Day 16 – The Art of God & Man
April 30, Kawaguchiko, Tokyo
Last day in our Ryokan. It was definitely one of my favorite stops. We opened the massive window one last time, letting in the Lake view and bright sunlight. Onto breakfast, and then to finish packing up. The hotel held our big bags and we took a quick walk to the Mt Fuji ropeway. We easily bought our tickets and took a scenic(and swaying) gondola ride to the top of the mountain. (Nate was nervous the whole time so of course Elijah had to pick on him.
Wow. The view was just amazing.
There were only a handful of people up top this early in the morning, so it was easy to get pictures for any vantage point. I’m so glad it was such a good day. The weather was warm, the skies were clear and Fuji San was completely visible. Another short hike up from the still-closed gift shop, and we found a short queue for a swing. Yes, like a child’s swing(like literally a Japanese child’s swing….my legs were entirely too long for it)
It was so relaxing and serene and lovely. A gentle swing with our feet pointed towards Mt Fuji. Absolutely divine.
We wandered further up the view point to find a still-blossomed Sakura tree and did a quick photo shoot. Further up, a viewing platform, also perfect for photos. We headed back down to the gift shop, before finding the line to get back down the gondola.
Good choices were made. I only had us go early so we would have time to look at Fuji San before our bus headed out back to Tokyo. Turns out, we avoided the morning crowd. The line turned back and forth inside the building, before looping around it, and then continuing down the street. We walked past, relieved we went when we did. Back at the hotel, we gathered our luggage and the shuttle took us back to the station. From there it was only a 30min wait for our bus to arrive and take us back to Tokyo. We found these chocolate covered cookies that collectively are our favorite, and the Fuji gift store had them Fuji shaped. So I had to have a little treat on the way back.
Ah, Tokyo
It’s crazy to think that it’s been over a week since we left Tokyo. Back into the capital of Japan was almost shell-shocking. Not because of the amount of people, but just from the vibe change. Instead of the crowd being made up of mostly foreign tourists, we were back to the every day crowd of people living their every day lives and going about their business. The proper fashions were back and the decisive I’ve-got-somewhere-to-be walks dominated.
We got caught in this crowd as we searched for the Nintendo store. I recognized what was a head – the famous Shibuya Scramble crossing. It’s the one 5 way crossing that always shows up when you Google “busy Japan” And we would be in the heart of it. We only had a few seconds to take in the sheer amount of people waiting on the side of the street before the light change and the river of people flowed. We needed to go diagonally, so we joined that stream and watched as people crossed, people took selfies and people walked bikes across. Once safe on the other side, the light changed again, allowing the cars to go through. It was crazy how much of an orchestra it seemed – this crossing light absolutely seemed a lot shorter than others, especially for the amount of people that crossed. But its efficiency was sufficient because there was no problem.
Nintendo Store
Had we enough Nintendo? Of course not! We still had a few items that we wanted to get that weren’t at the theme park – specifically for me, a Nintendo Tokyo shirt. We got our treasures before heading to MEGA Don Quijote to finish our last bit of souvenier shopping for friends.
We had so much stuff. My thing for this trip was to buy reusable shopping bags at any place that offered it to use back home. They got use now. We filled my bags with various souvenirs and snacks and kept them in coin lockers in major stations. After our last hurrah, we picked up the rest of the bags back at Shibuya station, and quickly head to our next hotel. We didn’t have time to fully appreciate it yet, so we dropped our things off in the provided storage lockers, and went to konbini for a quick (and tasty!) dinner. Then, it was to our next thing:
Team Labs Borderless
I don’t know how to describe this place. Think of it as an interactive, ever-changing, digital art museum. Like, absolutely crazy. You started in a room that explained a little about what you were going to do. It gave you a QR link for the app, so that way you could know what it is that you are looking at if ever you needed to. But then it released you. It’s a dark museum that has no flow – you are free to explore how you want. There are hidden rooms, and some exhibits are really hard to find. The first room was a huge open space that was Painted black. Moving animations of flowers, blooming, dying, then floating away were projected onto the floor, the ceilings and the walls. Elijah found that it was computer generated, and video on a loop. One of the points was that since each flower was computer generated every few seconds, the exhibit will never look the same ever again. So you’re really there at that spot in that space for a once in a lifetime experience.
Juli also found that if you touched the blank areas of the space, flowers would bloom or your hands were. They would also bloom where your feet were. So by looking at the floor you can see where people traveled through the room.
The whole place was absolutely beautiful and crazy detailed. Every exhibit did something different. We found one where lines would appear on the floor (human paths) that would converge to this rock of meeting. So like children, We made whirlpools on the floor with our paths, or loops and other designs. And one room where there were hanging, lighted crystals hanging down, Elijah found that you can control what happens either from the control panel or the corner, or from the phone app. So we know that Elijah got a good kick out of that.
And it was ever-changing. There were a few rooms we went back to simply because they were so different.
Soon, we headed to
En Tea House
The tea house was the same… ever changing. As you sipped your tea, the flower petals would fall off onto the table, and a new flower would bloom in your bowl. The flavor was absolutely amazing. I wish they had some for sale there cause it’s gonna take me a while to figure out the flavor profile to replicate it. At the end of the tea, the flower would no longer bloom and your station would stay dark.
Me and Juli were about done. My knee was killing me since I forgot to wear my brace, and Juli’s feet were hurting her. So we went out to sit, while the boys continued through the museum searching for a room that Elijah had seen on YouTube. There were two rooms that were closed the day we went so I was sure the one that he was looking for was one of the closed ones. It turns out it was not. He found three more rooms while we were out. One with globes, fog, and other crazy lights. It was a good time.
Afterwards, we walked the night streets of Tokyo,
sore, tired, and absolutely hungry. There were several ramen shops we knew on the way back to capsule hotel, thank you but rounding a coroner we saw the familiar Dominos sign. We could not not get Dominos, so we stopped inside. Staff was very helpful and almost excited to take our order. We waited about twenty minutes for the pizzas to cook before headed back to the capsule inn.
So capsule inns are generally men only, and those that aren’t, separate the genders by floor. At ours, there is a common lounge in the 10 floor, so that’s where we headed. It had a perfect view of Tokyo Tower. (The Eiffel tower looking thing) So we had beef spinach pizza (gyudon style, not American style)
Then it was time off to bed. The capsule inn provided us with pajamas, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and slippers. On the girl’s side, I took a quick shower in the dorm style bathrooms (although super clean and really sleek dorm style) before finding my capsule. I think because of fire code, it’s illegal to have doors and locks on the capsules, which is why they separate guys and girls. It’s just one of those old style shades that come down for privacy.
It was actually a lot more spacious than I thought…. I was really expecting a coffin but there’s plenty of moving to sit upright, stretch out, roll around you know. Whatever. I don’t know what kind of beans they use in their pillows here in Japan, but this one was curved so it went perfectly around your head and shoulders and was perfectly firm. I really need to invest in some of these.
