Sunday, June 20, 2010

Nikko trip weekend! Day 1

Wow, this weekend was so jam-packed of cool things! Just FYI, there will be a LOT of pictures and I will have to make most of them small so this blog post can be a reasonable length. Please click on the pictures to make them bigger; there is so much detail in all of them that you can't really enjoy them unless you click. :)

Here is a view of outer Tokyo that we passed on our way north to Nikko! We took a nice charter bus with great A/C but no bathroom, haha. I sat with Sachi, and Erica, Ethan, and Robaato-san were right near me. We left the Sumitomo building in Chiba at 9am.

We saw these small shacks by the river and kept asking what they were. Turns out this is where homeless people live. :( The houses are always right by the river so they are very dangerous in the times of flooding aka right now (the rainy season).




Our first stop was Toshogu Shrine, the most exquisitely detailed shrine in all of Japan. Most Buddhist/Shinto shrines have a minimalist style but the designers of this shrine really went crazy with the intricate carvings and paintings. I had to give a short report about Nikko on the bus ride, so I know some more info: the buildings at the Toshogu Shrine (I believe in all there were once 55?) were built over the course of two years in the 1630s by 15,000 craftsmen using 2.5 million sheets of gold leaf. SO PRETTY. I'll let the photos do the talking for now:



Can you believe this detail? These types of carvings were everywhere on all of the buildings.









The entrance.








The famous three monkeys who hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil. They originated here! They were carved on the Sacred Stable.






The whole shrine was built in a gorgeous, very old cedar forest.







Shrines often have empty bottles of sake for the gods.







So, so pretty! Some people actually find it gaudy because there is so much color and detail on a place that the Japanese are used to seeing in a minimalist style.


After climbing a ton of steps, Ethan and I found another building that seemed to be wood covered in gold.






The view from the entrance looking towards the sacred stable and the place where you have to wash your hands and mouth before entering the shrine.





I love this part of the shrine. I believe it is a more Buddhist element that is not typically found at Shinto shrines in Japan.








There were a limited number of buildings we could go inside, so I went in all of them that I could. There were even more elaborate paintings and various altars. One building had a dragon painted on the ceiling and a monk clapped some wooden sticks together to create a sound effect like a dragon roaring. I love it when old cultures knew about physics without writing down the formulas.
You could buy omamori, or charms to bring happiness, luck, success, or other spiritual fortunes. There were some for successful studies, safety during traffic, and safe childbirth. I thought they were very beautiful.

Robaato-san indulged in fantasies of being a samurai fighting a battle in the temples, because apparently that occurred during some of the wars. We had to take our shoes off to enter any of the temples, so the floor was really clean. Often tatami mats were used; I have grown to love the smell of tatami mats! I seriously considered putting them in my room in Townhouse Apartments next year, but I think they would be hard to maintain.

After seeing Toshogu Shrine, the bus took us to the Kegon Falls, arguably one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Japan. It was too bad that it was raining because that obscured some of the mountains in the background.

The drive up to the falls was pretty scary because the mountain roads were very curvy and steep. In this particular area, the curves of the road were all designed to look like different hiragana characters, which form the basis of the Japanese alphabet. Experiencing roads shaped like あ、す、の、む、る、な and わ was quite scary!

Along the road, we saw monkeys! I didn't get a clear shot of them, but here they are. They know that tourists to the falls like to feed them, so they come running when they hear car engines. :)




After visiting the Kegon Falls, we drove to our hotel, "Hotel Sunshine Kinugawa" which was a traditional ryokan or Japanese-style hotel. Our floors were tatami mats! As soon as we got there, we marveled at how beautiful our room was and promptly made green tea. Our room had a separate bathtub, toilet, and sink area. There were two closets: one full of futon mats for a ton of people (maybe 6 total?) and the other with yukatas (like a cotton kimono), sashes, and bathroom necessities. The hotel provided everyone with sandals for navigating the hallways but not for outside or for in the room itself.

Here is a picture of our room the following morning, after the hotel staff had lain out our futons and we had slept in them. It was so comfortable for sleeping on the floor! Possibly my favorite thing about the room, other than how spacious and minimalist it was (while still providing for all of our needs), was the sliding panels on all of the walls. As you can see in this picture, at night we closed the panels covered with thin, translucent paper. The smaller room with the closet in it had four sliding panels, so you could really change the shape of our hotel room! I wish I could do that with my apartment.

After arriving, we went outside to see the bridge newly built across the ravine. It was really intimidating to cross, but I loved it. The view seen in this photo is what we saw when we looked outside our hotel room!


Here's the view from the bridge. It was rainy and foggy which created a cool effect.

Our dinner was AMAZING, in traditional Japanese style: sitting on the floor, barefoot, lots of tea, rice, tofu skin (a famous food from Nikko), miso soup, tuna and salmon sashimi, an entire crab, meat cooked right in front of us in a small pot with a flame under it, and more. It was so difficult to eat everything because there was so much! I left my camera in my room but plenty of other people got photos of it. I got annoyed at my classmates who critiqued and at times even insulted the amazing food during the meal and in the presence of our Japanese hosts and our teachers. It's pretty evident that some people never learned manners, but I'm trying not to let it get to me. It's really discouraging, though; I came all this way to have a good time and try to be as respectful as any Japanese person would be, and here are much louder Americans overshadowing my attempts. Oh well...

After dinner, Sachi, Erica, and I quickly went to the hotel onsen, or hot spring bath. We were giggling a lot about getting naked but we did. Our bath was female-only and the other was male-only, then they switched in the morning. The first step was to shower in a group shower to make sure we would be as clean as possible before getting into the bath. There was an indoor bath, which was slightly less hot than the outdoor bath. The indoor bath felt so good! But the outdoor bath was too hot for me and there were scary bugs like spiders and Japanese beetles with pincher claws on their heads near the bath. Soooo we went back in. It was only us three and a few older Japanese women. After about fifteen minutes, we got out, took cold showers, and tested out the products in the dressing room. I dried off and hung around naked for as long as possible because it was fun. :) There was a foot massager and back massager that I really liked. But then our other classmates came in and they all got naked and ran into the onsen. I was glad we had a more private bath.

After we dried off, we found Ethan and Robaato-san and went to the Japanese bar next to our hotel. We had sake, fruity drinks, and edamame. It was delightful! It was so funny to hear about the boys' experience in the onsen.


When we finally got into bed, I slept like a rock. :)
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2 comments:

  1. LUVVVVV the photos! They are fabullous - you could win a photography contest with the one of the gorge from the bridge. Wow!
    Your kimono is so cute, too!

    The pics of the buildings at the Shrine are really neat. Looks like it was an interesting day there. Lots of great history. The monkeys by the roadside are adorable. They don't attack people do they?

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  2. What exactly is Nikko?

    I LOVE INTENSE TEMPLES/SHRINES/ETC.

    What are tamati mats? Hahaha that was quickly answered.

    That bridge looks super intense. Eek.

    Your naked bath stories are pretty funny.

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