… 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 …

kawagoe geocaching

So how many caches did I actually manage to find on my mission? As you’ll notice from my updated stats and cache map: an abysmal 3. But as you may have read in my captions – did it matter?

Not really – I still saw some cool places I never would have otherwise. And in my book, that’s the true goal of geocaching.

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.

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.

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!

… 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!

That is until Sunday morning. I decided I would explore the end of the Mita line – which was surprisingly close to our place – by way of geocaching. I headed out for three caches around Nishitakashimadaira… and came up empty.

But that’s the thing with geocaching: you never come back feeling a sense of failure. I discovered many new sites during my walk that I didn’t know existed. Now that I know what’s there – surely I’ll go back…

… to the end of the Mita-sen.

end of mitasen geocaching

What better way to get reacquainted with Sydney than to do a bit of geocaching around the CBD! On my first morning back in Australia Jc & I aimed for 6 caches – but found only 3 due to matters mostly out of our control. Many of the caches were themed on the movie “The Matrix” – due to it being filmed in Sydney: a city generally unidentifiable to Americans – and yet so American.

Some highlights of the caching in the sun…

sydney geocaching

And ever so slightly – the stats go up…

Frustrated with the lack of caches within walking distance of our place – I decided to fill the void and introduce cachers to our neck of the concrete woods.  There’s plenty of interesting sites to be seen around Akabanekita 3 chome… at least I think so!

Just a couple blocks east of our place takes you to a massive set of downwards steps, only half of which are seen here…

The base offers a unique locale for our first cache…

… an abandoned wading pool! Some would call it a “haikyo“… a mini one at that.  Perhaps one of my daring friends would be brave enough to hop the fence.  The chicken that I am – I stay well within the “public zone” of the site to snap a couple photos and hide the cache…

Clearly this place has been left for ruin for several years now, with no “renewal” plans in sight.

So, now the waiting game begins.  Who will claim FTF on our newly published cache?  Or will it end up being muggled without a single logged find?

Keep a watch on GC1KEB6 as the drama unfolds…

Update (12/01/09): I actually thought it was muggled at one point – but it’s all good! A fellow geocacher was kind enough to move it slightly to a sneakier hiding spot – and I thank them for that!

But believe it or not – Naoki already has his first few cache finds! How’s that possible you say? Well – ok, he may have still been in the belly at the time. I am sure he still experienced it all none the less!

Join us for a fastforward view of some geocaching highlights from last Sunday on a beautiful (but cloudy) November day in Tokyo:

We got to pay a visit to Kevin Rudd‘s Sydney residence on our journey – at Kirribilli House. I was surprised that security around the place would allow a geocache. Maybe they haven’t noticed it yet … or perhaps they did notice it and were rest assured by the “Geocache Harmless” labels on all sides of it. Hmmm…

Also picked up a couple of travel bugs like Mario here, and will take them on some of my travels.

Not that Mario hasn’t already been around the block. He’s already traveled 20,000 odd km’s to date…