Touring Tokyo; The Mark and Rob Edition – Aokigahara
My goodness, what a day this was. Let me prepare you now for some very random tales from the so-called… “Suicide Forest” (cue creepy music with a pitchy crescendo!) One of the things that Mark and Rob wanted to do was Aokigahara. I’d actually been there before and not realised back in 2012, when I went to check out the ice caves and so on that form round Mt. Fuji’s base in the forest.
Basically, this place is so huge and dense that many people go there to give it all up. Sometimes they’re not found for ages (or ever), as the crews who go looking for the dead can only do so much. It has therefore earned itself a scary rep, but actually the forest is really beautiful. We on the other hand, managed to get a good amount of creep out of it too!
As it was sakura (cherry blossom) season but I’d missed the famous Starbucks sakura drinks by about 2 days (grr), I thought I’d have a sakura injection at the start of the day. Some quick photos from my dorm, and a sneaky Royal Milk Tea Sakura vend. Sadly the drink wasn’t all I’d hoped for, but it was still nice on the train.
Bekah, Mark, Rob, and I met up and began to make our way to this most ominous of places. I can’t remember the exact journey, but once we got to the adorable yet slightly creepy Fuji train, we were pretty excited. The train seemed to be purposely tooooo adorable, perhaps in a bizarre attempt to get people out of the dying mood? We had a very comfy journey on this, and arrived at… some station or another!
We came out of the station after managing to survive overly friendly Fuji train, and found that the best way to get to where we wanted to go was via the “Retro Bus”. And boy was it retro. Velvet benches and not many of them. Personal taxi to hell anyone? Mark found a hilariously appropriate filter on his phone camera, and proceeded to take plenty of deathly photos for posterity. (Probably because the reporter never dies, else how would the stories come home? Mark clearly knows what character to be to survive in horror films!)
Our actual destination was the bat cave, which turned out to be pretty amazing. A short walk through a pathed area of the forest and we got to the entrance. That gave us plenty of time to muck about on the way! They gave us helmets, and good thing too as the cave was very much a crawler in some places. We didn’t see any actual bats though; just where they hide beyond some fence. But I love caves so I had a blast! The pictures below are far better at telling you how cool it was 🙂 Notice how the roots often grow above ground; this is because the ground is quite impenetrable, seeing as it’s made of volcano eruptions!
Once we’d had our fill of the cave, it was time for a proper forest walk. We made our way from the empty car park, down the empty road and into a small path. Bekah and I had it all figured out including bus times. We’d be fine. Off we plod into the strange and haunting forest. We had a great time! Mark took a video, which you really ought to watch. It’s pretty amusing.
We walked for a little while and came out where we were supposed to with some time before the bus. We found the stop and then messed about a bit while waiting for the bus. it did seem a little odd that the bus stop was all the way in the forest up a mud track… but that’s what the map said! Shortly after the bus should have come and gone, we realised it must not come up that far. Oops. So… we were stuck out in the suicide forest with no bus home? Cool. Great. Good-oh. Better start walking! Only how every horror movie starts ever.
As you’ll obviously note, we did make it out! We had to walk down plenty more empty roads, with Mark filming just in case. Made for some great video footage!
We eventually made it back to the station and got home. But man was that a day and a half! If you didn’t watch the video, go back and watch it. It’s worth it. I’ll leave you now with a picture of Rob munching at the station, sad for his noodle loss.
P.s. Many of the photos from today (and a few from the other Mark and Rob days) were taken by Mark. The blue filter ones are good, eh?! You can see more of his work here: www.markhatchard.com 🙂
Maisy In Japan 