Baffled Abroad: The Last of Nikko: Onward to Friendship, and More!

In which our heroes relax in Nikko before departing from the new friends they had made there in order to travel by train to Fukushima, where they meet up with an old friend and meet new friends in a blizzard of fun and adventure with foreign medical services, foods, and caves, all before finally making their way back to Tokyo city to explore and await the coming madness.
How's that for a teaser?

Our last day in Nikko we spent, relaxing at the hostel. Swimming in the river, playing Uno with some other travellers. That sounds totally restful, but just a few minutes of swimming in such a fast river can be quite a workout! The water was low and clean, so it was much safer and I had a lot of fun clamering on the rocks and swimming against the current (takes effort just to keep pace with it, like a water treadmill) so by the end of that my arms were quite tired.

The following morning, we and many other travelers we'd been hanging with were destined to leave Nikko. We'd passed the torch to all the newcomers the evening before over more barbecue and beer.

Here's a pic of some of them as we waited for a train; mostly Australians, by chance.

That day we were heading to Fukushima prefecture, Aizuwakamtsu, to visit Sarah. Sadly, despite us being in Japan for so long, she's got work and whatnot so we only ended up with about 2 days to chill. She did get to take wednesday off work!

Anyway, from the train ride there I took a pic of this mountain:

And what do you know? I was so busy having fun the rest of our time there I literally didn't take any pictures.

Anyway, we bumbled our way to her apartment while she was at work, and shortly thereafter she got off work and met up with us there. And then commenced a complex series of events...

Let's start by backtracking and telling you the story of...

My Foot (warning: gross)

I can't tell you for sure if this part of the tale is true, the earliest episodes of this saga are partly conjecture. But back on Ko Phi Phi I got drunk and danced the night away on the beach. Unfortunately I was barefoot, and when I awoke the next morning I found tiny, tiny lacerations on the bottoms of my feet. Nothing serious, our trip continued, as outlined in prior posts.

Some time later, I honestly can't give an exact time for this, I had a "bug bite" on my left foot. In all ways it seemed exactly like a bug bite, in the inner arch of my foot. Annoying.

This faded somewhat, but over the course of those weeks, I discovered a new symptom...What had been a bump now seemed more of a raised, red line. I really began to take notice of how gross and increasingly annoying it was probably around when we were in Osaka. By then the red line snaked from one side of the foot to the other. What could this be?

According to cursory research on my part (including google images of a bunch of things I wish I could unsee) I figured, "it's probably something like a staph infection." I said this because: A, it fit the symptoms somewhat; and B, I really didn't want it to be some kind of disgusting worm parasite in my foot...I took all the remaining antibiotics we had leftover for traveler's Diarrhea, but it was only a couple days doses. No significant change.

By the time I was in Nikko, I figured I couldn't wait to get back to America to find out what this thing was. I was asking Scout if he could take me somewhere, but he didn't have much help to offer other than a ride...on Line (the app) I was able to get a much better offer from Sarah, who did all kinds of asking around to know where to take me and I'm forever in her debt.

SO...having met Sarah we walked to a car rental place, because she was renting a car for the next 24 hours or so. Then we took that car to a skin clinic, where she translated and I stood there looking dumb as they signed me in; 2 hours wait, they said.

So we walked to the castle that's nearby, Tsuruga (orAizuwakamatsu) Castle. And we walked around on the walls and grounds, and then went and got in the car and drove around looking for this one ice cream bar Sarah wanted us to try (black thunder) but settled for lesser ice creams in the end.

Then, back to the clinic. My name is finally called, and we (all three, Christian comes too, haha) march into a room and I stick my foot up for a doctor to look at. He looks. Asks some questions, Sarah interprets. He uses a scalpel to scrape some surface skin and look at it under a microscope.

Eventually he comes back and gives me a prescription for 5 days of antibiotics and, surprise, some athletes foot creme, because apparently I've got that going for me too.

Total cost of consultation and drugs is about 6900 yen. I could actually get you the exact number because I saved the receipts but I'm not going to bother and I hope you can trust my memory on that number. That's about 55 USD; the clinic's fee was the more expensive part by far (~5000 yen).

Anway, with that done, we go to this steak restaurant and it's super busy, so we schedule to come back in a half hour, go to Sarah's place and...idk...do some stuff? Who cares.

Horse Meat

is delicious. We ate horse meat, lamb meat, and cow meat. All served raw and cooked by us on a gas grill in the middle of the table. Horse was the clear winner. The animal's got a lot going for it, you know? Useful when alive, delicious when dead.

The Next Morning

We went on a roadtrip to Irimizu cave. This is not a big, paved touristy cave. It's a narrow limestone crack that flows with icy rainwater. There are three bits to it, first the A course which is easy peasy, well lit, and has occasional metal stairs and floor to walk on. The B course, the intermediate bit after that in which you have to get your feet wet (and probably much more) and start to squeeze through narrow cracks and over obstacles with very little light, so your flashlight is important. And then C course, the advanced stretch of cave, where you do lots of crawling on hands and knees through icy water in pitch darkness and whatnot.

We did all three and took no pictures the whole time because we didn't take any cameras.

Here's a video by a some random guy on youtube I time-stamped the url to somewhere on course B. Just keep in mind C is even harder (and that video is like 45 minutes, just a warning).

Yeah, we couldv'e brought the GoPro and done something like this, but we didn't really prep for it to clip to any gear, and as it turned out it was hard enough climbing through with a hand on a flashlight so, no regrets.

Back at home, we had Sushi and it was delicious. When you ordered it, once it was ready it would be delivered on a little train, you grab it, and then hit a button on a touchscreen to send the car back. Adorable.

Some festival or something...idk man

I really don't remember. Kabuki festival maybe? Third largest in...Japan? We've seen a lot of third largest things we noted. It was in Tajima? Maybe?

Again no pics. But we got to hang out with all of Sarah's friends and it was a super chill time.

And then we went home and fell asleep, and in the morning Sarah went to work.

The next morning we prepped to leave, but met Sarah for lunch at that Sushi place again, and then she stuck us on a bus to the train station. God, it was so relaxing those few days not having to stress about understanding anything...the japanese-speaking local friend just did all the work!

Tokyo

Well, now we're in Tokyo. We grabbed some trains to get here yesterday (thursday), and happened on one to meet a dude who was headed to Nikko, and indeed headed for the Space Riverhouse Hostel! We told him to have a blast, and perhaps tell Scout Christian andRicky say "hi" though it's dubious whether he'd even remeber us after a few days--that dude's a bit overworked.

In Tokyo we're staying at a hostel, no capsule hotel for us, although each bed at the hostel is in its own walled cubby, so it's kinda capsule-like!

Our first night here we went to Shibuya crossing and the surrounding area. Here is notable for tons of people crossing at this one street, and then the area around there is also nice--full of niche shops and all kinds of stores, restaurants, etc.