And so I'm back from a 10-day trip to Japan, which is a really long time away from sunny Singapore. Kinda missed the food here heheh. We went on a tour of northen Honshu, including Nikko, Akita, Sendai, Morioka and Aomori, before going free & easy in Tokyo for 5 days.
The main motive actually was to see the cherry blossoms, but by the time we got to Tokyo most of the sakura trees had shed their petals, while those in the northern areas were still sleeping. Suay man. Anyway, after touching down in Narita airport on Thursday, we met up with the guide and the rest of the group (only 11 people from 3 families including us) and headed off to the hotel to rest.
I caught this in Narita on the first night
On the way to the hotel I saw this Pachinko shop with persuasive catchlines
Kinda subtle eh? The last one's "No pain, no gain". We didn't do much that first night except to have a dinner of deliciously piping hot ramen on a chilly night and explored the small town. There wasn't much life except a few convenience stores and salarymen making their way home.
Their egg yolks are always orangy in colour which I don't know why. Tastes kinda sweet too. Maybe the chickens there get to eat sushi? :/
The next morning we headed off towards Nikko. On the way the bus stopped at a highway pit stop (bladders weren't built to withstand 3 hour journeys) and I found THIS
Marimokkori! Its a new fad in Japan, lots of keychains and stuffed toys of this rather perverted looking green guy. Refer here Marimokkori for more information.
Anyway after arriving in Nikko we had a hotpot lunch before we headed off to see the shrines and temples in Nikko. I never knew the difference between a shrine and a temple - maybe categorised by the religion?
That is a tree bearing paper slips telling your fortune, much like the kind you find in fortune cookies. The Japanese tie slips that foretell bad luck onto trees in the hope that the bad luck goes away. I hope I didn't incur their luck by taking such a close up photo.
Took a long trek through a pine forest where the trees were damn tall. Apparently they cut down the dead trees and use their trunks to construct the temple pillars.
Finally reached the main gates, or torii, of the temple grounds.
This headstone is supposed to protect the families that walk into the temple grounds. I think the 3 spades emblem symbolises one of the 3 powerful shoguns that ruled Japan during the edo period. I remember seeing a lot of those on the hilts of samurai swords and the charms that can be bought from the temple.
These are wooden blocks where you write your wishes onto and then hang it up. I saw wishes written in numerous languages including arabic, tamil, french, korean, chinese and german. Funnily enough, most of the Japanese ones wished for success in exams and love, while the rest wished for general health and happiness.
I dunno what these are for, but they look really nice in this shot XD. I think its some kind of fortune telling thing also, like the type we chinese shake and see the one that drops.
Most of the shrines in the compound didn't allow photographs so I don't have much internal shots. This one is famous though - the 3 monkeys!
Saw a priestess running around the grounds. The clothes she wore reminded me of Motoko from Love Hina and Kikyo from Inuyasha.
Thereafter we visited this lake and a nearby waterfall which looked really majestic, it fell into this valley of sorts which was probably created by the waterfall itself. On the way up the mountains to reach the waterfall the bus we were in had to wind through 20 sharp corners, and 28 corners to get back down. Really tough on the driver.
Before the end of the day we went to an Edo Wonderland, similar to another theme park in Hokkaido. Lots of old houses, with samurai and geishas walking around. We went for this ninja show in which we didn't understand anything, and a comedy performance.
The stars of the ninja show:
This was a water show, in which water sprouted out from every single thing you could find on stage, including the fans and flowers the performers were holding. I suspect hidden water tubes inside those voluminous kimonos.
This guy is a mask switcher, he switched masks in a split second. Was quite shocked when he did it haha.
And finally a row of samurai bidding farewell to everyone who leaves the park. Every single person!
That night at the onsen hotel we wore yukatas to a buffet dinner. We were joined by a huge group of Japanese obasans and ojisans, together with another huge group of university students on an orientation trip. Their orientation is to visit an onsen!?!?! Good life man.
And that concludes the first day. Geez that took up the entire blog space.
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