The last days with Nikki

After the golden week adventures that only left a few days left to hang out with Nikki in Japan. While she was here she got the good/bad news that her dad got an awesome new job with Boeing but this meant this was her last trip We tried to pack it full of what we could.

One day we went to my favourite shrine in Fujiyoshida. The one with the horses, koi pond and little red bridge and there was this absolutely beautiful wisteria in bloom. We hit it at the perfect time of day so the sun was streaming through the trees and the day finally felt warm and I sat on the little red bridge and fed the fish. it was wonderful.

Another time we went to Kawaguchiko to this adorable cafe that featured Dayan the cat. Dayan is a character from a cute book series called Wachifield designed by a talented Japanese artist and absolutely everything there was Dayan themed! We loved it sooooo much.

On the last day we celebrated with samurai and flower. I being the samurai and the famous Fujizakura being the flowers. I've been doing iaido for about eight months now and it was time for my first testing. I'd been working super hard and was reward by a trip to the training centre in Kofu where I'd seen Kevin test for his brown belt in judo. Now it was my turn. In Japan they call it ikyu though which means I'm the step below black belt. So Kato sensei, my lovely iaido teacher helped me out and talked me through my nerves until I was ready and then I went to kick butt and passed!

After we went with Kevin to Saizeriya to celebrate with Japanese Italian food and finally headed home to see the flower. Unfortunately it had clouded over a bit so we couldn't see Fuji but the flowers were still pretty awesome. Especially as the past two springs I've been in Japan the flowers didn't have a chance to bloom because of crazy weather and earthquakes and stuff. In English they're called pink moss because they grow close to the earth so from above it looks like grass of pinks. it was very beautiful and smelled fantastic.

Then it was home for dinner, a very brief sleep and I drove Nikki to the train station so she could head to the airport. I'll leave it at that as I'm horrible with good byes...

Golden week to the south

For the second half of golden week, which was really more of a golden weekend with two long weekends in a row... we headed south! Oh but first, here's a cool picture of Mt. Fuji with umbrella clouds on my commute to Asumi.

It was a short week: only three days, so it hardly felt like I'd worked at all before it was the weekend again. On Friday, in the warmth and the sun I donned on a dress and we went for a nice little walk around the Oshino Village in Yamanakako. The stream was really pretty with hints of sakura in the trees and at the eight little ponds we fed fish and ate peach ice cream. It was kinda crowded with tourists flocking the country side from Tokyo for the weekend.

Not yet even noon we headed south and down out of the mountains to Gotenba famous for only two things really: beer and the premium outlet mall. SInce it wasn't the beer I was after we went shopping. The mall has a Nikon store and I was hoping to find a cheap camera to replace mine but they weren't any better priced and I can find one online for cheaper. But still it's an outdoor mall and set up like a European shopping centre so it was nice just to stroll about and fancy I was actually preparing to purchase that $1500 top at Dolce and Gabanna. In the end I did splurge on a really nice knew purse and a couple of shirts. Nikki got a beautiful purple Anna Sui wallet that I want to steal! With our treasures we sat down for lunch and then headed home.

Saturday was rather uneventful. A sleep in then off to Otsuki for iaido practice. Nikki says I look like I know what I'm doing but I think it's just cause seeing anyone do iaido for the first time is super cool lol. Practised really hard for my test next weekend. Hope it goes well... and then we went out for curry.

Sunday we headed for the beach! The weather was fabulous and the traffic not as bad as it could have been. Along the way we stopped so I could show Nikki the magic of strawberry daifuku and then we headed down the peninsula to Shirahama. I've been to some nice beaches in Japan but this is by far the best with its white sand, blue waters, cliffs to climb on, brilliant torii over looking the sea and the cute little shrine with a red bridge. We explored for well over two hours, frolicking in the surf, collecting shells and watching the surfers.

 

Having been no further than Shirahama in Shimoda ever, I decided to see what the rest of the town had to offer. There was an aquarium for Nikki where we saw some cool and terrifying fish, very majestic emperor penguins that can't help but perpetually look like they're holding some sort of court and a girl surfing on a dolphin. That was awesome! She was very talented and the dolphins were super lucky as the aquarium floated on the ocean and their tank was actually the harbour.

After the aquarium we walked back to where I'd seen this pretty little canal lined with old fashion brick buildings and willow trees. It turns out it was Perry Road. As in Commodore Matthew Perry from America who in the mid 1800s forced Japan to end it's policy of isolation. At the end of the road, which was also lined with bridges and cobblestoned, there was a temple talked into the hillside where he and companions stayed while awaiting news from the shogun about their alliance.

Pretty much the rest of the day was spent driving the coastline up to our ryokan to the east in Ito City. The ryokan was a lovely historic building on the river with a newly renovated interior so it was clean and comfortable. Our room overlooked the water with this awesome window sill that you could sit on and watch the river. It had a nostalgic atmosphere and I loved it. The room smelled of fresh tatami and the bath was marble and hot. The only problem was the noise but somehow I managed to get a good night sleep. In the morning we went to McDonalds to grab breakfast to eat on the beach!

We began the trek home after breakfast along the coast. We stopped at a pretty lame castle overlooking the ocean which I had seen from the shinkansen in February, but it didn't live up to my expectations which rarely happens in Japan. So we poked around there a bit and then turned north and quite abruptly began to climb from sea level and up into the mountains to Hakone. After getting lost several times, as I was approaching it from the south rather than the north like last time, we made it. When last I was here with Rhee it was the first of the chilly days and we had the most magnificent view of Mt. Fuji, the lake and the famous floating torii gate. With Nikki and I we could see Fuji but the heat made it hazy so we settled for a walk along the lake, a visit to the shrine and went to the old check point from the Tokaido road in the Edo era. Between the 17th and 19th centuries when one wanted to travel, he or she had to have permission from the shogunate, if not that they would never make it through checkpoints like this one set up to keep track of the coming and going of samurai, merchants and pilgrims. Because wives and children were held hostage, the official were particularly suspicious of women travelers but we got through okay lol.

 

And then we went home, traversing the mountains roads, combating bad drivers and finally finding some food along the way until we settled in on a Monday evening to rest from the busy yet awesome weekend!

Golden week to the north

It was late on a Thursaday night when I drove from Fujiyoshida to Tokyo. Really it's only about 100 kilometres but it took 4 hours! Of course this was because I took the local roads but whatever. So why was I in Tokyo at 11 on a school night? I was picking up Nikki for her last visit to see me in Japan. This is partly because I'm still not sure when I'm going home and partly because her Dad got a new (better) job so know more free flights for her. Still, it's been pretty awesome while it lasted. I'm pretty lucky to have a best friend that could travel to Asia pretty much whenever she felt like it. So I picked her up (she brought Tim Hortons!!!) and whisked her off to the mountains where we fell asleep at 2am and I had to be up for 7am... Needless to say Friday was an exhausting day.

Saturday was the first of golden week so I'd booked a night in a ryokan in Nagano with an onsen. There wasn't much of a plan really. I knew I wanted to revisit Ueda castle when I wasn't miserable and wet and perhaps find the famous battleground of Takeda SHhngen and Uesugi Kenshin but the rest we left up to fate. It was a nice day which made for a nice drive and we pulled off as often as we liked and wherever. This resulted in a rest stop where hundreds of koinoburi were being flown for Children's day, a revisit to the star shaped fort built at the end of the samurai era which was just past peak sakura but still beautiful (definitely more so than the infamous 'sakura without sakura' trip of 2012) and then to Ueda-jo. Ueda-jo is awesome for sakura, an original gate and guard towers and Sanada Yukimura! He is only the coolest samurai ever. (Okay besides Takeda Shingen, but they were on the same side, and Date Masamune.) He was also considered to be one of the best swordsmen of his time. Not only did he have ten ninja that fought personally for him but him and his father held off an enemy siege that was something like 10 times their numbers and prevented them from getting to a huge battle down south to help. The Tokugawa army thought they'd just breeze through Ueda and take them down on their way to war but Yukimura wouldn't have it and defended his castle. He would eventually go on to fight more battles and died fighting in one of the last true battles of the samurai era. By doing so he became a legend.

 

 

 

After the castle we went for dinner at Saizeriya, and bought cake and umeshu for the ryokan. I wish we'd arrived earlier to the ryokan because it was this beautiful little inn situated in a tiny onsen valley. The owner was a really nice gaijin who brought us information about the town and home-made oatmeal raisin cookies that were chewy! So good! After that it was pretty much bath, cake plum wine and bed.

I discovered the next morning that the sky was again magnificently blue, as viewed through the window that overlooked a little koi pond and stone lanterns. The night before the owner had told us about a mountain for on the hill overlooking the town and I was eager to get up there. In the end it was an awesome find as I hadn't found anything quite like it before in my travels. It wasn't much really, just a few out buildings and a fence but with clear skies, and awesome view and a little imagination it ended up being the second highlight of the trip. It was really cool and apparently one of the sets for a drama filmed about Takeda's war with Kenshin. It was a replica of what was really there but in the sengoku era it was a fort to watch the territory to the north and alert the armies of the south. It had an amazing vantage point and is practically invisible from the valley floor.

 

As if riding into battle ourselves we headed north to the legendary battlefield of Kawanakajima where Takeda and Kenshin went head to head no fewer than five times. It was very difficult to find but we first stumbled upon a Sanada mansion (very cool) and the remains of Matsushiro castle where Takeda readied his forces. We ate some sakura ice cream and wandered aimlessly about the country side look for this apparent battle field. It was so hard! Signs would point us in one direction and then just stop. It took nearly an hour of effort but then there it was! And it was perfect! Mostly it was a park but in one corner there was a Hachimangu shrine, the god of war, with a statue of an epic moment of these two great warlords. The little shrine shop sold Takeda and Kenshin charms (which Nikki bought one for me) and there were all these monuments to them like this upside down tree that Takeda apparently used for fortifications, and the rock where Kenshin attacked Takeda. So cool!!! The only regret... my camera refused to work. I think it's done. Three years and 46 prefectures worth of pictures is a lot for the poor thing. It was still brilliant.

That was as far north as we made it from then on it was headed home. We drove through this pretty, quiet little valley down to Matsumoto. When I was there in January there were these old coins I saw to buy in a little antique shop that I really wanted but I had no money. It seemed like as good an adventure as any to go and buy them now which I did! We also walked by the beautiful black castle of course. After we went to Suwa to visit the site of one of Japan's three unique festivals, a shrine where these guys go up into the woods to cut down a tree and ride it down! It only happens every six years though so I'm gonna miss it. Anyways, after the shrine we finished off the sightseeing portion of the trip by stopped at this little replica castle. Apparently it was once on the lake but the city has been built out so much that now it's surrounded by land. After that it was a bit of dinner at Coco Curry, a bit of shopping and a coffee (Starbucks has this knew absolutely amazing tiramisu frappucino complete with a layer of cookie and cake beneath the coffee flavoured whip cream!) and then home to bed.

On Monday Nikki and I went to Tokyo with Sheena, Stephanie and Rachel to see a shrine famous for wisteria and red bridges. It would have been extra special had the sky been clear and there not have been a thousand people milling around but we still had a lovely time. The smell of wisteria was beautiful and the little red bridges were adorable.

We finished the outing with burritos before Nikki and I split off to do a bit of shopping and have fun in the city. Tokyo is so much more fun with a friend!