Willem's Planet

July 19, 2023July 20, 2023

Wednesday/ bus tour to Kanagawa 🌋

Here are pictures of our round trip bus tour to Mount Hakone and Lake Ashi in Kanagawa prefecture.

We left from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.
The bus ride to Motohakone Port at the edge of Ashinoko Lake (called ‘Lake Ashi’ for tourists) was about 2 hours.

Here’s our luxury tour bus, parked at **Gotemba Outlet Mall**.

The **Hiratsuka toll gate** on the Odawara-Atsugi toll road in Kanagawa prefecture.

Driving up on the winding road to get to the caldera on **Mount Hakone**.
*A caldera is a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses.

The torii* at the mountainous town of **Hakone**. Hakone is known for its hot springs resorts (onsen) and views of the iconic volcano Mount Fuji.
*Traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred.

From the bus we headed straight for the ‘pirate ship’ that took us across Ashinoko Lake to the bottom of the cable car way.

On the short (15 mins) cruise across **Ashinoko Lake** (mean depth 15m/ 49 ft).
The elusive **Mount Fuji** peak can be seen behind the clouds. Mount Fuji is Japan’s tallest at 3 776 m (12,388 ft).

On the cable way called the **Hakone Ropeway** that took us to the village of Owakudami on the Mount Hakone caldera.

A view of the inside slopes of Mount Hakone at **Owakudani**. There are pure sulfur deposits in the soil (the yellow color on the slopes). The air is heavy with hydrogen sulfide here: the smell of rotten eggs. On the far right edge of the picture, wisps of steam and gas can be seen escaping from the soil.

The Hakone caldera encompasses a much larger area than just that of the lake itself.

The village is famous for its **black eggs**. We were scaredy-cats and did not try one. I’m blaming our reluctance to try the eggs on the pervasive rotten egg smell in the air.

July 18, 2023July 19, 2023

Tuesday/ ramen 🍜

Here is a ramen dinner that we had. The broth & noodles are garnished with shredded salad and spices. The other toppings are pork, nori (seaweed) and menma (fermented bamboo shoot).

*A Japanese noodle dish made by serving Chinese-style wheat noodles in a broth with several toppings. I believe it is fair to say it is Japanese comfort food.

July 17, 2023

It was another 36°C (97°F) here in Tokyo, and we ducked into a department store every block or two as we walked around the streets of Ginza— Tokyo’s famous up-market shopping, dining and entertainment district.

Pictures:
Ginza subway station’s fancy decor gives a hint of what’s to come above-ground;
Stylish dressers and parasols, at the Koban (police box) station in Ginza;
Architecture along Matsuya-dori (street);
A misting station offering a little respite from the heat;
Cupid looking to make mischief, at the Vacheron Constantin watch store;
Fancy window display.

July 16, 2023July 17, 2023

Sunday/ monsters and things 😈

We made a run back to the Uniqlo store in Akihabara to return & exchange clothing items for larger sizes there.
Behind the RECOfan record store nearby, there is a mini-mall of display cases filled with figurines for serious collectors.
Some items run into several thousands of yen (several hundreds of dollars).

The first picture is a reminder to passengers not to go onto the tracks to retrieve items that may have been dropped there. Well, these days there are safety barriers and doors in place (see the edge of the picture) that would prevent passengers— young and old— from dropping items onto the tracks in the first place.

July 15, 2023July 16, 2023

Saturday/ the tallest tree 🌲

We had dinner tonight at a restaurant near Tokyo Skytree.
We were a party of five: I, my brother and sister-in-law, and two of their acquaintances from South Africa.
After failing to find a ramen place that Google maps reported to be nearby (but it was not there), we settled on an American-style restaurant called Sizzlers.

Tokyo Skytree is the tallest tower in the world (634 m (2,080 ft)and the third tallest structure in the world after the Merdeka 118 (678.9 m or 2,227 ft) and the Burj Khalifa (829.8 m or 2,722 ft).
The TS website says that the gold and red colors are simply a ‘special display’ of colors with no connection to a holiday or an event.

July 14, 2023July 15, 2023

Friday/ the Marunouchi line 🚇

The Marunouchi Line runs in a U-shape between Ogikubo Station in Suginami and Ikebukuro Station in Toshima.
I took it from beautiful Tokyo station (first two pictures) to Shinjuku station today. (Got to love the graphic posters that warn of the dangers of trying to board a departing train).

July 13, 2023July 14, 2023

Thursday/ Yodobashi camera 📸

I checked in at the Yodobashi Camera store in Akihabara today.
(No, I have not bought a new camera yet).
The store is a giant department store for all things technology, office, home appliances, home decor, toys & games, entertainment, and even more.

There it is, the technology and toy emporium (my view of it, at least) that goes by **Yodobashi-Akiba**, in Tokyo’s buzzing shopping hub for geeks— Akihabara.

Fans of all shapes and sizes on the main entrance display board— today was still hot, but bearable at 31 °C (88 °F).

Nice .. a kit for brewing one’s own beer and ciders and other fermented concoctions. Kirin is a Japanese beverage company.

These colored LED lighting tubes look almost neon tubes. (The iPhone camera sensor could not quite capture the colors from the tubes).

Back at the hotel and a check of the parking lot reveals the first Tesla that I have spotted in the city. There are not many Teslas in Tokyo, or even in all of Japan (only some 5,000 were sold last year). EV sales are still only 2% of the domestic market here, and the top seller is a little Nissan microcar called the Sakura. I looked in vain for a little Tesla toy model in Yodobashi, but there was none.

Another view from my hotel room window: the construction cranes used for erecting the **Takanawa Gateway City** apartment and office blocks.

Just an interesting gate on my walkabout near the hotel in Shinagawa.

No smoking and no flicking of cigarette butts. I wonder if the sign actually stops any scofflaws from doing that. If you go out early in the morning, you are sure to see people (volunteers in many cases, I’m sure) picking up anything down to cigarette butts from the streets.

A parking lot with exactly two parking bays. I love it.

July 12, 2023July 13, 2023

Wednesday/ it’s hot 🥵

A diagram of the **Yamanote Line** loop (the real loop is an irregular blob on a map). The double track of 34.5 km (21.4 mi) of rail opened in 1885 (138 years ago) and is run by JR East (the East Japan Railway Company).

Here’s the new-ish **Takanawa Gateway Station** (it opened Mar. 2020), the 30th station to be added onto the Yamanote Line, and the first one in 50 years. Construction of large apartment buildings and offices around the station is still in progress— called Takanawa Gateway City, and scheduled for completion in 2025.

Here comes the lime green **Yamanote Line** train. Form over function: the flat front profile is obviously not anticipating bullet train speeds to be attained.

Baseball superstar **Shohei Ohtani** on a billboard for Seiko watches outside the Yodobashi Camera store in Shinjuku. He was actually in Seattle just this week for the 2023 All-Star game there, and is about to become a free agent (his contract with the Los Angeles Angles is ending). ‘Come to Seattle, Come to Seattle’ chanted the baseball fans.

**Yodobashi Camera** has several separate stores near Shinjuku, each dedicated to certain kinds of appliances or equipment. Here is an inside-outside display of binoculars of all shapes and sizes.

Out in the blazing heat again in **Shinjuku**, now on my way to **Lemon Camera**— located on the floor where the yellow strip runs in the building on the right. My mission for the morning was to try and find the elusive and ever-out-of-stock Fujifilm X100V compact camera (to buy one), but even here in Tokyo all the stores tell me they have none available.

Here’s the cavernous main hall in **Shinagawa Station**, the station close to my hotel.

We had 36°C (97 °F) here in Tokyo today.

I put urban survival gear in my backpack (water bottle, towel, wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses) and made a run out to Shinjuku on the famous Yamanote Line after the morning rush hour on the subway trains was over.

July 11, 2023July 13, 2023

Tuesday/ arrival in Tokyo 🛬

My flight into Vancouver and the connecting flight to Tokyo went without incident.
It is muggy in Tokyo and by late evening it was still 82 °F (28 °C) with poor air quality, to boot.

Pictures:
Boarding the Bombardier Q400 turboprop that took us to Vancouver; Interesting mudflats and scenery below just before the descent (that’s the turboprop casing and exhaust in the picture);
Indigenous artwork at Vancouver airport (I didn’t make a note of the artist);
Air Canada jet amid lots of containers at Vancouver airport;
Boeing 787 from All Nippon Airlines at the gate at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport.

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023

Monday/ at the airport 🛫

I am at the airport, and I made it through check-in at the long TSA Precheck line at checkpoint 4.
The airport is swamped with travelers. Even though the line is long, it’s still very nice to not have to take out anything out of one’s bag.

There goes a planeload full of Amazon Prime packages, taking off.
The view from Seattle-Tacoma Airport’s main lounge at Terminal A.
It is 62 °F (17 °C) under overcast skies here.

July 9, 2023July 9, 2023

Sunday/ Tokyo bound 🗼

My bags are packed. I’m heading out to Tokyo tomorrow— a hop on the Air Canada turboprop Bombardier Q400 to Vancouver and then to Tokyo on All Nippon Airlines.

The weather forecast for my arrival on Tuesday is intimidating for a Seattleite used to gentler summer temperatures and weather: 99 °F (37 °C) with high humidity and a thunderstorm advisory.

The projected route of the All Nippon Airlines flight on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (twin-jet) to Tokyo’s Haneda airport. We will cross Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and brush by the south of Kamchatka Peninsula before starting the descent to Japan’s Honshu island where Tokyo is. The flight time is 9h45 min (4,734 miles).
[Graphic from Flightaware.com]

July 8, 2023July 8, 2023

Saturday/ friends 😘

Happy Saturday.
I found this mural of ladies in their summer dresses at the corner of Denny Way and Nineteenth Avenue.
(I did not see the name of the artist.)

July 7, 2023

Friday/ stamps from Great Britain 🇬🇧

My ‘South Africa 1961-1995’ stamp collection is nearly complete.
Another ‘acquisition’ from a seller from Great Britain made it into my mailbox today, with these stamps on the outside envelope.

**Astronomy**
Issued 2002, Sept. 24. Printed as a minisheet w. two phosphor bands, perf. 14 ½ x 14
MS2315 1613 (1st) multi-colored, Planetary nebula in Aquila, Seyfert 2 galaxy in Pegasus, Planetary Nebula in Norma, Seyfert 2 galaxy in Circinus
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]

**350th Anniversary of the Royal Society**
From a set of 10 stamps
Issued 2010, Feb. 25. Printed w. “all-over” phosphor, perf. 14 ½
3029 2224 (1st) multi-colored, Edward Jenner (pioneer of smallpox vaccination)
3032 2227 (1st) multi-colored, Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery)
3034 2229 (1st) multi-colored, Dorothy Hodgkin (crystallography)
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]

**London 2010 Festival of Stamps (1st issue) and Centenary of Accession of King George V**
Issued 2010, May 6. Printed w. “All-over” phosphor, perf. 14½
3068 2262 (1st) multi-colored, 1924 British Empire Exhibition 1½ d Brown Stamp
3068 2263 (1st) multi-colored, 1924 British Empire Exhibition 1 d Scarlet Stamp
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]

July 6, 2023July 6, 2023

Thursday/ aphelion ☀️—🌎

aphelion
noun
ASTRONOMY
the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is farthest from the sun.

perihelion
noun
ASTRONOMY
the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun.

Happy Aphelion Day.
Today at 2:06 p.m. Pacific time, Earth was at the outermost point in its (slightly elliptical) orbit around our Sun, known as aphelion.

We are all some 3 million miles farther from our Sun today than when we were closest* to it in January (the date changes slightly from year to year). It doesn’t feel like it here in the Northern hemisphere, but Earth is in fact receiving 7% less direct sunlight than it does in January.
(Seasons on Earth are the result of changes in the amount of direct sunlight as the planet is tilted toward and away from the sun, and not a result of its orbital path).

*Earth’s average distance from the sun is about 93 million miles.

Earth is farthest from the sun during summer in the Northern hemisphere.
[Infographic from timeanddate.com]

July 5, 2023July 7, 2023

Wednesday/ haze, then clear 🟠

Widespread haze before 11pm.
Clear 86°F/ 30°C, with a low around 59°F/ 15°C.
Northeast wind 6 to 8 mph.
– Tonight’s weather forecast for Seattle, from the National Weather Service

Do we really need to blow up tons of fireworks while wildfires are raging and the planet is burning up?
(More than 7,000 pounds of fireworks was set off on Lake Union last night for the city’s Fourth of July celebrations.)

The setting sun is casting hazy red highlights onto this tree here on Capitol Hill.

July 4, 2023July 5, 2023

Happy Independence Day 🗽

July 3, 2023July 5, 2023

Monday/ Wimbledon starts 🎾

The two-week tennis tournament at the freshly-mowed green grass courts of the All England Lawn Tennis Club in London SW19’s Wimbledon village* started today.
Russian and Belarusian players are allowed to compete this year, after they were banned from Wimbledon in 2022. (The ban achieved nothing, really).

*The village is referred to as “Wimbedounyng” in a charter signed by King Edgar the Peaceful in 967. The name Wimbledon means “Wynnman’s hill”, with the final element of the name being the Celtic “dun” (hill).
In June 1877 the club decided to organize a tennis tournament to pay for the repair of its pony roller, which was used to maintain the lawns.
The championship has been held every year since then, outside of the World War I and II years (so not held 1915-18, 1940-45).