Our Trip to Okutama Town

Tuesday, 9 Oct 07, 7.52am at home

Hellow diary,
These last few days I've been busy. This is why I seldom write diary now. I told you that we planned to go for a family trip last weekend, rite? Yes, we went there, We went to Okutama Town! We departed from home at 8.30am. We managed to find Okutama Town, after 2.5 hours journey by train from my home. This picture on the left was taken when I first arrived at Okutama Station. When we first arrived, we were blurrr..didn't know where to go. We saw a tourist information office but did not help at all! The broucher and the map were all in Japanese, the person also spoke Japanese. It's ok, we decided to 'explore' the town ourself! Our main objective going to Okutama town was to find fishing spot and do BBQ. Our journey started from here..

Firstly, we walked around the station area. According to the map that I downloaded from the Internet, there should be a fishing spot just opposite the train station. We heard sound of water but there was fish smell. But, we found wooden stairs going down to somewhere.. somewhere darker and colder.. it's not a horror story, ok? It was going down to the water. The air was so fresh! The water was so clean too! But the fish was not there. We happily took pictures there, spent long time there, and forgot our main 'mission'. Well, I don't know how about my hubby, at least for me, I forgot completely about the mission. Here are the pictures..




















Then, we were so hungry.. We couldn't find any restaurant around that area. But, we found buses! Aha! I guessed we should ride on bus to explore more about this town. After we asked around with my limited Japanese, we found a Japanese who could speak English. That old man wanted to go to Okutama Lake, we were going there too! Thanks God we found him. He told us how to catch bus, how to pay the bus fare, and where to stop! It's very good lesson for me to realise that it's very important to know where to stop in a deserted place! We arrived at the Okutama lake. They call it a lake but actually it's a human-made lake. Anyway, it's still very nice!

We had lunch there and walked around the lake to take pictures. And, I just remembered about our important mission. It's not that I remembered actually, my hubby reminded me after clock was showing at 2pm. Omo omo omo! And we realised that the bus only came once in a hour or 2 hours. I asked the information center there about the fishing spot and which bus we should take. The bus would only come 75 minutes later. Another omo omo omo! They gave me a map. We saw the map to find a 'fish icon' on the map. Usually they label fishing spot with fish icon. Fish fish fish, where are you? Yes, we found one! But, it's very strage that the fish icon was not on the location where the information center showed me! Instead, it was around where we stood at that moment, it was just behind the mountain. Well, not exactly around where we were standing, I mean we did not need to take bus, we could just walk! We still had to wait for 75 minutes for the bus to come anyway, so we tried our luck to walk around.. to behind the mountain.











Believe me, it was initially so fun! The mountain air was so fresh.. the weather was so nice, the temperature was around 15C. I found one interesting thing, you can see from the picture. Dunno how to call that thing, it's a like stove but doesn't look like a stove, it's for cooking water. Anyway, we walked along a river and went up and up and up to a mountain.. and the road was smaller and smaller and smaller. There were more trees, more and more trees.. it was getting darker, and there were only 2 of us there! After walking about 30minutes and we still couldn't find the fish on the place where the map showed, I was so afraid. The road was so small, I was so scared of falling down. So I asked Ron to go back and wait for the bus. Mission half failed!

The bus finally came. Before I got onto the bus, I asked the bus driver to make sure if the bus was going to the correct destination.
Me: Kono basu wa Minedani e ikimasuka? (Is this bus going to Minedani?)
Driver: Hai, Minedani-bashi e ikimasu. (Yes, going to Minedani-bashi.)
Me: Minedani e ikimasuka? (going to Minedani?)
Driver: brapbrapbrapbrap Minedani-bashi brapbrapbrap (not clear what he said)
Me: Yes, this bus. Let's go honey (I told Ron with big smile on my face)

On the bus, Ron told me that he heard 'Minedani-bashi', not 'Minedani'. I thought, 'Minedani-bashi' and 'Minedani-ikimasu' sounded similar, rite? He must heard wrongly. We also would pass Minedani-bashi before reaching Minedani, by the way. So, wouldn't be a big problem, rite?? Then, after passing Minedani, the bus stopped. The bus driver screamed at me that we already arrived!
Driver: brapbrabrap Minedani-bashi brapbrap (...Minedani-bashi...)
Me: Watashi wa Minedani e ikimasu (I'm going to Minedani)
Driver: brabrapbrap Minedani-bashi, doko brap brap? (....Minedani-bashi, where...?)
Me: Minedani-bashi dewa arimasen. Minedani desu. (not Minedani-bashi. It's Minedani) << I purposely added 'desu' at the end of the sentence to inform him that Minedani full stop, there was no bashi.
Driver: brapbrap orimasu brap aruite brap brap hashi brap kirei.. (....get down from the bus..walk...bridge...nice..) << He opened the bus door and asked me to go down.

And we got off from the bus. The bus left. Yes, we saw a very big red pretty bridge. So what? We wanted to go to Minedani, not Minedani-bashi. We wanted to find fish, not a bridge. Initially, we wanted to hop on the next bus. Why didn't the driver let us go to Minedani? Why did he insist us to go down and see the red brige? We checked the schedule, and that was the last bus of the day! It was around 4pm. Then, we checked our map to see how far Minedani is from Minedani-bashi. I saw the figure, it was around 3km. And I told Ron "It was only 2km, let's walk!". I did not want to make him sad, it was all my fault. Why couldn't I just stay on the bus, by any mean, like pingsan kek, asma kek? Then, we decided to walk. By bus, we supposed to reach in 10 minutes, by walk we should be reaching in 30 minutes? 45 minutes? After 15 minutes walk, we saw the bus and the bus driver whom I was arguing with, going down from Minedani. Hiks.. I was so embarassed, I covered my face with my hand and my hair. But, Ron was starring at him! The bus driver should be thinking 'What these 2 guys up to? Walking to deserted mountain while there was no longer bus going down?" Oh yea, fyi, that bus was also the last bus! Even if we managed to reach Minedani, we also had to walk back to Minedani-bashi to get a bus to take us to the train station. So, total would be 6km walk. Wow, what a great exercise!

On the way up to the mountain, Ron saw some people fishing along the river, he saw some fish kecipak kecipung.. but it was down there. Even we didn't know how they managed to go down there. You see from the picture how Ron desperately wanted to see fish. Oh, I'm so sorry honey.. The other picture was to show you how far and quiet the road was. After walking for about 30 minutes, we realised that we had just walked half way. We gave up! It was getting darker. Even we reach there, we also still need to walk down, in the dark! So, we decided to go back to the red bridge. So tired.. so hungry.. so cold.. we were so happy when we finally saw the red brige again! We reached home around 9pm.
On that day, I remembered what I've written on my previous blog that I wanted to realise my hubby's dream a bit, I thought at least I would see a fish, one ekor would do. But, I never imagined that I failed to realise his dream. Not even a bit, but, not at all! I know he was disappointed, do you know that I was more disappointed than him? I'm very disappointed with myself. My clumsy soul always comes out not at the right time, arghh... Yes, we had lots of fun there, but mission was not accomplished! Mission was totally failed! I'm sorry, honey.. Do you still give me chance to arrange our next family trip?

-Sad Abbie-