Neil Hopcroft

After yesterdays storm the weather has been better today, so I took my first venture outside of the city.

Its great living so close to mountains, it only takes an hour and a half to get to the foothills, two hours to get to mountains proper. The train I took was a fast suburban train, rather than the ‘Excellent Express’. It was about twenty minutes from Shinjuku before some greenery started to appear, then another thirty five or so before we hit the countryside proper.

Along the way we crossed a river estuary with muddy banks on each side, with a road bridge running parallel to the railway bridge. In the shade of the road bridge there were a number of small groups of people collected around barbeques – this is obviously a done thing on days like this. On the way back there were still people there, though whether they were the same people I couldn’t tell, there was also a number of SUVs and 4x4s on the sandbanks.

At the end of the line I changed onto the little train that goes up the steep mountain track. A quaint little train that, while being a tourist attraction, was also something of a lifeline to some of the villages and settlements it serves. There are several points where the train doubles back and the driver and guard have to swap positions, which must be endlessly irritating for them. Some of the bridges on the way are terrifying, with no visible means of support, you can look down between the sleepers to the sheer cliff face below…must remember to stand back from the edge for those bits next time.

After a while heading up the mountain we came to a stop advertising the Hokane Open Air Museum. This was a strange museum clutching onto the hillside by the railway track, you enter down an escalator that takes you to the main plaza, where there are events and performances. They were just setting up something as I arrived. The museum has quite extensive grounds and three or four buildings housing various works, many by Picasso, but plenty by others too.

Theres no way I can remember enough of the works to give any proper review, but there were a couple that stood out:

‘my sky hole’ – which consisted of a little underground passageway with a seat in it under a hole looking up to the sky. I didn’t like this work but I liked the concept of a tunnel like that.
suspended ball – whose name I don’t remember – which is just a large silvery ball suspended over a junction in the paths around the garden
concrete jungle – again, my name not theirs – which was just a simple hedge maze, but made out of concrete.

So much for being an art critic, I soon got bored by the art and started looking at the buildings. There were some great spaces in the buildings, a couple of them were ideal (and I expect do) for hosting performances of various sorts, unfortunately the space is used badly when displaying art. Of course, it doesn’t help that I feel haunted by Picasso, I seem to be forever going to exhibitions of his work, I don’t mean to, it just happens.

Back in the main plaza the setup is complete and there is a juggler doing some not very exciting juggling (three fire clubs is as far as he gets, now I know I can’t do that, but then I’m not a professional juggler), but he’s got some quite good music so I stick around and watch for a bit.

The train takes me back to the bottom of the steep track, where I take a break in my journey back to the city to take a wander around the town. There are many similarities to some of the alpine towns I’ve been to, theres a beautiful river cascading down a deep channel under a number of bridges. Theres loads of little bars and markets selling touristy stuff.

Then, back to the city and as I’m leaving Shinjuku station there is a band playing in the square outside the station – this time they’re unusual, theres a film crew filming them there and they keep stopping halfway through their song and starting again because something went wrong…personally I don’t think I would have chosen the day when the shop behind them was being refitted and the builders there were using angle grinders to make the signs fit, but that might, of course, have been a part of the show.

And now I’m home and appear to be watching a Japanese version of “Geoffrey …? Is Unwell” (Simon – who is unwell?), which is good and not much less comprehensible than the original.