(no longer) LOST IN JAPAN

Getting Closer

It's July. July 4th. Happy Belated Birthday Canada and Happy Independence Day to all of my American friends. I have 24 days left in Japan. 24 days. 24 DAYS!!! WTF?! Where did the time go? Have I seriously been here for 2 years minus 21 days?! It's hard to believe. It seriously seems like yesterday that getting off the plane in Tokyo and someone handed me my very first Pocari Sweat. I didn't like it then and I still don't like it... besides, who really wants to be drinking a drink with the word "sweat" in it.
But lets not reminisce about it just yet. I've still got plenty of time. For now, lets just focus on the present and recent past. Like what I did this past weekend. And "What did I do?" you ask? I went to Tokyo to visit Anne-Line and to do some sightseeing in Mito and Nikko.

Saturday, I was in Mito. Mito City is the biggest city in Ibaraki prefecture and is relatively uninteresting besides the fact that it has one of the best three landscape gardens in Japan: Kairakuen (which means a garden to share and enjoy with others). It was probably my least favorite of the 3 but it was still quite pretty. You're actually supposed to visit it during plum blossom season because it has thousands of plum trees.
The 3 top gardens in Japan are completely different from each other. Korakuen in Okayama City is manicured with large expanses of grass. It was quite nice actually because Japan has no grass. The centerpiece of the garden is a large hill of azaleas which was in full bloom when we went.
Kenrokuen in Kanazawa City was also quite manicured but a little bit less than Korakuen. It's famous for the Koto-bridge lantern and its pine trees. Unlike in Korakuen where you can see the entire garden from one point, Kenrokuen is less open and is more fun to explore.
Kairakuen is the only top 3 garden that is free (bonus). It is not manicured but it does have sections: a plum tree section, a bamboo forest and then all the super old cedars. Inside the sections though, everything is left to grow. Kairakuen seems much more natural, more wild... personally, I prefer manicured.

Bamboo Grove

Cool path
Pavillion in the garden

Sunday, I went to the UNESCO World Heritage temples and shrines of Nikko. The most impressive of these is of course Toshogu, the shrine where Tokugawa Ieyasu (the first Tokugawa shogun) is enshrined. Toshogu is unlike anything else in Japan in size and colour. Most shrines are simple but Toshogu takes the Momoyama style to the limit, with elaborate carvings, colourful paintings and lots and lots of gold leaf. There are 5 important stops in the area: Toshogu, Yakushido (in Toshogu, it is the remenants of the Buddhist temple that was located there before Tokugawa Ieyasu was enshrined there), Futarasan (the shrine dedicated to the 3 sacred mountains--Mt. Nantai, the male mountain, Mt. Nyoho, the female mountain, and Mt. Taro, the baby mountain), Taiyuinbyo (the 3rd Tokugawa shogun's mausoleum) and Rinnoji (founded in 782 by Shodo Shonin, the monk who brought Buddhism to Nikko). Rinnoji houses an odd trinity, said to be the Buddhist representations of the 3 sacred mountains. It has a statue of Amida Buddha flanked by a thousand-armed Kannon (senjuu kannon) to the right and a horse-headed Kannon (batou kannon) to the left.
My camera crapped out halfway through the trip so I only have picture of Toshugu.


Shinkyo bridge. Used to be reserved for the Shogun and his retainers. Now anyone can cross... for 500 yen. So I just took a picture.

View of Yomeimon gate through the bronze torii.

Closer view of the lavishly decorated gate... the whole shrine is like this... it was crazy.

One of the famous carvings at Toshogu. These are the 3 wise monkeys: hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil. They are there to protect the sacred white horse inside the sacred stable.

Nikko was definitely worth it even though I had to wake up at 6AM on a Sunday just to get there (3 hours to get there, 3 hours to get back and then another 4 hours to get back to Nara... 10 hours on the train...) If you have the time, I would recommend staying a few days so that you can actually see lake Chuzenji , climb Mt. Nintai (2,486 m) then finish off with a trip to Yumoto onsen. Unfortunately, one day is barely enough to see all the temples and shrines. After all, according to the posters: "NIKKO IS NIPPON"

although, in my opinion, that isn't exactly true since there is nothing else in Japan quite like it...

posted by Samantha @ 7:47 PM