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!