bus takes about 45 minutes (from memory -- sorry, it was a while ago now).

Gimme another layer

Japan has a passionate but destructive and entirely codependent relationship with packaging. Especially plastic packaging. It drives me insane, but I keep forgetting to learn how to say "no bag thanks" and most of the time the checkout person has already wrapped something up before I've even noticed.

Example: Yesterday I bought a whole bunch of groceries at the supermarket that included two packets of fried tofu. This tofu was packaged in air and watertight plastic wrapping. And yet the checkout woman still felt it necessary to wrap them in a second plastic bag before putting them in my shopping bag (which was a reuseable cloth bag, but only because I brought my own).

Another example: Recently I bought a new toothbrush. It came in a cardboard-backed plastic bubble package. At the checkout it was wrapped in another layer of plastic all by itself.

Another example, although admittedly not involving quite as much plastic: Within our first week of being here we bought a couple of kitchen pots. The pots and lids were individually wrapped in plastic, which then went in cardboard boxes, which were then wrapped in paper, which were then carefully placed in large thick paper bags with handles for us to take home. And just in case the paper bag suddenly popped open and embarrassingly spilled its contents on the ground in a public place, the paper bag was sealed shut with a piece of sticky tape.

Favourite example: A while ago I bought cotton buds. A pack of 200, which came in 8 individually wrapped packs of 25. So that's already two layers of plastic between the cotton buds and the outside world. At the checkout? You guessed it, another individual plastic bag before going in the main (plastic) shopping bag.

GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

And then to accomodate this excessive use of petroleum byproducts, the country has devised an elaborate and time-consuming waste disposal system that requires strict adherence to the rules to actually work. Remember this post?

Now before you go and tell me all your anecdotes about checkout people in Australia (and elsewhere) who like to put anything used to clean things in a separate plastic bag before putting it in the main shopping bag, regardless of how well its primary package, bottle, wrapping or other confinement does the job of holding it in, I already know. All I'm saying is, Japan has turned packaging into a cultural phenomenon.

The things you take for granted

You know what I have come to love about Australia? The money is colourful. There's no chance of mistaking a $5 note for a $10 or a $20 because one's pink, another is blue and the other is orange. And they're noticeably different sizes too, just in case you are stupid (or colourblind).

I don't know if there are any other countries that do that. Japan certainly doesn't.

And because I am stupid, I have on three different occasions handed over a 10,000 yen note with a few coins for something that cost between 1000 and 1500 yen. Good thing the Japanese are so polite they don't point out your dumbness (and so honest they don't take advantage of you).

I've made a friend!

AND what's more, I've discovered that there are play groups ALL OVER Numazu that are run all day every day for FREE!!

So at last week's kids' activity in the park I met another woman, L. Her situation is similar to mine; her husband has a job here in Japan and she's stuck at home with her toddler son, looking for stuff to do. She's from Laos (Laotian?) but speaks English well and her husband is American. They've been in Numazu since earlier this year and in Japan for longer. Anyway, L knew a lot more of the ropes around here than I did, and told me about a play group called Poppo right near the train station. We made a date to go there together, and that happened yesterday.

Poppo was cooooooool. A nice big room with heaps of different toys and activities for little kids to play around with at their leisure. Twice in the day they have music and dancing followed by story time - in Japanese of course. I can hardly believe that a) this sort of thing is available all over the place totally free and b) I knew nothing about it until now. But hey! It's great, and I will definitely be going back.

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Location of Poppo for anyone googling playgroups in Numazu: On the fourth floor of the building next to Lawson (the convenience store) on the left immediately south of Numazu station. The building is on the corner of that block for added reference. If you use the main elevators, Poppo will greet you enthusiastically as soon as the doors open. The main elevators are well inside the building though, so you have to go for a little walk around the corridor to find them. Poppo is open every day of the week except Wednesday, from 10:00 a.m. til 5:00 p.m.

Yay for blackouts

On Thursday night I was about to start cooking dinner -- well, actually I had already started by chopping the onions and capsicum and putting them on the stove, but the pan hadn't even warmed up yet -- when the power went out. Our whole apartment block was in darkness. Interesting the sort of things that bring a community together. We stood out on the balcony and could see and hear people running up and down the corridors and stairs, jabbering at each other and shining torches, or just standing around doing nothing. Having no idea how long this situation would last I said to Craig "D'oh! I guess this means we're going to have to go out for dinner."

Craig agreed that this was a burden we'd have to bravely shoulder, and said "So, what would you like?"
"Something not Japanese," I replied.
"Indian?"
"Yep."

So we wandered down to this nifty little Indian restuarant called Aladdin we had found on our first night in Numazu. As well as having typically delicious Indian flavours (and when they say something is hot it actually is! That's something else I've really missed here in Japan; they simply Don't Do Spicy), this restuarant serves the most enormous pieces of naan bread you ever did see. So for a decent price, apart from their imported Indian beers which I really didn't care about anyway, you get a great meal which you didn't have to cook yourself. Love it.

And on our return home, the power was back on.

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ETA: I guess I should explain the location of this restuarant for anyone who happens to find themselves in Numazu one day and wondering what to eat. Um, I haven't learned the names of the streets around here. But you walk up that main street north and slightly west of Numazu Station (the one that leads to Ishibashi Plaza), and take the second street on the left. It's about four shopfronts along on the north side of the street. (Just look for the sign saying "Aladdin".) Less than five minutes walk from the station.

Taiko drums

I have mentioned before that there is a park across the street from us. Last weekend it was the site of some sort of cultural festival. Not sure exactly what, but on Saturday night we could hear lots of music and voices over the loudspeaker, so we decided to wander down there and check it out. They had set up a temporary stage, and when we arrived there were four old women dressed in traditional kimono with fans, performing a dance (didn't think to get a photo, unfortunately).

When their number was over, a large group of teenagers dressed in what looked to us like black karate outfits started preparing for their act. This involved putting drums of varying sizes in specific locations on the stage. When they rolled out "the big one" (it took two kids to carry it, and was set up on a stand of its own), we figured this was definitely going to be interesting enough to stick around for.

The performance was an extremely impressive display of high-precision, choreographed drumming. Craig struck up a conversation in English with a man standing next to him who turned out to be the students' teacher; they were performing on traditional taiko drums.

I haven't done a lot of research into taiko, but it appears that they have existed for centuries and are associated with Japanese martial arts. Perhaps that would explain why the students were dressed the way they were; they even had rather warlike white belts tied around their heads. Later on all the boys took their shirts off which kind of added to the "look" -- although maybe that was just to cool down because the drumming was pretty vigorous (too bad for the girls!). In more recent decades, taiko performances of the sort we witnessed have become very popular. And no wonder! They are really, really cool.

Kore wa nan des ka? (What is this?)

In the interests of being culturally enlightened, I bought this vegetable at the supermarket.

This is what it looked like inside. The outer green section was watery and
crunchy, a bit like the white flesh of a watermelon just before you get to the pink bit. The inner white section was slightly spongy, like raw zucchini. The seeds reminded me a lot of pumpkin seeds. I had no idea if you were meant to eat it raw or cooked, but I figured I'd try raw first and if that was horrible, cook it to see if it improved. The verdict? Scroll down.

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Pah! Amazing Cassia sucked on it as long as she did (long enough to get this photo and that was it). About the bitterest thing I've ever tasted.

The inevitable conclusion. And no, cooking didn't improve it.

Curiously enough, we found it at the smorgasbord restaurant we went to last week, cleverly disguised as a tempura (deep fried in light batter) vegetable. It was still revolting.

And it's called a goya, by the way. Apparently it's an acquired taste.

Food, glorious food

The food is really different here. I could write a book about it. But I'll try to keep this post to the essence of it.

First up, they don't do items in bulk. With perhaps the exception of rice which you can buy in 10kg bags (still nothing to get excited about; you can find 20kg bags in Asian groceries in Australia), and sake which you can buy in 3L bottles. But honestly, who wants three litres of sake?

To demonstrate what I mean, bread comes in packs of 3, 5, 6 or 8 slices. That's white bread, by the way. The only wholemeal bread I have found so far comes in packs of 3 slices. For $1.15 a pack.

Secondly, they don't do cheesem, rolled oats or beans in a can. OK, they do cheese. The individually wrapped slices of plastic stuff (6-8 slices per pack), or tiny blocks of plastic stuff for almost $20 a kilo. And beans are virtually unheard of. I really, really, really miss my beans. And my oats.

Fruit is insanely expensive (about $1 per item) but veggies seem to be pretty cheap. I must say it is nice to get a packet of bean sprouts for 49 cents.

Fish, pork and seafood (i.e. shellfish and all those revolting slimy things that make me want to vomit on sight like octopus) are their staple meats. We don't do pork or seafood. Incidentally, many, many seemingly unrelated products such as noodles have seafood flavour bases too. Bleurgh. We're not big fish eaters either, although that's probably going to change over time.

They love their chicken, so there's some respite for us.

They do beef, but it's expensive and fatty. Inedibly so. They don't do lamb.

Curiously, their love of fatty meat works to our advantage. The cheapest cuts of meat are the leanest. I had the amusing experience yesterday of finding one tray of diced beef that was $10 a kilo cheaper than all the others around it. It actually consisted of pieces of meat. And breast is the cheapest cut of chicken. Can't complain.

The other night, being the third of the month, we went to a restuarant for dinner. It was a smorgasbord place, with Western food. Ohhhhhhh! I loaded my plate with pasta, bean salad, thick cut potato chips and tomato sauce, more pasta, Mexican-style chilli, etc etc. It was sooooo good. Not a grain of rice to be had. (I actually don't mind rice. But not for every meal.) We also hoed into the steak, until Craig saw the chef rubbing the hotplate with pork fat. D'oh.

Anyway, we're slowly making adjustments. I have cooked fish three times since we've been here. That's three more times than I'd ever cooked it before. We eat with chopsticks a lot of the time. Um. OK, that's the extent of our changes. The rest of the time we're sticking as closely to our old diet as we can (minus a few much-loved items) so we're a bit slow on the uptake with this one. We might get there eventually, like maybe by around the time we come home again.

Fuji-san from our north balcony

This was the first time we got to see it. We'd only been here a few days. There had been a bit of a storm, and then the clouds cleared. Pretty cool, hey?

Unfortunately there is another large hill directly between us and Mt Fuji (which you can see quite clearly in this pic), so we can only really see the top of it. Craig gets an awesome view of it from his building at work, though, apparently.

Guidebook of how to put out garbage (photo added; scroll down)

The following is quoted entirely from the English section of a little pamphlet helpfully provided to us by the Numazu City Office.

All families in Numazu City are now requested to separate their garbage and trash into four categories in order to reduce volume and improve the efficiency of recycling.

Basic Rules of Disposal
1. Date for disposal... Confirm the respective dates for disposal in The Annual Collection Schedule for Trash and Garbage then put out garbage and trash by 8:00 am.
2. Place for disposal... Be sure to set out garbage and trash at the station designated for your area.
3. Type of garbage to be separated... Be sure the type of garbage or trash in this table is designated for that day.

The Annual Collection Schedule for Trash and Garbage is available any time at the Information Desk of the Numazu City Office. A collection station for your area is designated by your area. A neighbour can tell you its location of each different categories.

All garbage and trash shall be put into bags designated by the city. Please Do Not Use bags approved by the city for items like recyclable garbage and also other garbage (destined for landfill garbage) which are only burnable. Convenience stores and other shops use the city designated bag for your shopping, so you can use them for disposal.

Disposal of garbage or trash in a river or canal, on the roadsides, in landfills, or an open area, etc. and such offense shall be punishable under city law.

Burnable garbage
Days for Collection: 2 days in a week
Place: Designated collection station for Burnable Garbage
How to: Using Numazu approved city bag.
* Kitchen garbage
* Paper
Paper, carbon paper, wrapping paper, etc.
* Baby diapers, Sanitary napkins
Soiled diapers shall be rinsed and excrement shall be disposed into toilet before disposal.
* Other burnables
Cloth gloves, wooden chopsticks, cigarette butts and ashes.
* Items of personal hygiene
Toothbrushes, toilet cleaners, old clothing (socks, underwear, etc.)

Plastic containers, packing
Days for collection: 1 day in a week
Place: Designated collection station for Plastic containers and Packing.
How to: Using Numazu approved city bag.
* Cases and wrapping made of vinyl or plastic, if they are unclean, should be cleaned first then, can be recycled. But the other ones with the dirty are to be set out with burnable trash.
* Bottles, cups, etc.
* Plastic bags, wraps
* Styrofoam materials: cups, shock-absorbent packing materials, etc.
* Plastic netting, etc.

Recyclable Garbage
Days for Collection: 1 day in a month
Place: Designated collection station for Recyclable Garbage
How to: In each category set out as they are or bundled
* Cans
Empty and place into a collection bag.
* Electrical cords, cigarette lighters, etc. also to be placed as above.
* Glass Bottles (Only bottles that have contained food or beverages)
Empty them first and clean. Transparent bottles, such as clear bottles and coloured bottles shall be separated and placed.
* Metal items
These include metal items and items mostly composed of metal. Items that are partially metal should be considered metal items.
* Dry batteries
These must be put into the collection can.
* Used paper
These items shall be divided into four categories: 1) Newspapers and leaflets, 2) Cardboard, 3) Beverage cartons, 4) Magazines and cardboard. Each group shall be bundled with white paper string. However, carbon paper, thermal paper, silver wrapping paper must be put with Burnable Garbage. Beverage cartons should not put out on a rainy day.
* Clothing
Theses items shall be bundled with string. Soiled clothing shall be put out with burnable items. Clothing items shall not be put out on a rainy day.
* PET bottle
These items include all beverage containers (soft drinks, sake, shoyu.) marked as "PET" containers or labels shall be put into a collection bag set by the city. How to prepare PET bottles for disposal: Remove cap and label. Rinse the bottle with water. Step on the bottle to flatten it. Place the bottle into a collection bag. The removed caps and labels (or items without caps and labels) shall be put out on the day of the plastic containers, packing.

Other Garbage (Destined for Landfill Garbage)
Days for collection: 1 day in a month
Place: The collection station designated for Other Garbage.
How to: Refer to the applicable Category below for directions about how to prepare such items for disposal.
Ceramics, glass. (Category 1): Place items in a city approved bag. This category include items that cannot be incinerated such as items covered with aluminium foil, rubber goods, disposable pocket warmers, etc.
Burnable Large Garbage. (Category 2): Do not place such items in a bag. If the item is large, it should be broken into smaller pieces for incineration. The pieces should be shorter than 1 meter. Mattresses, blankets, and carpets should be bundled with string.
Thermal recycling Plastic Garbage (Category 3): Please place such an item in a city approved bag and mark the bag with a 3. The goods made from plastic or made of leather and small electrical appliances covered with plastic cannot be put into a bag and can placed out as they are.
Fluorescent lights. DO NOT BREAK. If the fluorescent light is already broken, it shall be set out with Category 1 Items above (ceramics, glass).

Got that?

I'll spare you the rest, which is "garbage that cannot be collected by the city" -- what we'd call hard rubbish -- and "information".

Oh, and apparently one of the most common complaints amongst Japanese people about gaijin living in Japan is that they're useless at putting out the garbage.

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Addendum

At the bottom left of the photo are all the crates for glass bottles. You have to separate your bottles into clear, brown and coloured, and put them in the appropriate crate. At the bottom right, along the diagonal section of the fence, are all the bundles of flattened, tied-with-city-approved-white-paper-string cardboard. (If you look really carefully, you can see a shoebox on the top of the pile, behind the spare tyre of the 4WD. That's my shoebox!) On the right about halfway up the photo is the giant blue skip for paper products, and directly above that are all the crates for aluminium and steel cans. And opposite the crates for metal, lining up along the fence, are all the crates for PET bottles. I didn't crush mine, although I saw people down there who were. But I noticed lots of uncrushed bottle in those crates and thought "Gah, forget it."

Tomorrow is Recyclable Garbage Day, and everyone's preparing for it by putting their stuff out this evening. It's a remarkable event, as I suppose it should be given it only happens once a month. There's a man down there who seems to be a self-appointed waste disposal manager. I was rather scared he would berate me publicly for tying my cardboard items together with brown string instead of white (yes, every other bundle I saw down there was tied with white string) so I made an effort not to make eye contact with him as I dumped my boxes. Don't tell him the shoe box was actually full of small cardboard items I hadn't squashed flat. And when I went back down for my second trip, this time with all my paper products stuffed randomly into the largest paper bag I could find, I held it all behind my back and just quickly chucked the bag in the skip while he wasn't looking. Well, I guess I'm not sure what he's really doing down there, as most people seem to know exactly where to put their stuff, so perhaps he's just using the opportunity to chat to the locals. Rubbish obviously has a way of bringing the community together around here. And I did end up asking him where to dump my used orange juice cartons when I made my third trip, and he seemed not to mind that I hadn't a) flattened them, b) tied them together, c) rinsed them thoroughly. Maybe he didn't look all that carefully. Or maybe the Japanese really are as tolerant and forgiving of stupid gaijin as the books say they are, to the gaijin's faces, at least.

I'll probably get better at this as we go along.

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

It's been in the mid-30s (Celsius) with about 240% humidity. Now, lest you think from one of my recent posts that I'm a huge fan of these weather conditions, let me clarify: I like hot weather. I love warm weather. I dislike cold (and wet) weather. I hate, loathe and despise very cold weather. So which do you think I prefer: mid-30s with 240% humidity, or frost on our windscreen? There you have it.

Yesterday we went on an all-day excursion to Tokyo. We expected it to be just as hot and humid there, so were rather shocked on arrival to discover it was almost cold! Which meant we were underdressed for the occasion too. And it rained – a LOT – and we didn't have umbrellas so we got drenched. (Fortunately it wasn't really cold, only comparitively so.) So not only did we stick out for being a head taller than everyone else and white-skinned, we were also the stupid tourists without umbrellas, looking like used mops. But for the record, there were some other people without umbrellas too – all gaijin (foreignors) of course. Stupid tourists.

Anyway, this week is forecast to be in the mid-high 20s in Numazu, which is about my ideal, humid or not. Today, indeed, has been the first day I haven't used the air conditioners, and I've had the windows and doors open all day long to try and cool the apartment down. It's been lovely, really. You get a nice breeze on the ninth floor. (Can you tell I still find being on the ninth floor a novelty?)