A Tochigi Day Trip - Part 1 - Utsunomiya

Utsunomiya - the Nashville of Japan, located in Tochigi prefecture, an hour and a half away by train. Yes, it's a modern city, but really, no one would go out of their way to visit it. It kind of tries hard to be something and puts upon a pedestal what simple areas of cultural significance it does have, no matter how minimal or insignificant. And even so it doesn't have all that much. If anything, it suffers from its prestigious neighbor, Nikko, which by anyone's standards is a lot more interesting. It's no wonder travel guides often skip Utsunomiya.

 But there are hidden nuggets of awesome to be found here, if you chance to look around! And so, the Adventure Friends of the day, Millo, Agha, Ken and I, tasked ourselves with the seemingly daunting mission of making a good day trip out of Utsunomiya and its surroundings.
Step 1? Rent a bicycle. You wouldn't believe how incredibly cheap it is to rent a bicycle for a whole day. The following is no typo. It's 100¥. There are no zeroes missing there. You can even return the bikes as late as 9PM. It's the perfect way to go out and about a decent sized city with interesting things few and far apart. With a price like that, cabs, buses and the subway just don't compare. We had no trouble getting ours after asking at the information kiosk at the JR station from which we had arrived. It only took a few moments for us to be upon our trusty new steeds, off to explore the city.

A chart of gyoza along with our lunch.

Utsunomiya is actually the capital of gyoza, or Japanese dumplings (though no one really calls them that.) There's no real getting around that, so a gyoza lunch was the first thing we got off our list. Well, we tried to see how deep the rabbit hole went by going into a food court where every shop specialized in gyoza. And we found it to be pretty god damn deep. Every variety of gyoza you could possibly imagine could be found in that one spot - and most likely a few you could not possibly imagine were as well. Tea-flavored, anyone? Shrimp? Or yuzu - you know, that sour citrus that only grows in East Asia? No? Didn't think so. Maybe Utsunomiya deserves its name as gyoza capital after all.

After lunch, we headed right downtown to the Futaarayama Shrine. Sure, it's no Meiji-Jingu, but the shrine is built on quite an attractive hill, almost right in the center of the city. It's hard to stand from the street level, look up at the shrine past its large torii gate, and not think it beautiful. We climbed the steps and paid brief visit to the shrine grounds, but found it to be nothing exceptional. Still, it's not without its charm, and some areas off the side of the central building itself were surrounded by beautiful trees, creating quite a nice and cozy little atmosphere. Still, the shrine and its surroundings do look the best from a little distance away, I thought.

 We hopped back on our bikes and made our way to the Utsunomiya Castle Ruins next. Here's what you should know about the Utsunomiya Castle Ruins: skip 'em. Really, there's little more than a wall and two turrets left. Again, these, too, look better from afar, but that's not even saying much. I couldn't figure out a way to even take a picture of the ruins that could make anyone kind of give a damn, and that's something I don't ever really recall saying before. So never mind them.

 Though it may not have seemed much, at this point we had already decided we had seen what we needed to see of Utsunomiya. Gasp! But wasn't this supposed to be a day trip? Fret not - our bicycles took us next to a place beyond the city borders. A place which was, I would say, exponentially more interesting. Thirty minutes and nine kilometers away, we came upon the second part of our day trip - the provincial town of Oya, and a small, very different adventure in and of itself.