Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Japan Tour Day Two
@8:15 PM
Tokyo, Shinjyuku – Mt Takao@8:15 PM
60km
In the morning, I went to Tsukiji Fish Market, but only toured the touristy places. I am more interested in eating fish, not seeing them auctioned! The sushi, however, is not cheap. Being a typical Singaporean, I went to a shop with quite a bit of queue, ordering a sushi set costing 3500 yen. That is $50. The premium sushi I ate, however, was quite worth the price: sea urchin, two kinds of tuna (one appears to be tuna belly), a freshly killed prawn sushi, tamago, and a white fleshly fish.
This prawn is still moving when I took the picture.
See the long queue at the far end?
Outskirts of the fish market
(Kiasu-ness is not a uniquely Singaporean trait. At Fuji-yoshida, I saw a long queue for ramen at the store opening, with dirt cheap prices. It was raining, and half the queue had no form of shelter.)I left Tokyo late, starting off at 12 noon. It was a judgemental mistake as I had overestimated my ability to navigate and cover distances. Navigation today was especially terrible as I spent 2.5 hours of cycling, only to cover 15km. I got lost 5 times, and had to navigate my way out of mazes of housing estates by cycling in the direction of the sun. The original plan was to reach Doushi; forget that, I could barely even make it to Mt Takao! I was wondering where and how I should stay, but in the deepening twilight, I found an abandoned car park on the slope of the mountain. Why not? Says I, and promptly pitched my tent on the rock hard ground.
I made a second mistake in underestimating the weather. It was COLD. I couldn’t believe that I was only 60km away from Tokyo downtown. I cooked, but it was so cold that I did not even feel like slipping out of my sleeping bag to eat. I spent the night shivering. It did not help that the river was next to the tent, so cold air kept gushing down, following the flow of the river. Including the windchill factor, I estimate that it was maybe 8 degrees Celsius in the morning.
Some pictures taken when I was riding:
Officially, you cannot ride a bike on the pavements without these signs. Unofficially, it doesn't matter, because they are everywhere.
A lovely path sheltered by sakura trees in a housing district.
A random shrine in the middle of nowhere.
This river goes along the perimeter of the entire housing district of Nishitokyo. The houses and walkways are to the left, and the road is to the right.
Carparks in Japan look like this, with ticketing machines at the side. There seems to be nothing stopping the cars from just driving off without paying though.
