Mount Takao

So to start, this was what the subways were like when we decided to take the taxi back yesterday  exactly like this  😬 https://youtube.com/shorts/nrHXCTzDo2k?si=bOvEkRFanzk6MN36

Google Translate is great and it has been a fantastic tool. We use it many many many times a day to translate everything but even when you use it, things aren’t perfectly clear. Here is the translation from the washing machine to see if you can figure out how to run a cycle

One really cool thing that a lot of Japanese bathrooms have are hanging rods and then you turn on a clothes drying mode and it dries your clothes by running fans and ventilation in the bathroom. On our trip to Italy one of the things that we struggled with was that closed took like three days to dry so you could only do Washing if you had a few more nights in the hotel here it’s perfect. We went out for the day and came back to perfectly dry laundry.

It looked from the hour by hour forecast like it was going to rain until about 11 o’clock. We were originally going to leave our hotel at 8:30 AM so that we could get to Mount Takao by 10 AM, but we decided to delay that an hour so that we’d hopefully miss the rain. The other advantage was that we would miss rush-hour traffic on the subway so we ended up having a bit of a leisurely morning. Trevor and I were both awake at about four or 4:30 AM due to time changes in jet lag. The kids have been sleeping great So we had a leisurely morning and then got on the train to go to Mount Takao

It was about 3° feels like one and it was raining/snowing when we got there. We quickly realized that the town was pretty dead. The restaurant that we had researched that we were going to have lunch at turned out to be closed and we really didn’t see a lot of restaurants open in town in the end we weren’t sure if we were going to find something so we grabbed some food at the 7-Eleven and had a little picnic before we started our hike.

The first part of the hike you can do with either a cable car or a chairlift we opted for the chairlift I don’t believe that this chairlift would’ve passed Canadian safety standards. It had absolutely no bar holding you in at all thankfully, it didn’t go too high off the ground at any point, Kayla I didn’t ask to see if they had the EM testing records.

It was actually a little scary when we got to the top. We were absolutely freezing and we used one of the vending machine to get some warm drinks. Unfortunately, none of us really loved our drinks and we ended up using them mostly as hand warmers

One thing that was delicious though was the one we got to the top of the chairlift they had this dango stand, tango R warm dumplings that are cooked over a fire and then they put soy sauce on them. They were warm and really delicious.

From there, it was a short walk to the monkey park. We had fun watching these monkeys run around and play for a little while.

Somehow, I got the most hilarious pictures of this little baby monkey

From there, it was about a one hour hike to the summit. It was up up up lots of stairs lots of climbing, all along the hike. There were different temples and shrines and little stands where you could purchase little things. You can rub this little octopus

For luck

This was the summit there are normally great views, and you can even see out to Mount Fuji if the weather is clear, but our weather was not clear and you couldn’t see a thing

He stopped at the top and had some peach, flavoured Kit Kats that we had brought with us The kids took a break and did a few Pokémon go raids

We were quite freezing by this point we ended up heading back down on a different trail and this trail was through the bush. It was kind of a nice trail but very muddy. We enjoyed this part of the hike though, and it was a little warmer than it was in the morning.

Anna‘s brand new shoes

I got back to the chairlift and wrote it back down

Getting stamps for our stamp book at the station if you don’t know, Japan, has these stamp pads and stamps all around and you can buy a book and collect the stamps everywhere you go

We were all completely frozen, and we took the train back into Tokyo and got off at Shinjuku station to head for some ICHIRAN Ramen. This was actually a really cool area of town and if we weren’t so tired and freezing, we probably would’ve explored it a little more

Eat you own Ramen is a well-known chain here in Japan. The way it works is that you go inside and order your Ramen and pay at a machine

Then they give you a little form to fill out to say what how exactly you want your Ramen you can pick how spicy you want it how firm the noodles how rich the broth is and a bunch of different options

There are only 25 seats at this restaurant. We waited a while, but the weight goes fast because it’s a very fast process and people just eat their Ramen and leave each person sits at one of these little individual

You put your piece of paper with your order on your table, and the person behind the screen opens the screen up, grabs your piece of paper and then closes the screen and then two or three minutes later the screen opens up again and somebody puts your Ramen in front of you and you eat it

This Roman was honestly so delicious. It was really really good.

At this point, we headed back to our Airbnb. We had a little bit of getting lost moment on the way home, but we made it eventually.

By the time we got home, Trevor was absolutely freezing and just couldn’t warm up even after eating that delicious Ramen and the kids were absolutely wiped and they didn’t have any interest in karaoke. So they decided to skip it and stay home. We almost didn’t go to karaoke because Trevor was so freezing and we just got into bed to try to warm up, but we knew this was the only night that we had available to do karaoke and I really wanted to experience karaoke while it was in Japan so I convinced Trev to get out of bed and come with me and he was glad he did because we had fun.Karaoke in Japan is a private experience. You rent a room and you can order food and drinks to your room. We each got one drink and then you just do karaoke in the room by yourself.

This seemed like a very karaoke drink for me so this is what I got. It tasted like blue Freezy and it was a float with ice cream in it. It was really really delicious.

Trav got hot sake because he was still freezing and we really wanted to try the sake. Neither of us liked it too much but Trevor drank all of it and it did help warm him up.

We sang counting crows the Beatles Taylor, Swift Bohemian Rhapsody Backstreet Boys Elvis Costello Weezer.

Then we got a few groceries and headed back. It’s 9pm now. We have a very early morning tomorrow to get to Disney so we are heading to bed now. When we got home at 7:45pm Owen was already asleep! Another good (but cold!) day!

20,600 steps!