Shriners

So with my couple of days off, I went to Nikko, World Heritage Site, home to several famous burial shrines and temples. Plus it's in the mountains and I figured it'd be cooler than Hitachi. Which turned out to be true, but not so much that it was really comfortable.

Had a nice chat in the evening with a couple of fellow Canucks at the hostel. Managed to drag myself out of bed at about 6 and head out while the light was nice. The temple/shrine grounds that were accessible (gates opened at 8) were really peaceful and calm. At 8, I headed to 7-11 and grabbed some stuff for breakfast. (Note: The egg (salad) sandwich I bought had no crust. And I thought that having no heels on the loaves of bread was crazy.) Shared it with a bunch of ants, and then headed back to the temples.

Paid my admission, and started exploring - to say that the Toshogu Shrine is a little extravagant is like saying the Pacific Ocean is somewhat large and wet. The amount of detail carved and crammed into every square centimetre of the place is phenomenal and almost overwhelming. You can only look at so many carvings before your eyes start to short circuit.

The famous carvings of the three wise monkeys and the "sleeping" cat (I think it's just squinting) were cool, but not as amazing as I'd been led to believe. Ieyasu Tokugawa's burial place was quite peaceful - probably because most of the big tour groups didn't want to pay the extra 520 yen just to climb the 200 (I only counted 199) steps up to it. I'm not sure what that says about those of us who did pay to climb.

The Buddhas in the Sanbutsudo (Three Buddha Hall) were cool, but taking photos was not allowed. It was neat to watch a monk ring the bell at noon - this ancient ceremony involved him carefully timing the ringing using his wristwatch... (Note that the buzzing in the background is cicadas. This everpresent sound in Japanese summer is amazingly loud. The first morning I heard it, I thought someone was using an electric saw to cut steel under my window.)



Rinno-Ji Noon Bell from matthew and Vimeo.


Next was the Tayuin-Byo Shrine, memorial to Iemitsu Tokugawa (Third Tokugawa Shogun), Ieyasu's(First Tokugawa Shogun) grandson. I can only assume that the Second Tokugawa Shogun was not very memorable.

After all those shrines (and large school groups on tour), I headed out along a stone pathway behind the shrines. This led up a big hill, to a small shrine at the top of a hill, and then down to a waterfall and a couple other small shrines.

Peaceful woods and stream, simple shrines and waterfall, contemplation walk.

I actually hadn't seen a decent waterfall in Japan so far, and I've really missed them. This one was quite nice, and the light was great. Spent some time here, and then wandered back down. By the time I got back into town, I found a place to eat some Soba noodle soup with the local specialty food, "Yuba" and then back to the hostel by around 6. Slept really well that night!

Got out around six again, and headed down to Kanmangafuchi Abyss, in the Daiya river. An emperor of the Taisho period composed the following haiku when walking in this area.

"Sleeves were wet by the spray at the river of Daiya. Cold moonlight night comes over the shore."

Enjoyed breakfast and picture taking by the river, had a nap, took more pictures, got hot, jumped in the river* to cool off, had another nap. And managed to not get caught changing by passers by on the trail above. Or else I didn't see them and they were too polite to say anything to me...

*For those concerned about the advisability of jumping into a fast flowing river, please note that I had looked before I leaped, and had several exit strategies. Plus I videoed myself jumping in, so that no one would have had to wonder why I'd drowned.

Also checked out the Bake-Jizo. Jizo are guardian statues, dressed in red toques and bibs. "Bake" means ghost in Japanese and legend has it that you always get a different number when you count the statues. There are supposedly between 70 and 100 statues. I didn't count.

Headed out around noon, missed the 1226 train by about 8 minutes, and caught the 1335. Stopped in Utsunomiya and had some of it's famous gyoza.

Got home and relaxed. Transferred the approximately 350 pictures to the computer, and started picking the ones for flickr.