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The Sunday before last, the highlight of my weekend was finding my way into an obscure little basement club in Koenji to see some nasty metal bands. There was doom, grind, death metal, everything all across the board, and ALL the bands were great. I highly recommend checking them all out, so I've left links with the pictures. Thanks to my friend Hendrick from Sweden for taking the pics and e-mailing them to me!
This picture pretty much sums up the whole nightThe Almighty COFFINS: (doom metal)
Gibbed: (Griiiiind)
Anatomia: (more Tokyo Doom metal)
Abigail: (Black Metal with some Thrashy influences)
Me and (British, not the aformentinoed) Ian.
Gallhammer:
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Mount Taka0wned.
I was asking co-workers about cheap vacations a month ago, and one of them recommended Mount Takao, a nice place to get away from the concrete jungles of inner Tokyo. After some planning and deliberation me and my friend Daniel (a.k.a. Spaniel) met up around noon in Shinjuku to hop the train. The roundtrip was roughly 800 yen and about 45 minutes each way.
The silly gaijin in questionThere's a railway car you can take up the initial slope of the mountain to get right to the tourist attractions of temples and junk - but that's for the handicapped and the elderly. Plus it cost nearly 1000 yen! So, me and Dan set off on what must have been the steepest 2 kilometers I've ever walked in my life:
On the way back down, there were cars driving down here, and making ridiculous 17-point turns at every one of these steep twists - must have been 9 or 10 at least.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
I almost forgot what trees looked like.
WTF?!
Yuck.The walk up was a bit rough but doable, although it was all on concrete so you can't really call it hiking. In fact, of the 4km to the top of this mountain (or "cliff" as Ian referred to it) about 95% of the path was preset on concrete.
Regardless, the air was rejuvenating as it didn't taste like exhaust or anything artificial, it was real air man. Getting out there really made my weekend and reminded me that you really have to get out of the ubran madness once and a while to keep your sanity. I've never lived in a city before either, so this whole expedition was border-line nostalgic.
Anyway, here is the motherload of pictures, slightly out of order:
Cool architecture.
It's not that cold here yet, so we had to get to the top of the mountain before we saw many leaves changing color.
Never faded.
As far as pwning goes, our triumph over Mount Takao was nothing compared to this dude. Pure pwnage.
Pondering the meaning of life.
A wrench?
Nice paintjob!
Scraps of paper where people write their wishes, hoping they come true.
Proper translation: "Big Angry Red Guy"
These wooden planks were similar to Japanese "tomb stones," so I decuded that this was probably a memorial wall.
On and on.
Even Gods need their Green Tea.
Paper Machete Donation Dog!
And that was that. The climb up only took about 90 minutes, and down about an hour. I'll definitely go on this trip again some time soon. We lucked out it was such a clear day, some of those mountain panoramas came out quite well, I think.
On our way out:
I do not want him cutting my hair.
One of many animals supposedly indigenous to the region - we only saw giganto worms and spiders though.
After the trip, I hauled my stinky, sweaty ass onto a train to Tachikawa, about 30 minutes away, where I met up with Ian, the awesome dude who brought me my guitar and some other junk that I had ebayed. It was a fun evening, and since I was exhausted and starving we went to a ramen shop for dinner first.
This is what Tachikawa looks like - it's mostly a business district, and coincidentally I work there one day a week too.
The hotsauce was especially delicious.
He get stupified - BWAAH!
Awesome guitar shop we went to afterward, a huge selection.
!!!!
Astro Boy picks, is that really necessary?Well that's about it. Back to the daily grind for me, although I feel it necessary to mention that I'm listening to the song "Attack with spell" by Abigail. Later all
"Hearts will stop and brain cells pop, Apocalyptic high" - Acid Bath
3 comments:
The trve kvlt of Japan!
Also you have to find some nice hot springs and scare the people with the hairyness that is BELCHER!!!!
Finally, even in japan you can not escape teh ga00ts
I liked your pictures Ben, looks like you had a good time on your "hike". We had our 1st snowflakes yesterday! I was in schenectady with barb and it had been COLD in 40's windy & raining ALL day then about 2pm in must have dropped colder in upper atmosphere and BIG WET SNOWFLAKES came splatting down. nothing stuck but it was a chilling sight, Iam not ready for winter but it seems to be here. MOM
The pics look great. Must to nice to get away from the city once and a while. Sadly, I stay surrounded by the jungle that is Tokyo day in and day out.
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