Occasionally when passing through stations during this trip, I’d see a plaque on the wall saying “This station selected as one of the 100 Stations of Kanto”. This got me somewhat intrigued, so I did some research. Apparently over a four-year period between 1997 and 2000, a hundred train stations in the Kanto region with some manner of distinctive features were selected as the hundred best stations of Kanto. Approximately 25 per year. The Japanese Wikipedia (my primary source of information on this) doesn’t specify who selected them or why, but I imagine it was some manner of tourism campaign. The list hasn’t been updated since then, so two stations which have closed down since the list was created haven’t been replaced (and some others have been significantly renovated, possibly removing the feature that made them distinctive). Apparently there are sometimes stamp rallies running to encourage people to visit. After the success (?) of this project, similar ones were run in the Chubu, Kansai and Tohoku regions.
I ran through the Kanto list (perhaps I’ll check the other three later), and it turns out I’ve visited twenty-six of them, more than a quarter. I didn’t always see the plaque up, though. This is including only stations I actually set foot in – passing through on a train doesn’t count. Stations on the list that I visited for the first time this trip are Kita-Kamakura, Yokokawa, Otsuki, Hakkeijima, Minobu and Doai. Think I spotted the plaque in… four of those? (Stations first visited in past trips include Tokyo, Kamakura, Sakuragicho, Seibu-Chichibu and Takao.) Katsunuma-Budokyo is also on the list, which I came so close to visiting. Bah. (Haneda Airport Station is on the list too, but whether or not I can count it is unclear – it seems to include only the station that serves the domestic terminals, but I’ve only been to the one serving the international. Meanwhile, Narita Airport Station’s entry seems to include all stations at the airport.)
If they tried running that campaign in NSW, I wonder how many station that are even halfway decent they’d find? Maybe… six?
Here’s the plaque from Yokokawa Station:
As expected, I was woken by the sun before dawn. I threw my arm over my eyes and tried to get back to sleep again (I’ve actually woken before my alarm every single day this trip, so I’ve been getting a bit tired in the evenings) and though that was mildly successful, I eventually gave up and decided to go and photograph the sunrise… only to find the sun already above the horizon.
On the plus side, I’d already planned to head to the ryokan’s baths before breakfast, and this gave me some extra time to enjoy them. The men’s and women’s baths switch positions every night, and today’s men’s bath includes the ryokan’s outdoor bath – which is one reason I decided to go this morning over last night. The place was empty when I arrived, so I tried sneaking my camera in for some photos, but I only got one fairly average one before someone else walked in, so I put it away. It was a very relaxing bath, though, and a very nice atmosphere for a bit of outdoor bathing. The showers for rinsing off had six nozzles – one regular showerhead, one handheld, and two in each of the side walls, and a total of four taps to control them all, so lots of things going on there.
I headed back to my room, got dressed and packed most of my stuff, then headed for breakfast. Same table as dinner last night. There was no menu provided this time, though I could tell what pretty much everything was anyway, and most things started on the table (though rice and miso soup were brought out hot).
After breakfast, I went to check the lounge on the fifth floor with huge windows looking over the view, then headed back up to my room to relax until check-out time. Gotta get my money’s worth. Grabbed the name card from outside my room for a souvenir.
I checked out of the ryokan shortly before 10am, settled my accounts with them, and then left my luggage in their care again, and headed for the ropeway station. Picked up the manhole card from the attendant on the front desk, before climbing the stairs to the ropeway ticket office and boarding platform. The ropeway (and parts of the town too, I suspect) is currently doing some sort of promotion partnership with an anime series called Binan Kōkō Chikyū Bōei-bu LOVE! (= Beautiful Man High School Earth Defence Club Love!) which is a spoof of the magical girl anime genre in that they’re magical boys – basically the ropeway gondolas are plastered with the characters, and as it travelled to the top, the speakers played a short audio drama voiced by the actual characters. (I admit I’m not clear on the connection of the series to Ikaho Onsen. Onsen in general, sure – in the series, the characters like to hang out in a bathhouse, and all of the heroes and villains are named after famous onsen towns in Japan: Hakone, Yufuin, Kinugawa, Kusatsu, and so forth… but not Ikaho.)
Anyway, the ropeway has a vertical separation of 182 metres between stations, and leads up to the summit of Mount Monokiki. Takes about four minutes to do the trip. I reached the top, and left the station to find… a park with a playground for kids. I mean, I guess you want to keep the kids occupied, but that’s not really what I’d expect to find on top of a mountain. And also the Ikaho Ice Skating Rink, which I’d seen signs for in town, and for some reason I was expecting a little rink maybe the size of the temporary ones that occasionally pop up in Sydney. It was a full-size rink – eyeballing the satellite view on Google Maps, it looks to be about 200m long by 50m wide, possibly a speed skating rink, but I’m no expert. The Gunma Prefecture Skating Federation is located here. At the top of a mountain in this tiny onsen town. No ice there today, naturally – a bit too warm at this time of year, even at this altitude.
More to the point, though, a short walk away from the station, through the forest, is the Tokimeki Dekki, a lookout platform from which you can see the view. “Tokimeki” is a sound effect for a heart beating with joy, excitement, et cetera, while “dekki” is just the English word “deck”, but someone definitely had fun naming that. The view up there was quite impressive, though unfortunately a bit hazier than views I saw yesterday. I could see my ryokan from up there too (though not quite the window to my room, as that side wall was edge-on to me) – it’s in the last photo below. And a couple of areas utterly filled with sakura trees – vaguely pondered stopping to see them on the way back to the train station when I left the town, but decided not to.
I went strolling through the forest some more, following markers to the actual mountain summit, and found a flat paved area with a picnic bench, though nothing else to see but trees, so I sat there for a while to enjoy the serenity, before heading back to the ropeway station. There’s a path leading from the mountaintop to Ikaho Shrine, but I decided to get the ropeway back down again. Managed to get the other gondola for the trip down, and got another audio drama from the Binan Boei-bu characters.
Back at ground level, I checked my map for the actual location of the manhole cover for the card I’d gotten, and it turned out to be all the way back downhill. So I strolled gently in that direction. Found another clue for the puzzle hunt on the way. The manhole turned out to be located at the former Ikaho railway station. If I was reading the signage correctly. I mean, it was certainly done up like a station, with a small platform, and a ye olde train standing at the platform, though whether the location ever was an actual station, I couldn’t really say for sure. It doesn’t seem like you can go inside the train, but you can look in the windows, and there are pictures up too.
From there, I considered getting the Ikaho town bus back up the hill, but I eventually decided to walk across to the bottom of the main street and climb the stone stairs again. Not completely sure what possessed me to do that, but it is at least better than walking uphill. (I also considered trying to find some place from which I could see my ryokan from below, but I wasn’t entirely sure how far I’d need to walk to manage that.) Passed another Initial D manhole cover on the way (actually, I just realised I passed two, but I completely failed to take a photo of one of them). I also discovered that there are not, in fact, 365 stone steps, because the step numbered 1 is actually the step after the first major landing… which is at least twenty to thirty steps above the actual bottom of the staircase. Someone’s been fudging the numbers!
I stopped partway up at a stall that I’d seen doing a roaring trade yesterday to get me a skewer of konnyaku dumplings for morning tea. I bit into the first one… and suffered instant regret. The texture of them was just wrong. Like biting into jelly with too much gelatin… except that it tasted of soy sauce. (Also could not shake the impression that it looked like someone had accidentally dropped it on the ground and hadn’t quite brushed off all the dirt, though that could just be what konnyaku looks like up close.) Well, I managed to finish them off, then continued up the hill. Spotted a few more of the zodiac sigils that I’d missed yesterday. I thought I’d gotten them all, but looking at my photos now… I photographed the dog twice and completely missed the rooster. Curses! Now I’m gonna have to go back. (They show exactly two of them in Yama no Susume: the pig… and the rooster. Might mean it’s somewhere near the pig, which I did see, but it might not.)
When I reached the foot bath, I considered again giving it a go, but it was still crowded, so I turned down a side street to head back to my ryokan, and immediately encountered another foot bath, completely unused. When I put my hand in to feel the water, though, it was also utterly lukewarm, so I just kept moving. I stopped at a Japanese confectioners called Kotobukiya at the turnoff to Outlook Onsen Street for second morning tea (mostly to overwrite the memory of those konnyaku dumplings). I got a “yu-no-hana” manju with smooth red-bean paste, and one of their specialty product, suzutora, a bell-shaped manju (the “suzu” means “bell”) filled with tiger bean paste (the “tora” means “tiger”) – apparently they won a gold prize for them at the Japan Confectionery Exposition in 2017.
I retrieved my luggage from the ryokan, and returned to the bus stop, hopping on the bus when it came, before disembarking at Shibukawa Station. Google informed me that the next train to arrive would be the Akagi Express bound for Ueno in Tokyo, and as Ueno was where I was headed, I was definitely interested in catching it. It’d get me to Ueno for 2000 yen less than the Shinkansen-based route, but only 20 minutes later. Unfortunately, since it was an express train, I needed to buy an express ticket for it (couldn’t just use the Suica), and there was a long line for the ticket machine. And even heading straight for the platform without waiting for the ticket machine, I still only just arrived in time to see the train pull out. I didn’t even know that particular express existed – if I had, I might have tried for an earlier bus from Ikaho.
(Incidentally, while elevators in Japan with two doors are common – particularly in places which are providing an elevator specifically as an alternative to stairs, like on overpasses or train platforms – said doors are usually at opposite ends of the elevator car. One of the elevators to the underpass at Shibukawa Station has the doors on adjacent walls, so the elevator car is kinda L-shaped. Only one of them, though – the one at the other platform has the doors at the ends.)
Unfortunately, Google’s next suggestion was a more complicated trip – most trains on the Joetsu line terminate at Takasaki Station, but the next one that’d be arriving would stop at Shin-Maebashi, a few stops short, necessitating a change of trains. Fortunately, it was a straight cross-platform transfer, with the next train soon arriving on the opposite side of the island platform. Unfortunately, everyone else was changing too, making it quite crowded. Fortunately, it was only a short trip, so I didn’t have to stand for long. Unfortunately, back at Takasaki Station once more, the shinkansen that Google was suggesting I should catch didn’t seem to be listed on the departures board. Fortunately, there was one not too long later, which gave me some time to buy my ticket, and head into the adjacent shopping mall to snag something for lunch – I eventually decided on a hamburg steak bento (with a bit of pasta, because it’s the Takasaki specialty), which the shopkeeper warmed up for me.
I’d again decided to be cheap and get a non-reserved-seating ticket for the shinkansen – the risk with that being that if the train is full, you could wind up standing the entire way. But since I hadn’t had that issue so far this trip (with my two whole non-reserved shinkansen trips so far), I decided to take the risk. And when I boarded the next train to arrive – a Toki service again, for the third of three trips – I wound up standing. Which was a problem, because I was relying on getting a seat (and table) in order to eat my bento. Just as I was considering fighting my way back through the crowd so I could use the luggage rack at the end of the carriage as an impromptu table, the guy sitting in the seat right next to where I was standing in the aisle offered up his seat to me. No idea if he saw me holding my lunch hoping to eat it, or if he wanted to be nice to the foreigner, or if he just didn’t want to risk being whacked in the head with my backpack (I can take it off in a crowd, but only with both hands free), but I certainly thanked him for it.
Wolfed my lunch down with some haste so that I could get it finished and have the table and my bags tidied up before we reached the next station. It was quite tasty, though. And soon we arrived at Ueno Station. On the way up to the concourse, I happened to pass a ramen stand that was entirely automated – you buy the ramen from a vending machine and eat it at counters there. I was tempted to try it, but I’d literally just had lunch.
Since I was once again travelling on a paper ticket, I needed to do the leave-the-gates-and-straight-back-in trick to switch to the Suica card, but I got a look at the station concourse as I went out and decided to have a look around. And I gotta say, going from the slight country town feel of Ikaho Onsen right into the middle of Ueno Station gave me a little bit of a mini culture shock. The crowds have such a different feel, even from the ones at Takasaki. Big city!
I took a few photos, but I figured I’d have another opportunity to come back later without having to drag my suitcase around, so I headed back into the station, and hopped on the Yamanote Line – another difference from my last ten-odd days of travel: no more checking train time tables all the time, just head to the station and a train will be there soon enough – before hopping off one stop later at Uguisudani Station. This might be ringing some bells for long-time readers of the blog. Yep, for this portion of my trip (the final portion! Nooo!) I’ll be staying at the Toyoko Inn at Uguisudani, the same one I stayed in at the start of my first solo trip to Japan back in 2017. It’s where the photograph on my membership card was taken, though you can’t really tell by looking at it. I feel a little fond of this place, for some reason. And this is the second time I’m staying in a hotel I’ve stayed at before (after Kawashima Ryokan in Kyoto). It almost feels like a bookend, though I certainly hope it’s not an end.
As I left the station, I discovered a poster showing that the station stamp designs here in Tokyo have all been redone, so I’m gonna need to go and collect them all again. Now they’re all some artistic rendition of one of the kanji in the stations’ names.
Arrived at the hotel after the start of the check-in period, so I checked in and headed up to my room. I’m on the second floor here, and somehow I’d forgot this place has different room layouts to the Toyoko Inns I’ve stayed at this trip – the bathroom is in front of you when you walk in, and the bedroom on the right (whereas the usual arrangement is the bathroom on the left/right and the bedroom in front). Discovered that after the last ten days of feeling like the only Westerner in town, at this hotel I’m not even the only Westerner on my floor. After dumping my bags and having a brief rest, it was still a few hours until sunset, so I decided to walk to Yanaka Ginza for some dinner – according to Google, about 2km away, or 25-ish minutes’ walk.
Started wandering down some back streets, heading first for the park by the station where I’d taken some lovely autumn photos in 2017, and discovered there’s a pair of sakura trees, so I did my best to photograph those. Next I headed for Motomishima Shrine, where I’d bought my first shuincho back in 2017. Discovered the place is also filled with sakura trees, so more photographs were taken. Shrine office was closed (though I don’t think I would have gone for another goshuin even if it was open). I made the claim back in 2017 that the shrine is built on top of “a very small and very pointy hill”, and I’ve got no idea now why I did – it’s clearly built on top of a building. Like, there’s an izakaya right underneath it. And I’d dearly like to know the story behind that.
I continued walking along the railway tracks, doing my usual trick of walking down whichever streets looked nicest, and soon reached a place where the nicest-looking direction was to walk under the Keisei Main Line and then up onto a pedestrian bridge crossing the JR tracks. Google’s telling me it’s called the Goindenzaka Railroad Footbridge, and it looks like it’s a popular place to take photographs of trains from – there’s a high fence to prevent people from throwing or dropping things (… or themselves) off, but people have made holes in it all the way along just big enough to stick a camera lens through. So I took some photos.
But mostly what caught my eye was the large copse of sakura trees at the far end. Took some photos, then saw some more trees – the bridge leads into Yanaka Cemetery, which (it seems) has sakura trees all over. Reached the main entrance road on this side, which has sakura trees aaaaaall the way down, so I stopped there for a while and took photos as best I could.
As I was starting to run out of light, though, I decided to move on and see what else I could see before it got too dark. More sakura trees. A street called “Sakura-dori”, with sakura trees, astonishingly enough. And also a man in a truck selling yaki-imo, stone-baked sweet potatoes. I’m not generally a huge fan of sweet potatoes, but yaki-imo from a truck is something I’d been wanting to try. After regretting passing by a truck without buying one in Kyoto in 2017, then passing a truck that wasn’t selling in Kamata in 2019, I definitely wasn’t going to miss my chance this time, so I stopped and bought one. Along with a number of other people, both locals and Westerners. It was, however, almost too hot to hold, so I kept walking for a while to wait for it to cool down enough to eat. It was pretty tasty – it’s a Japanese variety of sweet potato, so not the same flavour as the ones I’m not generally a huge fan of. The suggested eating method is to break it in half and eat from the centre – toss the very ends, because they can be bitter. Whether you peel it or not is personal preference, so for some reason I somehow wound up half peeling it with my teeth, and half just eating the skin. Somehow my right hand wound up all sticky with juices, so I had to take photos left-handed while looking for a public restroom to wash my hands in.
While I munched, I left Yanaka Cemetery and started wandering down streets lined with temples. With the sunlight practically gone, I turned down a few more streets, and found the Taito Ward West Division Office, and a plaza filled with families playing in rapidly-approaching darkness. And a map showing the streets around, including a park with a public restroom.
With my hands clean and freed up to do things once again, I pulled out my phone to check how far I was from my intended destination, and found it was just around the corner. Though then I turned the wrong corner and wound up walking around the block again. Yanaka Ginza was just as I remembered it from my last visit – just after dark, still lots of people around. As I’d just eaten a whole yaki-imo, I decided I just needed something small to finish off dinner. Considered buying some croquettes from the same shop I’d stopped at last time, but decided to go for a wander and see what else I could see… and in the end stopped at another shop selling croquettes. And other things too, mind. Place was called “Side Dish Ichifuji” – I figured it must be good because there was a queue outside. Had a sign up saying “no English translation available” so it’s convenient that I can order in Japanese. I got a renkon hasami-age (minced pork – or sometimes prawn, but I think this one was pork – sandwiched between two slices of lotus root and deep fried), menchi katsu (minced meat patty battered and fried), a beef-and-spring-onion skewer and a chicken-and-garlic skewer. I figured since everything was in a glass case that it would be kept warm, but no, everything was pretty cold. Would definitely have been better warm. I stopped under a street light to eat so that I’d have enough light for photos of the food, but they all came out fairly poor.
Started walking towards Nippori Station for the train one stop back to my hotel, and because a whole yaki-imo and four meat-based side dishes is apparently still not enough for dinner, I stopped in a small bakery for a cinnamon scroll. I never could say no to a cinnamon scroll, though.
On the final hill leading down to Nippori Station, I found another sakura-lined street, so I attempted to do a bit of night time photography.
Arriving at Nippori Station, I found it significantly fancier than my previous visit, when it was entirely a building site in the middle of being renovated. Now there’s a big shiny concourse, a direct connection to the Keisei private line station, and for some reason floor tiles with pictures of cats on them… arranged in the shape of one big cat. And also poster advertising a stamp rally at a number of JR stations… which ends today. Ah well.
Headed for the platform and returned to Uguisudani Station. And when I arrived on the concourse there, I spotted posters for Gala Yuzawa. Why, I was just there a few days ago. Wandered back to my hotel. I checked a few vending machines for an interesting drink to finish off dinner with, but I’ve generally found that most of the vending machines are a bit same-same – mostly tea and coffee, and the same handful of soft drinks, with the more unique flavours few and far between. So instead I popped into a Family Mart convenience store to see what there was (and start using up some of my shrapnel), and found a mango milk – contains 2% fruit juice (so a bit less than the 20% in the strawberry milk next to it) but also 13% fruit pulp, so I snatched it up. Also got a sticker saying “limited edition”. Drank it back at the hotel. It was very mango-y. Yum.
‘Tis time for bed.
Today’s photo count: Six hundred and seventy.
Today’s step count: 16,712 steps, for 12.3km. 38 flights of stairs.
Today’s stamp count: Five – Ikaho Ropeway (badly inked), the new Uguisudani station stamp, and three at Nippori Station (one a part of the stamp rally, showing a pair of gloves (as the theme is “tools for work”), one with the cat character, and the last the new Nippori station stamp). For comparison, here are the old- and new-style Nippori stamps. Not completely sure which one I like better – there’s arguments that could be made for either.
Number of days since last Hill Event: Zero.
J³: The Next Generation 
Leave a comment