Gotemba - Outlet Shopping - 1 Oct

GOTEMBA - Shoppers Paradise

Gotemba is a huge outlet ‘shopping town’ about an hour outside of Tokyo near Mount Fuji. The shops are open air and sprawl out over a lush hilly area and each half of the ‘towns’ is divided by a beautiful creek which you cross to get to the other mass of shops on the other side. Each area is about double the size of the Fyshwick DFO, though open air, not undercover. Most people come by train from Tokyo, some by car, but judging by the size of the bus parking areas, bus tours are hugely popular!

Grant and I decided to go along on the tour to enjoy a bit of time outside of Tokyo, fresh air, trees and all that, and maybe get a bushwalk in if we could as it said online that it is close to a couple of beautiful lakes as well as Mt Fuji.

Neither Grant nor I were interested in the actual shopping centre, except maybe to go to the sports shops to get Grant a new bag (the zip broke on his other) and possibly a pair of shoes. When we got there, everyone scattered. Some to the Adidas shop, other’s Nike and others Puma. The stores are huge and just to get from one side of the Nike shop to the other took a ridiculous amount of time. We found a great bag at the Nike shop for Grant and one for Zoe too (a third of the price of the one we saw in Shinjuku) but thought we’d check out the Adidas shop too. Big mistake! It was then that we two non-shoppers slid into the depths of shopping hell. By the time got back to the Nike shop after checking out Puma as well, most of the day had dissolved away. After taking a walk from one side of Gotemba to the other and back, we were totally exhausted. I still had hopes of going on a bit of a bush walk, so we headed out of the shops to the mountain road.

Before I start this next paragraph, I should provide a bit of background. In Japan instead of putting in a traffic light, or give way sign at the exit of a carpark, or parking area, or leaving things to chance, the Japanese employ hoards of ‘guardman’ to direct traffic all day. I’m not kidding, at the exit of the local department store on our way into Kichijoji, (see photo left) they employ 4! people to stand there with batons, stopping traffic and people all day waving their batons and shouting, ‘car’s coming, please stop’ and ‘ ok, sending one car through’.

Ok, back to my story. As we exited the shopping area and made our way down the mountain road, there was a elderly ‘guardman’ standing at the intersection of the road and carpark. He eyed us up and down and as we got closer I said to Grant I’d ask him if he knew of any walks around here. He looked like a scared bunny as we walked closer to him. He relaxed somewhat as he realised I was speaking Japanese. He said there wasn’t anything like that round here. So I asked well what’s up that road heading up the mountain road, he replied ‘nothing’. So I then asked, well what’s down the road, towards the creek, again, ‘nothing’. Ok, so what’s along that road, ‘’a golf course’. Hmmm, ok, thanks I said and said to Grant we’d walk down the road towards the creek, maybe we could find a path or something down there. We walked about 10 mins and found a bridge over the creek. It was quite beautiful and we decided to stand in the shade on the bridge and enjoy the atmosphere for a while.

After about 20 mins, we started back up the mountain to the shops and as we rounded the corner, I saw the same ‘guardman’standing there, and as he spied us I heard him speak into his walkie talkie, ‘cancel that, the two foreigners have arrived back safely’. I made out I didn’t hear him, and after we were out of earshot, I told Grant what he had said. Thankfully we decided to come back when we did, or we may have had the National Guard out searching for us!
At the end of the shopping day, we once again arrived at the designated meeting place and saw the product of a day’s madness at Gotemba. One family had bought NINE pairs of sports/soccer shoes for themselves and family members back home, other’s had bags of bags, clothing and one family had bought another suitcase to take their purchases home in. I hate to think of the money that left Australian shores that day, but all assured me it was ‘much cheaper than in Australia’. The only point of disappointment was that there were no souvenier shops within the complex, but I assured everyone, that the morning at Asakusa would serve all their needs in that area.

Dinner was at a local town where there was a huge dining hall similar to those in school camp complexes, where we had dinner buffet style, all you can eat as part of our tour package. They had all kinds of foods and drinks, which included beer, and it obviously catered towards the bus groups like ours as well as school groups using the local soccer ground. By the end of the evening it was jam packed and we even enjoyed the local band playing in the corner. Grants one moment of surprise was when he got back from getting some desert, he went past the self-serve beer counter. He said to me, ‘Wow mum, I didn’t think Japanese women were the type of people to drink beer!’ At the end of the day, we came away with the two bags we found at the beginning of our journey, and a pair of casual Adidas shoes for Grant, which I have to admit were cheap, and as he’d only bought with him soccer/futsal boots and a daggy pair of joggers, were just what he needed for the formal dinner in Tokyo next week. Oh, and another good story to tell the others on the tour.