![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yakyu Inari and stuff
Mar. 20th, 2011 10:15 amNo photos yet because I'm lazy.
Yesterday Shinsuke and I had originally, before the earthquake, hoped to go on a train trip somewhere. That clearly wasn't happening, so instead we went to the Yakyu Inari shrine, which is in Higashi Matsuyama, out in Saitama. Only thing is, we weren't sure the Tobu line would run out there, so Shin planned us to train to Konosu and take a bus from there. Which we did.
Except that thanks to a huge ton of suburban idiots all lining up to get gas that morning, and several stations being out of gas, there was a 2-mile-long traffic jam along the route we wanted to go on. I can't imagine how much gas was WASTED in that lineup, seriously. So we took the bus as far as Kamenokou (aka Turtle Shell) and then walked the remaining 5 kilometers or so. Along the way we walked through big wide-open suburban farmland, past houses, past some bus stops where we found one woman waiting for the bus and we told her it wasn't going to come, and we walked past a castle ruins neither of us had ever heard of, and then we also walked past 2 miles of cars waiting for gas. The funniest part is, at Konosu the driver had told us "The bus that left an hour ago still hasn't gotten to the other end..." and sure enough, we saw a LOT of buses in that traffic line as well. Truly ridiculous in some ways.
The shrine itself was not huge and exciting or anything, certainly not your usual tourist site kind of shrine, BUT it did live up to the double play on the name, 箭弓 being "yakyu" and that also being the word for baseball, 野球. So there were some normal "ema", wooden prayer boards that people write wishes on, but there were also ema shaped like home plates, with various logos on the back like baseballs or players or whatever, with lots of people's wishes being "I want to play at Koshien" or "I want to be a regular on the team this year" or "I hope the Tigers win the Japan Series" or "I hope so-and-so player has a good year this year" and such. There were also ema shaped like baseball bats that people wrote wishes on as well. It was kinda neat.
I ended up buying a few baseball bat omamori charms and one normal one for Carl, and then we left.
Shin had looked up a weird kind of udon in Konosu that he wanted to try, so we went back there. No problems with the bus on the way back, I guess due to the roads the lineup only went one way.
This udon was some kind of "kawahaba" udon, a very, VERY wide flat noodle. Like, 4-5 inches wide, and like 2 feet long, per noodle. It was pretty difficult to eat but interesting nonetheless; we both got beef udon although he got a special kind, so my noodles came in the soup already and his came outside the soup as a dip. The little restaurant we were in was really very small, and so the lady running it asked Shin at some point, "what country is your wife from?" and he's like "no, we're just friends. She's American." The thing is, a minute or two later Shin said to me, "I just realized, you're not blushing, you're SUNBURNT."
Sure enough I went into the bathroom and checked and my face was rather pink. Whoops. I guess it was pretty sunny and warm out when we were walking through those several miles to get there, so I picked up a nice burn, whoops.
Anyway, after that, we ended up heading home, because Shin had screwed up his SD card on his camera and was really freaked out about it and wanted to figure out how to fix it and get the data off of it. So I went home for a few hours and did laundry and kinda just zoned out because I was really tired (the sunburn probly didn't help).
In the evening, I started getting ready to go out for dinner, and an earthquake shook the house when I was in the bathroom. That was kinda scary, but funny. So rather than leaving the house immediately after, I came back upstairs to check the earthquake -- Shindo 5+ in Ibaraki apparently. Like, it hit Hitachi, essentially.
But I went to Ikebukuro anyway. I went to Tenkazushi because I hadn't had sushi yet here, and IT WAS SO HAPPY AND GOOD! God I missed that place. So damn good and like, 960 yen for stuffing my face. Sigh. Then I walked around East Ikebukuro for a while, the Sunshine area... went and played a game of Pop'n, looked around Book-Off some and found a super-cheap copy of Osu Tatakae Ouendan so I bought that, and I walked around some more. Apparently there were no blackouts for the weekend, so the arcades were working, though a lot of shops still had lights off and whatever, which is good. Eventually I just headed home, and crashed when I got home, pretty much.
Tokyo still feels very alive even if a little darker and slightly less crowded than before. Although the train coming back to the city after going to Konosu was REALLY crowded, so eh.
Yesterday Shinsuke and I had originally, before the earthquake, hoped to go on a train trip somewhere. That clearly wasn't happening, so instead we went to the Yakyu Inari shrine, which is in Higashi Matsuyama, out in Saitama. Only thing is, we weren't sure the Tobu line would run out there, so Shin planned us to train to Konosu and take a bus from there. Which we did.
Except that thanks to a huge ton of suburban idiots all lining up to get gas that morning, and several stations being out of gas, there was a 2-mile-long traffic jam along the route we wanted to go on. I can't imagine how much gas was WASTED in that lineup, seriously. So we took the bus as far as Kamenokou (aka Turtle Shell) and then walked the remaining 5 kilometers or so. Along the way we walked through big wide-open suburban farmland, past houses, past some bus stops where we found one woman waiting for the bus and we told her it wasn't going to come, and we walked past a castle ruins neither of us had ever heard of, and then we also walked past 2 miles of cars waiting for gas. The funniest part is, at Konosu the driver had told us "The bus that left an hour ago still hasn't gotten to the other end..." and sure enough, we saw a LOT of buses in that traffic line as well. Truly ridiculous in some ways.
The shrine itself was not huge and exciting or anything, certainly not your usual tourist site kind of shrine, BUT it did live up to the double play on the name, 箭弓 being "yakyu" and that also being the word for baseball, 野球. So there were some normal "ema", wooden prayer boards that people write wishes on, but there were also ema shaped like home plates, with various logos on the back like baseballs or players or whatever, with lots of people's wishes being "I want to play at Koshien" or "I want to be a regular on the team this year" or "I hope the Tigers win the Japan Series" or "I hope so-and-so player has a good year this year" and such. There were also ema shaped like baseball bats that people wrote wishes on as well. It was kinda neat.
I ended up buying a few baseball bat omamori charms and one normal one for Carl, and then we left.
Shin had looked up a weird kind of udon in Konosu that he wanted to try, so we went back there. No problems with the bus on the way back, I guess due to the roads the lineup only went one way.
This udon was some kind of "kawahaba" udon, a very, VERY wide flat noodle. Like, 4-5 inches wide, and like 2 feet long, per noodle. It was pretty difficult to eat but interesting nonetheless; we both got beef udon although he got a special kind, so my noodles came in the soup already and his came outside the soup as a dip. The little restaurant we were in was really very small, and so the lady running it asked Shin at some point, "what country is your wife from?" and he's like "no, we're just friends. She's American." The thing is, a minute or two later Shin said to me, "I just realized, you're not blushing, you're SUNBURNT."
Sure enough I went into the bathroom and checked and my face was rather pink. Whoops. I guess it was pretty sunny and warm out when we were walking through those several miles to get there, so I picked up a nice burn, whoops.
Anyway, after that, we ended up heading home, because Shin had screwed up his SD card on his camera and was really freaked out about it and wanted to figure out how to fix it and get the data off of it. So I went home for a few hours and did laundry and kinda just zoned out because I was really tired (the sunburn probly didn't help).
In the evening, I started getting ready to go out for dinner, and an earthquake shook the house when I was in the bathroom. That was kinda scary, but funny. So rather than leaving the house immediately after, I came back upstairs to check the earthquake -- Shindo 5+ in Ibaraki apparently. Like, it hit Hitachi, essentially.
But I went to Ikebukuro anyway. I went to Tenkazushi because I hadn't had sushi yet here, and IT WAS SO HAPPY AND GOOD! God I missed that place. So damn good and like, 960 yen for stuffing my face. Sigh. Then I walked around East Ikebukuro for a while, the Sunshine area... went and played a game of Pop'n, looked around Book-Off some and found a super-cheap copy of Osu Tatakae Ouendan so I bought that, and I walked around some more. Apparently there were no blackouts for the weekend, so the arcades were working, though a lot of shops still had lights off and whatever, which is good. Eventually I just headed home, and crashed when I got home, pretty much.
Tokyo still feels very alive even if a little darker and slightly less crowded than before. Although the train coming back to the city after going to Konosu was REALLY crowded, so eh.
