Daaaaaaay two! I’m gonna use lots of ‘a’s because I’m just so excited. I was planning to meet cousin Katie (yay! cousin time!), and she likes to get moving early, so that meant I was up and out at the same time Chris left for work. Smack in the middle of rush hour!
It’s cray cray out there.
Side note: Wendy’s sells bubble tea here. Jealous. Haven’t tried it yet.
Breakfast was a blueberry and cream cheese sandwich and a little seaweed-wrapped rice ball.
And then we were off to climb Mt. Takao! (I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the first of many hikes in Japan. This may be my most active trip yet!)
There were several different trails, but we chose the paved one because it rained the previous day and the trails can get dangerously muddy. It was so steep! We had our work cut out for us.
The views were worth it though! Not even all the way up yet.
It was also a bit confusing because the weather forecasted chances of rain and chills today, too, but it just got nicer and sunnier as the hike progressed. We were stripping layers like there was no tomorrow, and soon we were the most naked people on the hike. (Mind you, the locals were all wearing the standard long skirts or pants and high-necked layers galore, paired with hiking or tennis shoes. No yoga pants or sports bras to be seen except on us!)
We veered off the main path about halfway up to take a trail with a suspension bridge. It was beautiful and tucked into lots of green.
There were also bunches and bunches of caterpillars on this hike. Like. So many. It was cute at first. See?
So cute. So innocent. But then we stopped for lunch. (Yogurt and a matcha-red bean bun.)
The next thing I knew, I looked down and there were four caterpillars crawling around my lap and my right arm. “Ohhh!” I said, still amused. I began trying to remove them in a friendly way by having each one crawl onto my finger so I could replace them on the other side of the bench. But then Katie mentioned that there were some on my left side that I hadn’t noticed before. She began trying to remove those with a stick while I continued my work with the original stubborn four, who had somehow since multiplied to five.
Before I knew it, there seemed to be at least ten caterpillars on my lap-arm-torso region, and it was getting a little out of hand. I felt like saying, “Ha, ha, very funny guys. You can go home now!” But before I had the chance, Katie said, “Oh, and there’s this little guy,” and she pointed to another creature on my left arm that was very much not a caterpillar.
It was the shock that finally did me in. I reacted at this unknown specimen with my usual bug-filled terror. (A friend once commented, “I’ve heard you see a bug,” as proof that he knew I could scream loudly.) I jumped from the bench like it was iron-hot and began a dance to try to remove all things from my body that did not belong there. I imagine it was a bit of a scene for those passing by.
The sad thing is, it wasn’t until I’d sufficiently calmed down that I registered the extra fella who set me off had been a baby stick bug! I’ve never seen one in the wild before, and I just shook it off! Sad. Believe it or not, my first ever pet was a stick bug who I named Camo, so I’m definitely pro-stick bug. Poor little thing. I would have held her if I hadn’t been so surprised!
But anyway… Shortly after this fiasco, we made it to the top!
Ooooohh… Aaaaahh… So pretty!
Mt. Fuji’s somewhere back there, but he was hiding in the clouds. Apparently he does that a lot.
Katie had heard that eating ice cream at the top was the thing to do, so we did just that!
Instead of having a standard soft serve machine where you pour a bunch of liquid ice cream into the top and the machine freezes it on the way out, the stand manager grabbed a little cup of ice cream from a freezer and placed it in a little box. When he pulled down on a lever, the machine pushed the ice cream out in a swirl! Low-cost, pre-rationed soft serve. Pretty fancy.
We enjoyed the views a bit longer because they really were so gorgeous.
And then we went to explore the temples on the mountain. A ceremony was just about to start, so we saw many people filing in to sit and wait, and then later, we saw the geishas head in, too.
Then we began the descent.
Remember when I mentioned the friendly boys on the plane over? Well I told them we were doing this hike today, and they decided to do it, as well! We ran into them on our way down as they were heading up. Pretty funny.
Our next stop was the monkey park.
74 Japanese monkeys. It was so interesting to watch them clean each other. One would just walk up to another and flop down, and the other monkey would take that as its cue to get to cleaning! I wish my family would take their cues to give me a back massage whenever I sit near them. Bahahaha.
There were also hilarious descriptions of the monkeys on the wall inside. Some favorites include:
-“Frequently angry. Gonorrhea.”
-“He is adult but he love to play.’
-“It is a girl. But it looks manlike face.”
-“Handsome.”
-“No. 3 popular with girls.”
-“Weak and at the inconspicuous place.”
-“She has a crooked waist. Boss’s ex-girlfriend.”
Next, we stopped at a restaurant with an outside bench table that faced this gooooorgeous view!!!!
We split a bowl of super yummy udon. Mmmmm.
We met up with the boys again when they returned down, and they gave us the great idea to take the chairlift down to save our tired knees. 10/10 would recommend.
It was scary being on a chairlift without snow underneath! Never done that before!
It was so cute with the colorful chairs, and I was sitting there wishing we could have coordinated to have someone riding up take our picture on the chair, when out of nowhere, a little man on the side of the lift took our picture! It was so cute, too. One of those pictures they try to sell you at the bottom, and it had this little border and was less than $7! They’re usually so much more expensive. I wanted it, but Katie and the boys just walked on by without taking a second glance and then went on to talk about how silly those pictures are. I was so flustered that before I knew it, we were way on past the pictures and it felt silly to go back.
Well, it’s been a week since then and it still makes me sad and mad at myself for not buying it. Ugh. I really need to learn to take a second to catch my breath when I want to do something and the rest of my group doesn’t. I’m really bad at it, and then it nags me for ages… )’:
Okay. Sorry. I just went to go pout for a half hour. (If you think I’m joking, you’ve never seen me lament about not buying something. I once had a pair of yoga pants haunt me for over a year.)
Ugh. Well, once that happened, I was a bit sad and quietly grumpy (I bet Katie didn’t even notice!), so when we got to the train station, we parted ways with the boys because they had to buy tickets and I was not feeling friendly… Oops. Sorry, boys. (The next train came like five minutes later, so it’s not like we were hanging them out to dry.)
Soon we were back in Tokyo where we met up with the rest of Katie’s travel gang: cousin Lea, Remy, Cassie, and Matt.
Our first mission was bubble tea. So yummy. Bubble tea isn’t super huge here, so there still aren’t very many places that sell it. The ones that do often have crazy lines though! If you ask me, they need to build more bubble tea places! (And could they please sell them for $1.50/each like Taiwan??? Thanks in advance.)
We wandered a bit more with our bubble tea…
And then we found a sake bar! It was pretty neat. For about $10, we were given free reign of three fridges filled with different varieties of sake. All we could drink in 30 minutes! Not a bad deal. I managed to try six different sakes, plus ice cream over sake and a sake cocktail! Quite a steal.
When I got back to Yokohama, Chris met me and we walked around the Yokohama waterfront.
So flashy! He also showed me Japan’s very first international shipping port.
And then we walked over to a port that is currently in use – I think it’s where passenger ships come in??? I can’t quite remember. But the structure was supposed to be shaped like a whale.
And then we hit up Mos Burger! They had these in Taiwan, but I never got to try one. I was so excited, and my rice-bun burger was everything I’d hoped it would be.
Yummy yum yum.
After our late dinner, finally, it was time for bed. A busy second day in Japan! Stay tuned for more.
私はあなたに最高を祈ります/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa