I am finally going to start on an overview of all the great things we have seen and done in Japan last year (october november 2009). Probably not a lot of poeple still care at this point, but it's more as a reference for ourselves and all the other people who also want to plan a vacation to Japan and get some extra information.
I'll try to give all the required and interesting information about our trip but if you have any other questions pls feel free to contact me.
So here we go ..
After arriving in Narita airport, we immediately took the train to Nikko, going over Tokyo. We didn’t stay at Tokyo yet, because we knew that the jetlag and culture shock might be to big then, and kept Tokyo for the end of our trip.
Nikko is probably one of the best places to go in Japan when you arrive if want to see how beautiful it can be. It has great nature and a very beautiful temple complex as you will see in the upcoming pictures. Sadly enough the city itself is not really nice, and I wouldn’t recommend staying in the city itself. I’ll try to give some more suggestions at the end of this post. Nikko is located a little bit north of Tokyo: (I was thinking of adding link to real maps at google maps or something but the problem is that it is completely in Japanese and will not be really helpful for a lot of people)
We arrived in Nikko at the beginning of the evening, and it was raining a little bit, but here are some picture of our first impression:
The stone portal is called a Torii and can be found all over Japan. Please see link for more info.
The white papers, called Omikuji, are basically the Japanese fortune cookies. You can buy or get them at temples, and if they are good, you take them with you, else you hang them near the temple so the priest can pray for you. The Japanese really love them and they come in all forms and sizes. Some places you can also buy english ones if you also want to try you luck! (eg Asakusa in Tokyo)
Before entering a temple or buying your omikuji, you can often find some sort of ritual you have to perform. Here you had to walk around 3 times through the loop and clap your hands. It was funny to see the Japanese girls really going for it! A lot of them are for good fortune in love and romance as you will read later in Kyoto.
An old bridge connecting Nikko village with the temple complex, and can only be crossed during Shinto wedding ceremonies.
After our first short impression of Nikko we went to our first and perhaps even our best stay in Japan: Nikko Inn. I would highly recommend this place to anyone who wants to go to Nikko. It is a little bit outside of Nikko itself, but can be easily accessed by train. It is located in a beautiful rural environment and has a real euthentic feeling. The very friendly owners restored the houses with a lot of care and detail which you will see in the upcoming pictures:
The house itself is completely from wood and the has the well known paper walls. I have no idea how cold it might get there during the winter but everything was available to heat yourself. Most of our stays were in traditional Ryokans. They can be very expensive but don’t have to be. We paid as average around 4000 yen per person per night, which would be around 30 euros. You only have to search for them!
Toilets are indeed very special in Japan. Most of them have a remote! And the seat is warm when you go sit on it, and no, not from the previous person who set on it, but it has just been preheated. There are lots of options for the toilets such as fake flush sounds, and different kinds of sprays to wash yourselves after you are done. But to flush you need to know the kanjis of small and big!
| Ookii - 大 | Big |
| Chiisai - 小 | Small |
You can enjoy your breakfast with a view at the country side, while listening to an ipod provided by the owner with some very good european music. That’s right, no J-Pop yet!
Every ryokan normally has a televsion, so this one had one as well, but I think this must have been the smallest television I have seen in my life. But it was neatly placed inside the wall, fancy!
After breakfast the owner of the ryokan provided us with a map of the surroundings, so went for a small stroll through the Japanese rural environment. At first sight it might look the same as here, but if you have seen some Japanese movies you immediately recognize the typical Japanese things.
Old people working with their hands on a rice field while friendly waving at us when passing by. These small stone statues I think are called Dosojin, but I am not sure. Feel free to inform me if I am incorrect! You find them everywhere in Japan and sometimes they are even properly dressed!
The typical river banks and bamboo just growing a bit everywhere. It is actually kind of hard to find a real big bamboo forest, except the one just outside of Kyoto which we will see later.
After our short walk around our ryokan, we went back Nikko to take the bus up in the mountains for another small hike. The trees and vegetation were already showing there first autumn colors! Here are some pictures taken from the bus:
The lake is called chuzenjiko, and is part of the Nikko National Parks. We took a hike from the Ryuzu falls, through the Ozegahara, upto the yudaki falls. (the hike itself can be found in the book called Hiking in Japan). The colors in from pictures are from the actual colors which we have seen!
At different places along the road you could buy some ‘snacks’. In America this would probably be hot days and wursten in germany. All of the them were really strange and some were nice while others we really didn’t like. The balls on a stick were oke, but the sauce they put over it, was really not very tasty! To bad we didn’t try the fish on a stick though!
And the end of the hike there was another lake, with a small Onsen town next to it. We didn’t have enough time to check out the local onsens, because we had to catch our last bus back to Nikko, but I’m sure they would have felt good after a whole day walking!
After our hike we stayed at a small rundown ryokan inside Nikko itself. The place was ok, but nothing special. (location info coming soon). As dinner we had Okonomiyaki, which is basically some sort of Japanese pancake. Can be really tasty, but make sure they don’t put to much sauce on top of it. The best okonomiyaki we had was def. in Osaka!
That’s it for today, next update the actual Nikko Shrines and perhaps already some information on Nagano!
