Mueller hut - Zeke’s version

Rainy day in Okinawa and we are going back in time to Zeke’s recollections of the Mueller hut. A glimpse into a 13 year old in the alpine:​

First me, Ty and dad started at a camp ground where we left mom, Mikaya and Levi, it started off as a long flight stairs that lasted 2000 steps In the first half. All the first half was stairs then we got to a very steep rocky trail, then it went to a big landslide we had to climb up that for a while, then it got to boulder hopping which was really fun! I listened to music the whole way up which made it way more fun for me. 

When we made it there it Was a huge party in there every single spot was taken up, dad started up some potato’s, curry, and Ramon on the stoves instead of eating it with everyone else we went to our tent to go eat it all by ourselves

After a guy told us we realized that these really cute birds called keas eat your tent, so as soon as we heard that Ty ran to protect our tent, so after that every single time we made food one of us had to protect it. One time I had to protect it and I had 3 of them all playing me, one of them would go on the back of the tent so I would go to the back of the tent to scare it off and as I did that another one would go on the front then they just kept repeating that. 

Then we watched the beautiful sunset, we had the top peak all to ourselves it was so beautiful! One of the best things I’ve ever seen. 

at 9:00pm dad found this guitar that a band from Spotify gave to the hut. He played it underneath the beautiful stars it was so pretty we all had to sleep in a tight 3man tent with a sleeping bag stuffed with clothes as our pillow, the next morning we woke up at 7:15 to go watch the beautiful sunrise we had the hut manager and 2 other girls at the top with us we stayed up there for a hour I think, we went down took down our tent so the keas won’t eat it when we went into the cooking area to make some hot chocolate and oatmeal, but we thought we would walk into a big breakfast party but turns out everyone left very early for some reason we were all so confused, it was only me, Ty, and dad and the hut guy, and 2other girls left.

We stayed until 10:00 and we saw a bunch of people hiking up for lunch, we started Down and we were way faster than dad we had to wait every 10-15 minutes, we got down in 2hours!

Nikko - shrines and forests and a bike!

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After the tight packed humanity of Tokyo, our family really appreciated the space and return to nature of Nikko.

In addition Mikaya in particular enjoyed this strawberry themed train car. This was the only one we saw. Japan loves cute…

Accessible from Tokyo via a 2 hour train ride, I picked Nikko from a map primarily bc they named their town after our old dog. Secondarily it was known for beautiful nature, ancient shrines and HOTSPRINGS! Aka onsens, more on these later…

Those of our readers who know Chilliwack can look at the above pics and immediately see that we felt at home here.

Our rental place in Nikko came with a bike!!! It was lovely to pedal around again and I took the opportunity to explore the dusty little town of Nikko.

I even got groceries securing the bike with a simple spoke lock, as one does in Nikko… very refreshing.

Nikko on its own is a small service town. It owes its prominence to its proximity to Tobu-Nikko, an area of forests, rivers and mountains shrines, started in 766 AD by the Buddhist monk Shodo Shonin.

This is him, made of stone commanding a bowl with a dragon spouting potable water. A true symbol of Tobu-Nikko if ever there was one.

Apparently the shrines really took off in the 1200s and again in the 1600s

The largest shrines are all grouped together on the mountain above Tobu-Nikko. We started with Futarasan Shrine as it was recommended as less busy. And indeed there were only a few other people exploring the area, even less in the back corners and up steep steps.

It really is pretty incredible that these shrines are hundreds of years old. The intricate craftsmanship and hard wearing materials are a wonder to behold. And how did they come up with this much paint? Were the colours this vibrant when they were new?? 

This is the hand washing/ritual cleansing station at the entrance to the shrine. Kept in good repair with 2 or 3 dippers and fresh water. Check out the painting and carvings on the inside of the roof. This isn’t even the actual shrine!

After a couple hours of official shrining we wandered into the forest to find a spot to eat our snacks and happens on some older less maintained structures that were still phenomenal. Mikaya tried out her meditation skills as did I.

On our way back we walked along the river and again communed with our Chilliwack roots. The walk back to the train station was a few km but it was all gradual downhill and Tobu-Nikko is a bustling tourist town with lots of fun restaurants and shops to look at.

The next day we took a bus beyond Tobu Nikko to Lake Chuzenji. Our goal was to do some hiking and see some waterfalls. The bus dropped us basically at Ryuzu falls. The hike was a little underwhelming at first. The falls were nice but the path was a large concrete staircase. However about 200m in the trail turned to dirt as we left the busiest area and we entered a lovely forest that we had basically to ourselves.

The river continued in little cascades over granite. The falls are at 1280m and as we hiked up we left spring behind. The trees only had the barest buds on them. Still lovely.

Picture above me hugging Levi in the sunshine is an official “picture taking area” it did have a nice view. We think it must have been for tour groups to get group shots. This whole raised boardwalk section was quite an endeavour for some national park program, especially considering we only saw 2 people after the waterfall area. We did about 7km out and back on this trail, but there was quite a network to explore.

On the way home the kids chose to eat at Gusto. This was primarily bc a review said the waiter is a robot cat. It’s more of a robot tray holder with a cat face on its screen but it was entertaining and mildly disconcerting regardless. My food was not great but Mikaya and Kylie liked their pizza and Levi liked his Japanese style burger. The kids all enjoyed the drink bar. We ordered on a tablet at the table and paid at another one by the door. A restaurant with no real front staff was a bit weird. Maybe this is the future but my guess is Canadians will  pay for face to face interactions for a while yet. A restaurant is a different experience than shoppers drug mart…

I don’t think we took any pictures of our tiny house in Nikko but it was perfect and also right beside a train and bus stop. Small and practical (the house I mean but also the train stop…). Three tiny bedrooms a kitchen and a bathroom (toilet and shower/sink area separate as is common here. It did have sliding paper walls and our kids managed to not smash through any of them which was quite an achievement.

Great weather for exploring and it can’t be overstated how much of a relief it was to let our kids roam wider and make more noise and climb and jump off things without scaring the locals. People in Nikko (which I think doesn’t see many tourists) were very friendly and happy to chat even if they hardly spoke any English. By this point Ty was getting pretty good at Japanese and could ask basic questions as well as answer the obvious ones.  Canada-jin des!

 

Kichijoji and back to Shibuya

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Halfway through our time in Tokyo we packed up our place in Edogawa and braved the subway with all our luggage, crossing Tokyo to the busier and fancier neighbourhood of Kichijoji. 

Our second place was a bit bigger (2 toilets!) and had nice windows and a bigger kitchen. But its selling feature was its proximity to Inokashira park, a huge greenspace with a lake and a zoo and parks and baseball diamonds and running trails. Seriously big. There were definitely more tourists here than in Edogawa. But plenty of locals enjoying the outdoors. This was the first place we really noticed that some of the locals weren’t huge fans of tourists in their space. And I do get it, if you’ve had the place to yourself for decades, watching an influx of newcomers sitting on your park benches might be irritating.

Our first night in our new neighbourhood we found a little waffle stand nearby and had dessert for dinner, then found a 7-11 and had uni-giri for dessert. This was on the less touristy side and the people were lovely. Another development: the teenage girl 7-11 clerks were clearly interested in Ty and impressed with his Japanese skills.  ;-)

The next night we ventured back across the park to central Kichijoji and the kids pulled us down some narrow stairs to a smoke choked Izakaya restaurant.

Kylie almost turned around at this one. It was squished and tiny and underground and smoky. But it was busy! So we stayed and it was delicious. Kylie could not be convinced to try tongue on round 2 but the rest of us had beef and pork tongue plus some other random cuts that sounded intriguing. The kids also got 2 rounds of melon sodas to go with our 2 rounds of Asahi. Party time. Excellent.

Kichijoji is a bustling funky neighborhood but not nearly as overwhelming as Shibuya. Also the buildings are more human scale. 

During the day we explored Inokashira park a bit more and Zeke and I went for a run. We also enjoyed some local shopping streets. Kichijoji has a thriving vintage scene. Unfortunately, as in Canada that meant “used but also expensive” so it was just window shopping. A lot of stuff from our high school days was displayed completely unironically. Silk shirts, colourful sweaters, Mexican ponchos, Hornets jackets… trying to tell the kids how cool their parents were back in the day!

Ty wanted to go back to Shibuya one more time so on our last night in Tokyo we once again entered the river of humanity.

On our last visit we had noted a burger shop with perfect people watching windows onto the street, which sounded pretty good after a week of uni giri and Yakiniku (we did find some tasty granola brands and kept our intestines stable with cereal and fruit and yoghurt for breakfast - I don’t think any of us coulda kept up with meat and broth in the morning.)

Anyways the burgers and fries were absolutely incredible and the people watching was top notch. The staff were all young and friendly and very interactive.

After dinner we wandered the streets at random. We actually found a used clothing store that must not have been vintage bc the prices were reasonable. And somehow they had Champion hoodies in every colour of the rainbow and an amazing selection of jeans. I bought some bell bottom cords for old times sake.

And just like that it was time to leave Tokyo! Clearly we hardly scratched the surface but we did get around. Ty could have stayed another month for sure but Kylie and I were ready to move on to a place where we weren’t quite so worried our kids would knock over little old ladies in the grocery store. Which they didn’t. But there were a few close calls. Or at least we got some looks… Maybe Japanese kids move slower? Or maybe our kids just take up more space?? Or maybe their parents don’t even take them grocery shopping? Anyways on to Nikko where there is a lot more space and at least a bit more tolerance for noisy kids.