Kawagoe – known locally as “Little Edo” – is an interesting little retreat just outside of Tokyo. The town is famous for preserving many old buildings that represent architecture common in the Edo period of Japan (1603 to 1868). With its close proximity to Tokyo it understandably draws quite the crowd of Japanese and foreign tourists …

… and the occasional geocacher!

With a Saturday all to myself, I got up at an unreasonable hour and headed out with my trusty GPS like a man on a mission. The goal: find as many of Kawagoe’s 19 caches that I can before sanity settles in. Lucky for you, you can live vicariously through my pictures without sacrificing any precious weekend sleep time …

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After a brief trip to the States and Canada a couple weeks ago I have now (finally) surprised the 100th find mark!

Making a lot of progress on my geocaching stats is exceedingly difficult in Tokyo. There’s just too many people around, the caches are very spread out, and well – lately I simply don’t have that much time caching. Once I get Naoki into it – I’m sure that will all change!

Some shots of my day caching with Viking43:

nb geocaching

12 in one day – definitely a record for me, but pocket change for the vikings!

As always – my cache map is up to date with the latest finds.

I’m going to take credit for this…

A couple months ago I placed two new traditional caches around our neighbourhood: Haikyo Stairs #1 and (un-originally) Haikyo Stairs #2. As their names imply these caches were made to highlight a couple of haikyo (urban ruin) type structures in our area; the “stairs” in this case being pedestrian overpass bridges.

Both of these overpasses were completely unnecessary. They provided those on foot the option of a gruelling stair hike over a very quiet street with plenty of simpler un-elevated cross walks as alternatives. Why did Kitaku (our local ward) bother constructing them? Who knows. Clearly they had been there for several decades and their lack of use and maintenance was evident.

So is it purely coincidental that after just a few weeks of placing said caches at these locations that the city decides to take the overpasses down? The timing is unbelievable. If you ask me, it’s a little too coincidental.

Indeed – I am taking credit for this. Kitaku is a cleaner place thanks to genfab.

Now I need to find some new hiding spots…

haikyo stairs caches

In other geocaching news:

You may (or may not) have noticed the new menu item up top labelled cache map. I’ve put together this nifty WordPress plug-in that will map geocaching finds onto Google Maps! Pretty cool, eh? Take a gander at all our finds and see where we’ve been doing our geeky little hobby.

Should there be any interest in distributing the plug-in, I may be persuaded.

Continuing my renewed motivation for geocaching, Makiko, Naoki and I spent Sunday morning strolling around Kitaku and grabbing a few new caches not too far from our place.

The walk took us to some really great little parks around the area – some we love and have been to several times – others were new to us. That’s what I really love about geocaching: the excuse that it gives you to see parts of your own neighborhood that you otherwise wouldn’t.

Highlight of the outing: Shrine of the Hair God. I spent a good while praying there – and if I’m not mistaken there’s a few new hairs coming in! (“Dream on, Scott!“) Ok ok – I’m kidding myself …

The route we took:

… and the pictures along the way:

kitaku caching

My goal is to reach 100 caches by the end of the year – and at 85 I’m not that far off!

Still 85 is far cry from the nearly 3,000 my father and step mom (the geocaching monsters!) have found. Mind you I should still be able to beat them on ‘number of countries cached in’ for the foreseeable future. For those of you keeping score at home, that total is now 5 (or 6 if you consider Guam its own country).

Coming up next: two new hides!

Have no fear, Naoki – your adventures will continue in another week or so …

… hand-me-down shirt and all!

I dare say this shirt is the defining one of our family’s next generation. Purchased in Japan and sent to Ella in Virginia before she was even born, handed down to Ryan in Canada – and now back in Japan on the Naokster. Manger Du Pain! It still hasn’t lost its coolness.

While we’re all waiting for more videos – how about some snapshots of life with the original genfab adventurer? I spent this past week in HCMC, Vietnam while Makiko & Naoki have headed up to Niigata for some family time. Here’s but a few oddities and highlights of my quick trip …

hcmc vietnam

While the rest of the family remains up in Niigata – dad works hard in Tokyo and gets in the odd bit of geocaching to keep his mind off the great emptiness of our apartment. Gotta get those stats up and see more of this ginormous city …

tokyo geocaching

… back before too long!