A weekend without sakura

Last year this time, found Rhee and me in shorts and t-shirts basking in the sun and tossing around sakura pedals. This year, eventually at least, the sakura did come out but the weather has been gloomy and rather cold in contrast to the clear skyed springs Japan often brags about. So my plans for a month of sakura were a tiny bit derailed. Sheena had planned this amazing weekend for us in Nagano that would involve nothing but friends and sakura, and while it was still a lovely weekend, thanks to the friends, the sakura failed to realize that they too had been invited...

We got up super early and caught a train to Tokyo where we met up with a bus and went north through Saitama and Gunma to Nagano. Our first stop was the ruins of Tatsuoka Castle. It was very rainy and a bit cold so no pictures but it had a neat aspect that would have been impossible to capture with a picture unless I was a bird anyways: it is one of only two fortresses to be built in the shape of a star. Next was the ruins of Komoro castle which had it been in full bloom would have been lovely. The old fortified walls framed the little park beautifully and in the centre was a neat little shrine with the prettiest koi pond!

 

Ueda castle was the highlight of my day because it was the main keep of the Sanada clan. A family of samurai that lived during Takeda Shingen's time that was famous for Sanada Yukimura, a samurai known to possibly have been the best swordsman of his time! Now just ruins with a gate and a small guard tower, it was once a small castle that twice fended off armies the outnumbered them, including the son of the warlord who would eventually unify Japan. Context, that makes them pretty strong and awesome! Anyways, the rain was slowly dying off and as I leaped from the bus I found one sad little blossom doing it's best. The sad things was all the blossoms were so close to blooming... they just needed one good sunny day and they'd be there... But I amused myself by eating chicken karage with Chelsea and Sheena and posing with a guy dressed up as Sanada Yukimura and going to the little shrine dedicated to the family. After our stop was a little town where we warmed up with coffee and then dinner which was shabu shabu this delicious pork hot pot that we prepared ourselves while sharing a few bottles of beer!

 

The evening's entertainment was a reconstruction of Takada castle, in Niigata prefecture. at night where had there been cherry blossoms it would have been all lit up in pink. I must give it some credit, for even with out my sakura, the castle was gorgeous and the grounds pleasant for the evening had taken on a warmth that had been lacking in the day. We walked around the castle grounds a bit and then settled next to a long red bridge where I took a few long exposure photos I was quite happy with. The atmosphere was the best of the day there!

We spent the night at this hotel in the mountains where there was still snow and barely squeezed in a bath before, exhausted, we fell right to sleep. The next morning the sun was shining where we were up north in Nagano and we were able to see what Zenkoji temple looked like in Spring as previously we were there when it snowed. It was very beautiful!

Traveling back home south the weather turned on us and it clouded over again. At the failure of finding any sakura in the designated places our tour guide felt sorry for us and took us quite out of the way in order to find some. We did eventually in Iida. There the sakura was very beautiful and we saw two very old trees that were something like 300 years old. It was nice to have that bring an end to our trip.

 

We did stop at one more place, Takato castle, that was so vacant of  sakura that I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures so we left it at that and hoped to return when it was in bloom as it wasn't that far from home. The way home was a bit agonizing for we would be driving right by my house with no hope at stopping until we cleverly convinced the tour guide to let us off near a station where we could travel home just a few stops. Thank the gods or else we would have had to track three hours just to return to where we had come from. The tour guide was so kind and helpful! All in all it was a nice weekend with Sheena, Kevin and Chelsea but there are prayers for sakura in my mind for future trips!