Tokyo/Hokkaido 2026 Index Page

This past summer, we decided to do 2 trips instead of one, because it was Bowen’s last hurrah before going to high school, where we expected him to get very busy. While my original proposal was to do the Coast to Coast hike in England, both Boen and Xiaoqin weren’t enthusiastic. Boen and Bowen both wanted to visit the Pokemon Center in Tokyo because their classmates had gone there and told them all about it. I figured that now that I was no longer being regularly asked to carry either kid (they’d both become way too heavy) it was time for me to buy a new camera. Tokyo’s the best place to buy a Japanese camera, because there is no tourist tax and there are frequent discounts during the summer.

With that, I booked direct flights from San Francisco to Narita airport via ZipAir. This was
a discount airline, but it had a good reputation and excellent pricing for summer travel. Now, the big problem with Tokyo is that it’s effectively tropical weather in mid July, which would be when we would be going.I decided that the right thing to do was to visit Hokkaido after 4 days in Tokyo, simply because it wouldn’t be absurdly hot during that time. Working off Claude, Gemini, and my previous bike tour in 2009, I decided we would attempt a hiking-oriented trip.

The problem with Hokkaido in the summer is that it’s highly impacted—you’re advised to make reservations ahead of time. So what we had to do was to place our bets as to where to have extra time so we had a chance to out wait the weather, and where to just risk having crap weather and not being able to do much about it.

Certain hikes like the Shirotoko 5 Lakes hike had to be booked far in advance, and having secured those reservations we also made bookings for the Kammuywakka Hot Springs waterfall hike. Asahidake Hot Springs was even at that early stage booked so full that lodging was expensive, so we decided to book an AirBnB for 5 nights in Biei instead. I figured there was plenty to do in Biei, and that a commute to Asahidake Hot Springs was only 45 minutes long, so it was a shorter commute than our usual visit to Mt Tamalpais from the south bay.

I also arranged to visit Drumkan, it being one of the highlights of my trip back in 2009. The brothers running the B&B were now in their 70s, but when I wrote to them they still remember our visit, mostly because of Yana Ivey. Xiaoqin and I decided that for our last night in Japan we would splurge and stay at the so-called “Secret” onsen that was just a 45 minute drive from the airport.

This is the index page for the trip, with links to photo albums and day by day trip entries.

Photo Albums

• Tokyo Fish Market
• Nakano
• Kaiya Wakou
• Tokyo
• Blue Pond and Shirahige Falls
• Biei and Furano
• Chiyoda Farm
• Mt Asahidake Loop
• Kurodake Summit 
• Ginga/Ryusei Falls and Lake Shikaribetsu
• Kitamani Fox Farm and Utoro
• Shiretoko Five Lakes
• Mt Mokoto and Lake Akan
• Mt Mashu, Mt Io & Wakoto Penninsula
• Natai Terrace
• Noribetsu Jugokudani
• Otaki Falls
• Marukoma Onsen
• Narita san Temple

Videos

• Kaiya Wakou
• Biei
• Mt Asahidake Loop
• Kamuywakka Hot Springs
• Kitamani Fox Farm
• Sahoro Resort Bear Mountain
• Noribetsu Jugokudani

Daily Journal

• July 13-14: Prologue
• July 15: Shinjuku and Shibuya
• July 16: Tokyo Fish Market
• July 17: Roppongi Crossing
• July 18: Tokyo to Chitose
• July 19: Chitose to Biei
• July 20: Biei Hot Springs, Lavender Fields, and Furano Roads
• July 21: Mt Asahidake Loop
• July 22: Asahikawa and Shinei No Oka
• July 23: Chiyoda Farm
• July 24: Biei to Suonkyo Onsen, Mt Kurodake
• July 25: Lake Shikaribetsu
• July 26: Suonkyo Onsen to Utoro
• July 27: Shiretoko Five Lakes + Kamuiwakka Hot Springs
• July 28: Utoro to Kawayuonsen
• July 29: Mount Mashu, Mount Io, and Wakoto Peninsula
• July 30: Kawayuonsen to Shintoku
• July 31: Shintoku to Noribetsu
• Aug 1: Noribetsu to Marukoma Onsen
• Aug 2: Marukoma Onsen to San Francisco, California
• Conclusions

Review: All You Need Is Kill

 All You Need Is Kill is the source novel for the Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow. The protagonist of the novel, Keiji, is a soldier in the Unified Defense Forces about to go into battle with invaders from space, the mimics. He fights in a first battle and then gets reset to the beginning of the day. From there on, he gets the opportunity to figure out how to get out of the time loop and how to go about surviving his battles.

The writing style is breezy, easy reading, and occasionally a little dumb. The plot rolls along and we get reveal after reveal, and then the ending kinda sucks, in a completely opposite approach from the way the movie's ending sucks. The movie has a happy ending that's typical of Hollywood. This novel has a bittersweet ending that's typical of Japanese TV shows, but both are similarly unearned. What's interesting is that the movie actually had an appropriate ending only to snatch it all away with a final reset, while the novel itself had a contrived reveal specifically designed to create its bittersweet ending.

The novel is short and at the very least if you try it and it's not to your liking you haven't wasted your time.

July 15th: Shinjuku and Shibuya

We had 2 goals today, which was to buy a new camera and going to the pokemon center. After breakfast, we went to the local subway and bought subway tickets. We got up so early that Yodabashi Camera wasn’t opened yet, so we went to Shinjuku Chuo park and explored the park. Even so, we still ended up waiting about 15 minutes in front of the camera shop before it opened.

When the camera shop opened, I tested both the Sony A7C2 with the Sigma 20-200mm lens, along with the Nikon Z52 with its 24-120mm lens. The Nikon was a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Sony, but when I shot the cameras with my own SD card and then compared them in lightroom on my laptop, I decided that the extra 4mm of wide angle was more valuable than the nearly imperceptible difference in image quality as well as the longer reach at the 200mm end. The Sony A7C2 with the 20-200 was also lighter by about 276g, which is more than half a pound difference. The difference wasn’t magic—the Nikon 24-105 was an F4 constant aperture lens while the Sigma degraded quickly to F6.3, which is more than a stop and a half. However, modern cameras perform well even with the ISO set to 12000 (which would have been inconceivable on any of my now ancient cameras) so that was a wash. What really made an even bigger difference was that the A7C2 had a 33 megapixel resolution, which meant that I could crop out 50% of the photo (effectively extending the reach of the 200mm lens to 400mm) and still get an 16 mega pixel image! I got a quote from the salesman, and then we went to the video game section of Yodabashi camera to shop for video games while waiting for Map camera to open.

Yodabashi’s video game store was disappointing. Boen found Pokemon Pokopia at a good price, while I got a copy of Soras for the PS5 at a discount from USA prices, which I shouldn’t have because I later found used copies at even better prices. When Map camera opened we went in and indeed got a much cheaper quote from them, but then they told me they didn’t have international versions of the Sony A7C2! Disappointed, we went to Fuunji Shinjuku for their dipping ramen. There was a line out the door, but we finally figured out that what we had to do was to go into the store anyway, and use the machine to order food. When the food was ordered we’d get tickets to hand over to the servers. What this meant was that as soon as one party left, the next party was immediately seated and the food was already ready and served! That meant that while the line was long and the restaurant tiny, turnover was rapid and we were seated and eating within 30 minutes!

After lunch, I queried ChatGPT, detailing my disappointment with the prices at Yodabashi Camera. ChatGPT replied that BIC camera had a deal where the A7C2 (international version) bundled with the 28-60mm kit lens was on sale for less than Yodabashi’s body only price. In addition, there was a 5% coupon available online which would stack with the body and the Sigma 20-200mm so that the total package price made it not worth it to stop by Map camera for the lens and then walking over to BIC. It was already very warm when we got out of the restaurant, making Boen insist on buying an electric fan from Yodabashi camera on our way to BIC.

At BIC camera, the salesman walked me through all the steps to get the coupon, and helped me pick out a circular polarizer and a screen protector for the camera. The circular polarizer is the one last filter that you end up buying, useful for removing reflectance from vegetation as well as making rainbows look better. 81B warming filters are no longer required since you can just adjust the white balance in Lightroom. As a matter of curiosity, I asked how much the international version of the Nikon Z52 would be and he told me that Nikon Z52s in Japan never came with an English menu. What you would have to do was to buy the camera, and go to the Nikon service center and pay a fee to get the English firmware installed! That confirmed for me that my decision was the right one. I bought the camera, got out my passport and got an exemption from the sales tax right on the spot.

While we were there, Xiaoqin found some cosmetics at a good price, and we also bought floss for the kids—they’d forgotten to pack their floss. After that it was time to visit the Pokemon Center Shibuya. Boen, however, announced that he had lost his subway card! This was a big headache, and necessitated us visiting no more than 3 different places in the subway station before we found someone who could talk to the station manager to cancel the lost card and do all the paperwork so that we could buy a new one tomorrow! Boen’s card was special since it was a half priced card so unlike an adult card, same day replacement was not possible.

With that ordeal out of the way we visited the Pokemon Center. The place was a zoo! It was completely crowded. It’s clear that Pokemon was a global phenomenon and we could see lots of tourists browsing all sections of the store, and the checkout line was super long as well. Boen’s goal was to buy lots of stuffed animals and it took all our parental authority to not have him fill all of our carry on luggage with stuffed animals. We checked out and everyone was exhausted, so it was time to go back to our AirBnB.

Bowen wanted Sushi and we were done with subways. We ended up at Sushi Kaoru, which when it opened was not crowded. After dinner, we stopped by the supermarket to buy real supplies for breakfast, including dessert and ice cream and went back to the AirBnB to relax and get some sleep. The AirBnB was equipped with a washer but not a dryer, so what we had to do was to do laundry after showering, and then turn the shower room into a drying room since it had a vent and you could actually set it up to reduce humidity and then close the door.

July 13-14: San Francisco to Tokyo

Our flight from San Francisco was smooth, and since we had no baggage, we could walk through the temperature sensors, scan our passports through customs, and then get our Japanese landing visa. Surprisingly enough, despite them asking us how long we planned to be in Japan, they stamped our visa for the maximum days we were allowed to be in the country.

Getting to the Keisei Skyliner counter, we bought one way tickets to the Nippori station. The Keisei Skyliner looks like an old train and is just as rocky and rickety as an old train, but moves very fast, stopping only at a few stops and not even slowing down at all when passing through stations it is not scheduled to stop at.  While much of it was underground, there was an open air section where we looked out through (closed) windows into the night scene.

Arriving at Nippori, we got to the taxi stand and showed a taxi driver the address of our AirBnB. The ride wasn’t long, but the taxi driver actually had to circle around because he actually didn’t know where it was! We got into the AirBnB, turned on all the AC as the weather was decidedly tropical, and then walked out to the local convenience store (Family Mart) to buy some snacks for dinner and breakfast. Unlike California, Japan’s supermarkets do not open until a relatively late our (9-10am!), so they’re not a good source for breakfast food!

We expected an easy jet-lag experience because we were traveling West, but it was already quite late by the time we’d all taken showers so I took a melatonin extended release pill before going to bed.

2026 Tour of the Alps Conclusions and Thoughts

 This was a very warm year, and just like last year, we didn’t lose any traveling days to rain. Our plan to use the train to skip the hot flat sections of Italy worked out as I expected, and we got very lucky in that every road closure (other than the Col de Tende one --- and that was always a stretch goal anyway)was navigable with minimal losses to our schedule. What surprised me was how arriving in the French alps a little early was quite problematic. For instance, Col de la Madeline was pretty much devoid of any place to buy lunch except at the summit. Similarly, Isola 2000 had few places to stay. This is because European school schedules are quite late compared to California—they  don’t let kids out of school until August, when everyone in Europe appears to go on vacation at the same time. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, finding lodging seems to be quite hard—though in some cases I feel like we should have had faith—arriving in St Etienne de Tinee, for instance, we should have just looked for lodging there instead of pre-booking, as there were better places that would have been available if we had arrived early enough in the day.

Despite all that, we had a great time, and whenever I’m visiting some place that’s not the alps I still find myself asking why I’m not in the alps. I’m sad to see the effects of global warming on my favorite places in the world, but I’m afraid for now humans are saying: “you first”, when it comes to preserving the climate the species evolved in.

I’m completely sold on EVs as a result of our experience with the Volvo EX30 this trip. While charging was a pain on one occasion, most of the time it worked really well. Every time I descended a mountain on the EV I always felt happy that I was getting energy back rather than dissipating it all into the brakes. At home, charging wouldn’t be a pain since you could charge at home, and the convenience of never having to go to a gas station plus the feel good aspect of not contributing to climate change is a big plus.

July 7th: Epilogue

 We got up early, ate the breakfast we bought the day before, and then checked out of the hotel and prepared for the shuttle ride. Arriving at the airport, I found a cart and then we proceeded to roll the carts up to the departure floor in order to get checked in. The Aer Lingus checkin counter was a disaster. There was a line, but none of the counters were staffed. Eventually they started taking finally taking Dublin flight checkins at 7:30am, despite the policy being to take checkins at 7:10am.

After getting our bike boxes weighed and tagged, we still had to take them to the oversized baggage counter for their bigger X-ray machines to run over them. The good news was that this was the last time we needed to deal with the boxes until we got to San Francisco. We cleared passport control, which was no big deal this early in the morning, and then customs, giving us plenty of time to do more chocolate shopping before boarding the flight.

The flight was late, arriving in Dublin at 12:15pm, meaning that we had to rush through US passport control and customs and try to get onto the Dublin to San Francisco flight within 15 minutes. We walked fast and made it, only to realize at the gate that the flight to San Francisco was also late by about 30 minutes! There was no communications at all from the flight crew to us about any of this. Well, this gave us time to buy lunch. I wondered whether our bike boxes would make it, since this was a very tight connection.

Arriving jet-lagged and bleary back in SFO, the good news for us was that we had no customers or passport control to clear—having already done all that in Dublin. In fact, the Aer Lingus flight directly took you to the domestic terminal.

The bad news was that Xiaoqin’s bike was missing at the luggage claim oversized counter. All the other bikes had arrived, including Mark’s the tandem, and a couple of others that belonged to other cyclists. We filed a claim and then got picked up by Steve Wang.

Xiaoqin and I spent a couple of days worrying about her Ritchey Road logic, but 2 days later they finally delivered the final bike box to us. Aer Lingus continues to this day to deny our claims for compensation for the meals due to our delay imposed by them. We're still awaiting the results of an appeal to the Irish authorities, which can take as long as 6 months.

Review: A Life on Our Planet

 A Life on Our Planet is Sir David Attenborough's memoir and plea to humanity to not bollox up the planet any more for human life than it already has. The early part of the book is his memoir, detailing how he ended up being in front of the camera rather than just a producer. Unlike many TV people, Attenborough actually does have a background in science and has experience explaining the science to a lay audience.

I love the part where he talks of how the baseline has shifted in how we perceive the option:

Records and reports even from just beyond living memory, back in the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, describe an ocean that we wouldn’t recognise. Old photographs show people thigh-deep in salmon. Reports from New England tell of fish shoals so vast and so close to shore, that locals would wade in to take them with their table forks. In Scotland, fishermen would haul in a line of 400 hooks and find flatfish on almost all of them.16 Our not so distant ancestors fished with nothing more complex than hooks and nets of cotton. We now struggle to catch something edible, with technology that would take their breath away...A shifting baseline has distorted our perception of all life on Earth. We have forgotten that once there were temperate forests that would take days to traverse, herds of bison that would take four hours to pass, and flocks of birds so vast and dense that they darkened the skies. Those things were normal only a few lifetimes ago. Not any more. We have become accustomed to an impoverished planet. (page 84, 100)

When you read passages like this, you do not wonder why Tolkein's words, for instance, are full of nostalgia and sadness. Living during the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene is a sad experience, with the Earth denuded and burnt, species driven to extinction, and of course, the planet overheating.

The second part of the book describes what we can do, and there's a lot of hope. For instance, I always thought that it was pointless to have "no fishing" zones since there are no boundaries in the sea and ocean. It turns out there are studies showing that's not true:

The Marine Protected Area of Cabo Pulmo lies at the tip of Baja California in Mexico. In the 1990s, this area of sea was extensively overfished, and the fishing community, desperate for a solution, agreed to suggestions from marine scientists to set aside over 7,000 hectares of their coast as a no-fish zone. The local people describe the years immediately after the MPA was opened in 1995 as the hardest years they had ever faced. The fishing families caught very little in the neighbouring waters and had to survive on food vouchers offered by the Mexican government. Fishermen could see growing shoals in the MPA, and were often tempted to break the ban. It was only the faith the community had in the marine scientists that kept their resolve. It was at about the ten-year point that sharks came back to Cabo Pulmo. The older fishermen remembered them from their childhood, and knew they were a sign of recovery. After only 15 years, the amount of marine life in the no-fish zone had increased by more than 400 per cent to a level similar to reefs that had never been fished at all, and the fish shoals began to spread into the neighbouring waters. The fishermen caught more fish than they had done in decades, and what is more, the community had a tourist attraction on their doorstep. The men and women of Cabo Pulmo found new sources of income–dive shops, guesthouses and restaurants (page 148)

It turns out that just a bit of restraint on the part of one coastal area is sufficient to allow marine life to recover to the point where the fishermen and their descendants are economically better off than back when they fished without restraint. Seems like a no-brainer, except of course we all know people who are into "free-dumb". One of the points of the book is that just talking about climate change is insufficient--to be maximally successful we have to preserve the biodiversity of the planet and prevent the extinctions that will continue unbated if things go on like they have been.

 I have one friend (and I'm sure most of you reading this have friends like this) who love to say things like: "The planet has been warmer before, and it has recovered." Attenborough is very careful to note that when the Earth had been warmer int he past, humans did not exist, and would have a very uncomfortable time living on that warm a planet:

We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves. With or without us, the wild will return. Evidence of this is no more dramatic than that to be seen in the ruins of Pripyat, the model city that had to be abandoned when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. When you step outside the dark and empty corridors of one of its deserted apartment blocks, you are greeted by a most surprising sight. In the 34 years since the evacuation, a forest has taken over the deserted city. Shrubs have broken up the concrete and ivy pulled apart the bricks. Roofs sag under the weight of accumulating vegetation, and saplings of poplar and aspen have burst through the pavements. The gardens, the parks and the avenues are now shaded by the canopies of oaks, pines and maples, 20 feet above the ground. Beneath, there is a strange under-storey of unkempt ornamental roses and fruit trees. The football field, which 34 years ago served as a landing pad for military helicopters sent to evacuate the city’s inhabitants, is now covered by a thicket of young trees. The wild has reclaimed its territory...The living world has survived mass extinctions several times before. But we humans cannot assume that we will do the same. We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom. (pg 219, 220)

The book provides a timeline projecting the horrors in our future if we stay on "business as usual", letting capitalism and greed run rampant. The book was written in 2020, but some of the forecasts have already come to pass, though there is some relief on at least one front, which is many countries now have reduced fertility which should help unload the Earth of some of its burdens.

I sincerely hope this book is successful in its goals. But judging from the 2024 election, a large number of people just don't care or actively wish to do more harm to the planet and its life support system. I guess humanity really will try everything else before turning to doing the right thing.