A Brief Visit of Chichibu

Many things happen in the town of Chichibu, in Saitama. It's a town that, although calm during most of the year, brims with festivals on multiple occasions, and has found its way to the public eye. The town is spread on a fairly wide area which it also shares with vast fields of flowers of different types - so many in fact that it doesn't take all that much luck at all to find at least one such field in full bloom. This, and its surrounding mountains and temples, have given Chichibu somewhat of a picturesque look, while removing none of its tranquility.

 I found myself making a short trip to Chichibu in order to have a look at the town, not quite sure what exactly to expect, and found myself walking amongst pilgrims. As it turns out, one of Chichibu's main selling points to visitors is the 34 temples scattered in the forest and mountain trails. The pilgrimage through all 34 temples has been done for nearly 700 years now, but though the pilgrims of Chichibu today don't necessarily do it for the sake of actual religion, it was easy for me to see the appeal of such a journey. Based on nothing but a picture on a pamphlet, I picked one of the 34 and decided I'd have a taste of it.

 Temple 28, the Hashidate-do, was only a short distance away from one of the train stations of the local line, and a very short hike up one of the mountains lead directly to it. Nestled amongst tall trees at the top of a staircase, tucked under one of the faces of the mountain behind it, the small, ancient temple was a small marvel in and of itself, and radiated with history and lore. Unlike most temples in Japan, it's said that as many as half of the temples in Chichibu are not attended by priests, and are instead cared and maintained for by locals. Happy about my discovery, I soon decided to move on.

  As I mentioned above, Chichibu's flower fields are also fairly well known. Unfortunately, I had just missed the blooming of the pink shibazakura (or moss phlox) fields, which is widely considered to be the most beautiful of the bunch. I did, however, catch the blooming of the buckwheat! Granted, buckwheat's not all that impressive of a flower at all, and I'm not even that big a fan of soba noodles, but it was still kind of neat to stand in a field of it. But a little color would have been nice.

 Altogether, though, I didn't spend so much time in Chichibu, and I'm quite aware that there are adventures to be had here if I went looking for them. There's rafting on the Arakawa river, and zip-lining from tree to tree a bus ride away from the center of the town, let alone the whole 100 kilometer pilgrimage across the 34 temples. But those will have to be for another day, perhaps.

Soft Camping in Okutama

Since coming to Japan, I haven't really gone proper camping. There was that one time I slept inside the concrete tube, but you know, none of the traditional stuff. More's the pity, because camping is kind of my thing. I was a boyscout for longer than five years, growing up. I'm a big fan of the great outdoors. It just so happened though that a few workmates of mine decided they would get together and throw a camping trip - mind you, none of the hardcore stuff, but just a simple get away with a rented shack, sleeping bags and campfire. So I got off work and hopped on a two-and-a-half hour train ride to Okutama.
 It turned out to be quite a relaxing get away. Though I arrived at 10 in the night, my coworkers, Akemi, Ty, and Bryan, met me at the station and we got to it pretty quickly. Our rented shack was just big enough to have the four of us lay out our sleeping bags, but we were sure to get some campfire time in before that, and even pull out some fireworks.

Bryan, Ty and I. By our mental age combined, we're 12.

 It had actually been a longer time than I remembered that I had hung out with a group of people who were actually in the same age range as I was.  Even though one of us had to make it back to Tokyo in the morning, we still had the following day off, and we figured we'd make the best of it.

 Though I had been to Okutama once before, coming again in Autumn was definitely a good choice if only for the colors. The region being so choke full of mountains as it is, hiking trails of all lengths and difficulties were easy to find, and gaining some height gave us a good view of the autumn leaves and the scenic countryside towns nestled deep in the valleys. It was hard to believe we were still in Tokyo prefecture, with the air so fresh and not a single busy street in sight.

By the time we came down, though, we were good for lunch, so we rented  poles and plunked ourselves down for an afternoon of fishing. If truth be told, I'm not the best angler out there, but it's not like we found ourselves any random creek. The fishing area was heavily controlled and just about anyone had a good chance of catching fish here. The deal was we had half the day to catch five fish each, after which we were free to do what we wanted with them. Catching fifteen fish between the three of us took us less than two hours in total. We then brought them up and had them cooked on skewers.

Our expedition ended with a dip at a hot spring, and we finally the long train ride back to Tokyo. It was just enough to fill the day, but all in all, it just left me craving for some good old fashioned hard camping. The kind with tents and bears and peeing in bushes. That'll come another time, hopefully.

Kayaking in Okutama

I recently made the discovery of an outdoor activity club that makes frequent excursions to places around Tokyo. With hiking aside, I guess it's been a while since I've done any outdoor type of sport, and so I took the chance the moment I saw it, made a bank transfer, and showed up to one of the group's meetings in a remote corner of Tokyo prefecture named Okutama, which is pretty much the farthest place you can go from the heart of the city while still being considered in Tokyo.
 Okutama is untouched by the sprawl of the metropolis, though, and is a little bit more than an hour from Shinjuku by train. It's a pocket, or rather, a chain of pockets of civilization nestled between green mountains, with valleys and rivers and waterfalls crisscrossing every which way. Like so many places outside of the cities of Japan, people here live off the land.

 As it turned out, the day was wet and miserable. After five full scorching sunny days, a typhoon swept through Japan and pissed rain down on me on the very day of my outing. I wasn't too thrilled at first, but it turned out to be quite alright in the end - because kayaking, as the organizer said, gets you wet all the same.

 I hadn't kayaked in 6 years! The last time I went was in the Laurentides, in the open sea surrounded by whales, penguins and seals and a sky full of boobies (the bird species named booby, to be sure, though the other type would've been interesting too.) Kayaking brought back good memories, but I wondered if I remembered anything about how to row at all.
 Turns out I did! Fun fun fun.
Our group rowed up the misty canals of Okutama, against quite a bit of current brought on, no doubt, by the rain. Though many of my fellow rowers were spiraling uncontrollably, I managed quite alright, if I were to be my own judge!
 With the mist sitting right on top of the river, the whole setting had some magic to it. We were, in fact, down in a valley, with high cliff sides on either side and the one eventual wood bridge looming high overhead. It felt like the set of an Indiana Jones adventure. Even though a river in the countryside hardly compares to the Atlantic Ocean, kayaking in Okutama was very fulfilling in its own right, and I probably could've spent the day exploring the misty green valley if I were given the choice.

 Eventually I was even allowed to jump off one of the cliffs and into the water, which was actually quite deep. I did a front flip right in, forgetting I was wearing a life vest. I can tell you with certainty the life vests work, now.
 After a few hours, we made our way back and pulled the kayaks out of the water, and that was pretty much that. But since I made the discovery of the group, there's great opportunity to go at it as often as I care to spend the money for, and try lots of new outdoorsy things!

Izu Oshima

After a 6 hour overnight boat ride aboard the SS Salvia, I landed upon the largest of the Izu islands, Oshima. Being that the ferry landed at 5 in the morning, and the seats didn't allow for the best comfort, I found myself a little dazed, stumbling out of the ship with a hundred or so other passengers in a zombie-like fashion. 

There were rumors a typhoon was going to hit this side of the country, and looking at the horizon it appeared I'd be in for a bit of that. I took a bus to the main settlement in the northern part of the island, dumped my bag at the hotel, and, unable to actually check-in into my room, strolled into a town which had to wake up itself. Palm trees line the streets of an aging town with few of the conveniences of the city, and I was actually impressed there were no McDonalds' in sight.

 And man, I thought, Oshima is pretty damn awesome already.

The island itself has little in terms of local population. Most of the people walking around are tourists from Tokyo or Kanagawa. I guess the large cat population (and the incredibly large spider population) kind of make up for that. It's a hell of an escape, and despite there being quite a few tourists, I was a little amazed that there weren't more. Oshima also happens to be the closest island to the main landmass. Fun fact: all the Izu islands have a volcano in their middle! That's how they came to exist.
As it turned out, that typhoon didn't come after all. I was treated to a great big sun that was overly enthusiastic about scorching the shit out of my skin (which it did.) There's actually quite a bit to be seen in Oshima, and had I had the time, I'd have been glad to spend an extra day on the island.

That was fun, if quite dangerous!

 It's easy to find a whole damn beach to yourself and just jump into the ocean without having to share a single grain of sand - a pleasure you won't find in Tokyo. The one I stumbled upon actually had enormous waves the likes of which I hadn't seen, which kind of goes on par with the island's popularity with surfers.

Quite happy no one came behind me and ran over my tripod.

 Actually, the waves were so viciously strong that they literally sucked me in and flipped me over, and I kind of gave up on going deeper than my waist for fear I'd get smashed on a rock. Adventure ahoy!

 If I have to recommend one thing to anyone interested in traveling to Oshima, it's renting a bicycle. Pay that 20$ and get one for the day. It's definitely worth it even if only for the Sunset Palm Tree Line, which takes you around the northern shoreline and offers a wonderful view over the course of a few kilometers. If it hadn't occurred to you before then that you were on a tropical island in the middle of the ocean, it will once you do. You'll end up in the port town once you're done and you can treat yourself to a slushie in that one shop. You'll know which one. There's only one.

They don't do it like this in the city!

On the note of food, don't expect to find anything other than more or less traditional Japanese meals here. Actually, during lunch and dinner each restaurant I stumbled into was about to close or stop offering meals, but opted to give me the choice of a limited menu instead. Island restaurant tactics? Maybe. I was told for lunch there was only ramen available, and wasn't expecting much, but this awesome seafood feast came up and took me aback.


Had I had the extra day, I would've probably tried to visit the south side of the island, which is apparently quite scenic, as well as the volcano itself, which is rumored to have a really cool crater on top, but there's only so much your own body will let you do after you've been thrown out of a ship at 5 in the morning. As an afterthought, there's lots to see in the other Izu islands as well, and Oshima was just such an amazing opener to a side of Japan I had yet to experience.

A Break From the City

Man my camera doesn't do to good here. Maxine's grown!

It was Nozomi's birthday! Who, you say?
 Well Nozomi's Ken's step-sister. You might've seen her on the blog a few times. Here, and here and here, notably.
 We got festive and drove down to Chiba prefecture, where Erika has moved to in order to settle down with her boyfriend (who happens to be the father of her child, but this is now old news!) An hour's drive from Tokyo, Chiba is a neighboring region a little removed from the city lights. It's spacious. People in Chiba have space. Something I haven't seen in a while.

Erika and Maxine getting ready to dip their feet.

The ladies! Nozomi, Erika, and Zara, Ken's girlfriend.

After some extensive grocery shopping in a super-duper market with lanes four-Seans-wide, we brought the car down a little deeper into the prefecture and settled by the river for a barbecue. It was all kinds of lovely to be able to take it easy with friends in somewhat of a secluded area, away from all the noise. I admit I got a little engrossed in catching tadpoles and frogs and shrimp and fish and whatnot, but it was bit of an escape I needed, and I sure was glad to be there. I hadn't swam since my brother was here last. Maybe I'll forget how.
It was also nice to see Maxine again, who I haven't visited for the past six months or so. She can talk now, so I had to struggle to keep my swearing in check. I hope I did alright.
On a side note, Chiba prefecture kind of strikes me as scenic and nice, as opposed to Tokyo's other neighbor Saitama, which in comparison kind of seems bland and lacking in identity (sorry Saitama people! I know some of you read!) Rent being several times cheaper, a lot of people choose to commute from neighboring prefectures on a daily basis to get to work. I guess it's a considerable trade-off seeing as in you can actually get a house. With a yard.
 All in all, it was a good time, and definitely good to catch up with some friends.

Behind the Mountains: Shirakawago

We had parted with Ken, who had gone to visit a friend in nearby Nagoya on the previous day. After having spent the night in an (unexpectedly) expensive inn, our driver woke up hungover. With one last vigorous push, he drove us to a valley behind the mountains, and left the car in a clearing by a brook where the water ran crystal blue, and fell asleep, leaving Dario and I on our own to explore the World Heritage Site of Shirakawago.

The villages of Shirakawago bear incredible visible historical heritage, from the structure of the tall thatch-roofed houses to the scattered agricultural fields squeezed even between said houses. Villagers here used to make their trade with the outside world by farming the base elements that were necessary in the creation of gunpowder and paper. In these lands were snowfall still comes thick and heavy through the colder months, people made a simple and honest living.

This picture by Dario.

Now that they're considered by UNESCO to be World Heritage, these villages draw a lot of their livelihood from tourism. Many of the farm houses have re-established themselves as inns, allowing visitors an imaginably great opportunity to live as one of the villagers and let the life of the countryside breathe through them in full. Dario had previously been through Shirakawago and done just that, barely half a year ago. In his own words, the place was worth returning to every season of the year. That aside, a lot of the farmhouses have also turned into museums. Once again, history buffs could really have a field day, here.

Shirakawago was the last of our sightseeing stops before we headed back to Tokyo, but I'll be back there, some day, I'm sure.

On the Road to Takayama

My three musketeers by my side, we had set off to Takayama with the goal of arriving on time for the Sanno Festival, renown throughout Japan - a three-day trip I've only just now gotten back from. The road to Takayama itself, though, was worthy of notice, as we drove through the countryside and up and around mountains to get to our destination. We managed to make quite a number of stops along the way, too, and here are some of them. No doubt each of these would've been worthy of a smaller trip just for themselves.

 Matsumoto
 Our first stop, a little more than halfway to Takayama already, was Matsumoto. Although the small town bares little in terms of bustling city life, it does have the Matsumoto Castle - one of the few in Japan to have remained in such an intact state. Over 400 years old, the castle has resisted the wear and tear of time and still remains as majestic as ever. It has a moat, with koi fish, and, holy shit, say it with me, swans. There are god damn swans in the moat. Wow.

Kiso Valley
 Knowing full well that our chances of finding a place to stay within Takayama would be fairly slim, we decided to spend the night in the Kiso valley, tucked in between the area's numerous mountains. Thanks to Ken, we managed to find a cheap bed that also provided us a hot bath and breakfast on top of that. 
 The Kiso valley, though, is also home to a number of very old post-towns, the likes of which are often seen in samurai movies. The most notable post-town in the valley is that of Tsumago, which we paid a quick visit to, and found rather silent and empty, despite it barely being 7:00 in the evening yet. Still, Tsumago had a very particular and dated feel to it, and left me wondering what its few streets would have been like during the day.

The Japan Alps
Although the mountain paths we took along our drive did not take us very high up the mountains, we did get to enjoy a lot of the mountain scenery, complete with pristine rivers and lakes. Not too far in the distance were white cap mountains, and so too were there too many ski resorts to count, still white with snow but not operating at this time of the year. Takayama city itself lies nested within these alps.

Nikko - Sunlight City

Before my former roommate Julien "Shank" Einschenk left Japan, he went on a pilgrimage of sorts to hit all the most beautiful historical sites that the country had to offer. It was then that I had first heard of the city of Nikko. Shank, he wasn't really the talkative type, but you could almost see the glimmer in his eye when he spoke of the city in the mountains.
 And now I know for myself that Shank was right.

 

It had been a while that I had discussed going to the city with Mori, who has been working hard to save the money needed to travel the world once more. Ken, always willing to set out for new places, was quick to join along, and our waltz was complete, our destination, set. We headed north to the mountainous prefecture of Tochigi and arrived two hours later in the much colder, and quieter, city of Nikko.

I have to tell you right off the bat that if you expect to eat anything in Nikko other than yuba (that's ゆば in Japanese) then you're fucked. The tourism overlords of Nikko seem to take great pride in the local speciality dish that is yuba and will stop at nothing to cover the city in restaurants and billboards with yuba upon every corner. "The hell's yuba?" you might ask. Well, according to wikipedia, it's tofu skin. Pretty simple, I think, but local restaurants seem to take delight in preparing it in many different ways. Yuba's okay, I guess. It's not a particularly rich taste. But for such a statement I may get a stone thrown at me by the very people who use it for the preparation of lavish dishes, dessert, and even ice cream in Nikko.

 But it's not the nature (nor the food culture) that makes Nikko's beauty, although it certainly does contribute into it. In the religion of Shinto, Nikko is effectively the birthplace of a God. A Shogun, one of the de-facto rulers of Japan, died in this place, and was there after deified and given a grave fitting for that of a God. If Nikko was any holier than it it is, then surely I would've burst into ashes on the spot. And in no place is this more apparent than that very grave: the Nikko Tosho-gu.
It would take a real philistine to not appreciate the sheer enormity of the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, from the mere path leading towards it to the detail in every relief, every idol and statue. A tremendous amount of gold was used here not only in reverence of the shogun-turned-God, but to show the whole world a demonstration of the wealth and power of Japan. 2 million sheets of gold leaf were expended in the creation of this mausoleum - that's 2.4 hectares of god damn gold leaf. On top of that, it took 15000 artists and craftsmen from all over Japan to bring the mausoleum to its completion in the 17th century. I hope they fed them more than just yuba.
 It's in Nikko Tosho-gu that one can fully appreciate icons famous in Japan's mythology - take for instance the fresco depicting the Three Wise Monkeys, Mizaru who sees no evil, Kikazaru, who hears no evil, and Iwazaru who speaks no evil. Yeah, this is the origin of that.
 Five of Japan's national treasures are located within the territory occupied by the Nikko Tosho-gu.
 Without exaggeration, I feel like one could easily spend half of a whole day to appreciate all there is to see within the grounds of the mausoleum, but it took Ken and Mori and I the better part of an hour and a half or so. In all frankness, though, it takes more than mere pictures and words to convey the majesty of Nikko Tosho-gu. It's world class beauty, maybe even more so than anything else I've seen in Japan.





Frankly, there's a lot more to see in Nikko than we managed to get ourselves to do. From what I hear, a number of beautiful gardens and other temples and shrines adorn the city, including that of the shogun's grandson, even, but what are those when compared to the birthplace of a Shinto God? Although we did visit the imperial villa, it turned out to be a little underwhelming, I felt (but it is a big-ass house.) And so, our journey to Nikko ended with the three of us going into one of Nikko's hot springs, after which we took the train back to Tokyo. (And then we sang karaoke!)

 Here's a photo-roll, because there was no way I could fit all the pretty sights into this one blog post!

Gunma, and the Country Side

The morning following Canti's departure from Tokyo, Ken and I were already on our feet and ready for our next escapade out of the big city. The idea was to make it to the national park of Ose, reputed to be one of the nicest national parks in the Kanto region of Japan.
Due to some shoddy planning on our behalves, we never quite made it to Ose, and instead wound up in the country side of Gunma prefecture, unwilling to pay an unexpected extra sum to take the bus to the national park. The revelation was bitter, but when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Similarly, when life gives you an infected wound, you squeeze the pus out of it. So we tried to make the best of our situation, and perhaps we succeeded to some degree.
The three hour train ride we took brought us to a town named Numata - which literally translates to "swamp field." Once there, it wasn't long before we realized there wasn't much to be done. Numata's population seemed to be at a rapid decrease. A quick trip to what was supposed to be the local shopping mall proved to be nothing but the carcass of. The only shop in the whole mall that seemed to be able to keep business was the 100¥ store - the "dollar shop", as you would say back home. It seemed hard to keep a business running. Knowing we would find little fun in the actual mall itself, we decided we'd be the source of our own enjoyment in Numata, so we took a wheelchair to the shopping mall's roof and played the fools (much to the dismay of a high school couple trying to have a romantic moment), knowing the mall didn't have the money to afford security.

Sometimes the best fun is senseless fun.

The hotel we stayed in that night was probably some kind of pension for old people at one point or another. It smelled odd and the wallpaper was peeling off, but we had cable television and beds to sleep on, and that was all we needed.
 The next day we ventured out of the town and into the actual country side, hoping to indulge in something more typical of the rural life.

 We enjoyed picking some grapes (although, with Japanese fruit being so expensive, we could only pick so much), took a dip in a small bathhouse run by elderly country-folk, and altogether just immersed in the skyscraper-less landscape of the Gunma outback. But, city-people as we are, it wasn't long before we had run out of places to go and things to see, and Tokyo beckoned us back with its glitzy lights (and its pretty girls which could be counted with more than just the fingers in one hand.)