Japan Summer Vacation Trips - Pics/Video 3

Part 3... And first up is Kendo (traditional Japanese fencing)!

While walking through the national treasure of Nikkou, I heard what sounded like a big Taiko drum and lots of screaming. Naturally attracted, I followed the noise and found a shrine-like building with a number of guys and girls going at it. Here's the video:

And after the kendo and some delicious curry croissants made by a famous hotel restaurant called Kaneya, we headed to the museum. And the pics, well what I was able to take because photography isn't really allowed...




We had lunch at a local restaurant and it was actually quite good. I snapped a quick photo of the town and of the restaurant before devouring my demi-glas hamburg and my travel partner's curry rice.




Next we headed to the numerous shrines laid out around the area. Here's a video of an underground passage we took to cross the road to get back to the shrine area. There are huge pictures on the walls of various scenes in Nikkou of interest.

Many of the shrines can't be photographed, so I'll tell the story of the two most interesting ones.

In one, you move through a labyrith of rooms to get to the center room, and it's quite large, about maybe 30 feet by 20 feet, and the entire ceiling is painted with an enormouse dragon. There's a monk there banging away at this hammer instrument, and just when you get under the head of the dragon, you can hear this long drawn-out loud screech of the dragon calling back to the instrument. Very exciting to experience, and it must've involved some really cool architecture planning to have that happen.

The other is the most famous shrine in Nikkou I think. The outside has carvings of monkeys doing the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' thing, and it's used here as a metaphor for the various levels of living (the children all keep quiet for survival, waiting for the mother to come back with food, etc. but the carvings get more deep - with the monkey looking to the heavens as the spiritual part of life beyond just survival, etc.) Since of course these are on the outside, I could take photos of them, and I did in detail as you'll see in the next Part of this series coming later this week. In the meanwhile, enjoy this stream of shrine photos of Nikkou.

Japan Summer Vacation Trips - Pics/Video 2

On with part 2!

So we arrived through the gates to Nikkou - a national heritage, the whole area is a cultural treasure for Japan. There's amazing and beautiful scenery and so many huge and well beautiful shrines.

First, after entering the gates, we see this map. Notice the red triangle at the bottom center - "you are here." Directly to the right of where we are, you can see the park with a lake in the center. That's the first destination, then on to all the shrines above.



After looking at the map, we head to the 'lobby' area (the first 3 red arrows after the 'you hare here' triangle on the map), and I took some pictures again before we headed to the park.









Next, we turned around and headed into the park. The park was really great but I don't think the pics/vids do it justice, but here they are. I added the video to google videos so the quality should be a little better than the usual youtube videos.


Entering the park...




Video of the walk through the park (one of my watching recommendations).



Photos from inside the park!


















And in the next part, we'll head to a museum, an old building where guys and girls are fighting with swords, and some of Japan's most famous shrines. Stay tuned.. until tomorrow.

Japan Summer Vacation Trips - Pics/Video 1

So, having a summer vacation I made some plans for travel. I headed to a lot of different places in north Japan and some smaller trips around Tokyo. Here's the stories with some pics/vids.

Kicking off the vacation, I got a summer bonus from my boss and then came home to find this in the mail.

It's an envelope containing a certificate stating that I passed my Kanji writing exam. So, as for a vacation, so far so good!

So we hit the train at 6am, destination: Aomori. We had had packed bentou boxed lunches and had them at the somewhat famous and very mysterious Aoike "Blue Lake." after a number of hours of trains, buses and hiking.

Please click the images to see the larger full version.

We had lunch at the lake then some more hiking, winding mountain buses, trains and arrived at our first place to sleep. A beautiful hot spring resort. We were both beat from the long day so we had dinner then relaxed in the hot spring baths til bedtime.

The next day after a bit more sightseeing in Aomori we moved on to Tochigi. I took a few pictures after getting off the train in Nikkou.

Then, we grabbed the guidebooks and looked at the map to see what was in store for us.

Then we headed outside. Here's a short video of the surroundings followed by some pictures. The video makes the weather look worse than it seems - the fact is we were surrounded by mist covered mountains. It's really dreamlike in some areas of Japan.

Next up, we head to a famous Tochigi shrine and park. Here's video and pics just up to our entrance to the place. The shrine and park pics/videos will be in my next post, Part 2.