Welcome, year of the cock.

​Along with ramen and shopping outlets, Soshu-ji, the Buddhist temple near my apartment, is one of the attractions in this otherwise humdrum town. Commonly called Sano Yakuyoke Daishi, this temple is well-known for getting rid of evil spirits. And at the New Year, droves of people flock here (and many other temples or shrines all across Japan) for good fortune, good luck, and waiting in absurdly long queues.
 
The street in front of Yakuyoke Daishi is rarely busy. Sure, throughout the year there are regular visitors to the temple and the adjacent tourist center, but it’s generally quiet, save for the first month of the year, when the street is filled with vendors and worshipers from all over.
 
The other day my friend and I went for a stroll to people watch, and we discovered a line snaking up and back the distance of two traffic lights. I’ve decided that one of Japan’s national pastimes is waiting. Waiting two hours in line for 40 seconds of prayer. Waiting an hour before a doctor’s office opens to get your name on the list. (Most offices don’t make appointments, and somehow Japanese people have hours to kill sitting in a parking lot just to be seen for ten minutes. If time were money…) Waiting three hours in the cold and rainy weather to eat at a popular restaurant. In fact, I asked a friend why Japanese people wait for ridiculous amounts of time for any particular eatery, and she responded, “Yes, we wait in line.” I clarified, “Yes, buy why?” She said, “The food will be good if we wait a long time.” See, that’s what I call hype. And I just don’t get it.

Validated by a Japanese friend who owns a ramen restaurant near the aforementioned temple, he lamented about taking his family to a restaurant with a reputation as being “one of the best” of whatever it serves, and he said it wasn’t worth the hours they waited; people just want to believe that it is. Finally, logic and reason.

​Anyway, enough about that. I went somewhere cool the other day.
 
Hakone is a decent day trip from Tokyo. It’s got old school trains, hills and mountains, nature, views of Mount Fuji, hot springs, (which this tattooed hoodlum is prohibited from entering) and plenty of charm to be romanticized in self-congratulatory travel blogs.
 
A friend and his girlfriend were planning a trip there and invited me and another pal. We booked tickets that would get us to and around the area, including the “Romance Car” – a faster regional rail with minimal stops (although not terribly romantic, per se) – a pirate ship, and cable cars that would carry us awfully high above the earth.
 
There were six of us in total. Our morning started early, meeting at the station gate at a quarter to seven – way earlier than I even like to open my eyes. No bother, this was an adventure! We made our way to our assigned seats on the train and made it to Hakone in a scheduled 85 minutes. We then had to make our way onto a cute little local rail that would clunk and clatter and vibrate its way up a mountain, trees to the right and a hell of a drop to the left. Because we had a moment of convening on the train platform to discuss our next move, we missed our chance to secure seats on the half-hour ride up mountain. We are after all in Japan, and popular places get booked pretty darn fast.
 
The trip consisted of two switchbacks, where the train would stop on a level section of track and reverse, switching to a track going the other way. (a zig-zag, basically) We made it to our first destination, an open-air museum. The ticket price was a bit shocking – about $15, which we all agreed seemed a little steep. I can’t think of any museum I’ve visited that has cost that much without a special exhibit, but whatever.
 
The next two hours we spent perusing the grounds and admiring the installations created by artists from around the world. One of the coolest works was a…a bubble…honeycomb…thing. If you were no older than twelve, you could climb inside and have a hell of a time. If you were three foreign dudes excited about climbing around, you would be discouraged by the three sensible and rule-abiding Japanese women in your company. Ah well.

Weeping eyes. Some white thing. Kids having fun because they're kids.
​Happy couple. Six adults not having as much fun as the kids.

​Midway through the park there’s a museum dedicated to Picasso and featuring a sizable collection of his work. I wouldn’t say it’s his best work; some of it, as my friend opined, could easily be mistaken for a junior high school student’s refrigerator-worthy efforts. But overall it’s a decent collection, and an informative gallery.
 
A short walk from the museum is a foot spa, which we six enjoyed for twenty minutes or so. The water was so warm, and the stones below great for massaging our weary feet. We then climbed up a tower surrounded by stained glass windows and looked out over the hills before descending and continuing on to our next stop.

​We hopped back on the little train and transferred to a lift that would then transfer us to a cable car. This time we managed to get seats. These days I’m sure not to make eye contact with anybody standing up lest I be guilted into offering my seat to them.
 
The cable cars were pretty cool, but also kinda scary. I mean, it’s just a big box dangling from a single wire hundreds of feet off the ground. Well, I’m writing this now, so clearly there’s no surprise ending.
 
We arrived at Owakudani, a volcanic valley known for sulphuric gasses spewing from the mountainside and for kuro-tamago: black eggs. The eggs are boiled in the waters that are high in sulpher and iron, so they turn black. But beyond that, they’re just hardboiled eggs. When the black shell is peeled away, there are no surprises. It’s kind of like an Easter egg, really. But it’s said that eating the eggs will add seven years of life. I had two while I was there, but mostly because I was hungry.

Death-defying cable car act. Deadly gasses coming from the side of the mountain.
​Chiho looking chilly and (maybe) happy. Fujisan.

From there we descended down the mountain in another cable car and arrived lakeside to wait for a boat that would take us half an hour or so across the water to a quaint village with, as we would soon discover, a very popular (busy) temple.

We all fell asleep on the boat, and when it arrived we walked along the water towards the temple. Once we arrived, we ate from a few of the street vendors, and then climbed the stairs to the temple to get in line for some Japanese-style pastime. After a half hour we got in, did our little bit, and headed back to the town center where we could catch a bus to the train station. Along with hundreds of other people.

By now it was dark. Once we could finally board, we were packed onto the bus like name-your-metaphor. None of us had seats, so we were left to stand the duration of the trip in bumper-to-bumper traffic down the mountain. The windows fogged up so every so often I’d wipe away some condensation so we could entertain ourselves by looking into the darkness. We eventually arrived and made our way onto a local train that got us back to Tokyo in about two hours.

​Chiho had to go home. The rest of us had sushi at a tiny corner shop across from the station. I then parted ways as well, catching a late train back to Sano. I had two seats to myself and took advantage of the ride to doze off and drool on my sleeve.
 
Happy New Year.

Happy captain. Stray cat plays with Jarwin's glove.
Jarwin attempts to buy a drink from a vending machine in the midst of being serviced. Pretty lake.
​A ship not as fast as the Black Pearl. Sleepy people.

Oh, and as a little bonus, here's a picture sent to me by an old friend of mine from Brazil.
This was from my senior year of high school, 1997. Thanks, Cássio.