2009-03-19 35 139

Thu 19 Mar 2009 in Tōkyō: 35.3593302, 139.2229452 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Participants

星鳥 and Dave-san

About

Hadano is a city of 150,000 about 60km SW of Tokyo, near the coast. The hash is a mile walk from the train station, on the border between some woods and cultivated fields, about 60m from a big road.

Expedition

Part 4 of a consecutive hash. Part 4A can be found here.

I'd been regaling my friend Dave all week with my geohashing adventures, and on this day he said he wanted to come along. So, in one day I doubled the number of active hashers in Japan, w00t! We went to Shinjuku and took the Odakyu line for about an hour to get to Hadano. As usual (for me), we got a later than ideal start, and after figuring out which trains to take, and managing the train change at Sagami-Ono, we arrived in Hadano after 5 PM and had to race against nightfall.

Hadano lies at the edge of the Kanto plain, and it is not flat. We went belting off in the direction of the hash, and were hindered by the fact that most of the walk was uphill. This was just practice, however. When we arrived at the nearest point to the hash on the road, there was a really high wall in the way. The satellite photos didn't warn us about the terrain. In retrospect, the wooded area should have been a clue. In a country where every possible scrap of land is farmed, a bunch of woods near a cultivated field is probably only still there because it's too steep to grow crops on.

We managed to retain our sanity, and walked a little further up the road instead of scaling the wall. We were rewarded with a smaller road that cut back in the direction we wanted to go, this time along the top of the wall.

The fields looked like a community garden, with small oddly shaped plots and several gardening sheds dotted about. We wandered carefully along the paths trying to orient ourselves. With the help of a hasty sketch I'd made earlier from the satellite photo, we were able to locate the hash point right next to a shed at the treeline. The whole photo business is certainly easier when you bring a friend to take them.

We found a path running down the hill through woods and fields, and stopped to admire a twilight view of the city below us, and the mountains behind it. We made our way back to the station, and went for a walk through an interesting section of the downtown, with narrow streets and little shops. Unfortunately, most of them were closed already, it being after 7:00 by then. There were still a few restaurants open (including a bar called Australopithecus), and we had some dinner before catching the train back to Tokyo.

星鳥 earned the Consecutive geohash achievement by reaching 4 consecutive hash points starting on 2009-03-16.

星鳥 earned the Drag-along achievement by dragging Dave to the (35, 139) geohash on 2009-03-19.

Photos

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  En route

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  Hash is about 70m ahead, but...

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  Stupidity distance?

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  View of Hadano from nearby the hash

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  Community gardens

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  One of several sheds on the plot

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  Me at hashpoint

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  Dave-san

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  Every garden needs a scarecrow