Jodogahama

Today we ventured out to Jodogahama Beach. After a short train ride to Morioka Eki, we hopped on a bus for a little over 2 hours, traveled over the mountains to Miyako, then caught a 15-minute local bus out to Jodogahama. It was so worth it!!! The coast is even more beautiful in person than in the photos.

We couldn't get tickets for the children's Pokemon train, but Catie had a big hug for Pikachu anyway.

It's rice harvesting time in Tohoku, so these cool rice drying racks are everywhere!

There was a taiko (drum & flute) festival set up right on the beach. It was neat to watch, but the sounds of distant drumming were a little disconcerting as we were hiking.

You can see the level of the 2011 tsunami on this visitors center- look at the lines painted on the front right corner of the building, just over the Coke banners. SCARY.

We followed this path along the coast for a while, before hiking up onto 2 of the headlands. Catie loved getting splashed by the waves as they broke against the wall.

There were wild daisies all over the cliffs!

Hiking along one of the headlands

The awesome views from the top!

View from the 2nd headland

 

 

 

 

 

 

C. resting a bit with some coloring in the kids section of the nature center, before we caught the train home.

Shrines & Volcanoes

Andy planned the SICE fall trip to see the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Nikko and to explore the volcanic terrain around Lake Chuzenji. He wanted the students to experience another time period in Japanese history (in this case the 1600s) and see some examples of how volcanoes have shaped the Japanese landscape. This way he could tie the trip into both of the classes he’s teaching right now. I’ve been interested in going to Nikko since I first visited Andy in Japan in 1999, so I was pretty excited about the trip.

On Sunday, we headed into Nikko Sannai to see some of the shrines and temples that Nikko is famous for. It was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel for the students and Andy, but since we didn’t want to wear Catie out, she & I took the bus (remarkably easy!). To enter Nikko Sannai, traditionally very high ranking officials would cross the sacred red laquered bridge, Shinkyo. Today you can pay ~$3 to walk on it. I suspect it is the most widely recognized image of Nikko, and is certainly a stunning site.

After crossing the bridge, we headed up the hill to the temples and shrines. Nikko is striking for its over-the-top ornamentation with a backdrop of 400 year old cedars. The contrast is spectacular and purely Nikko. 

We spent the morning exploring Toshogu Shrine. Toshogu was built in the early 1600s to honor Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. It’s huge, ornate, and at least for this past 3-day holiday weekend- absolutely packed with tourists!  

Toshogu is also the home of the famous 3 wise monkeys "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". It's funny that one of the world's most reproduced symbols comes off a lowly stable (and yes, there are still horses in it). The carving is actually part of a much larger series of carvings showing monkeys depicting useful life lessons. Of course the students couldn’t resist the opportunity…

We saw a wedding taking place in one of the chapels (are they called that here?) and later on the sacred bridge. It was all very fancy and fun to watch. In spite of the crowds, Catie enjoyed herself by pointing out all the animal carvings on the buildings. After lunch Andy took the students to Futarasan Shrine and Taiyuin Mausoleum, but Catie was tired, so we came back to the hotel.

ice cream with daddy before heading back in to town

The second day was spent hiking in the volcanic terrain around Lake Chuzenji. To get from Nikko to Chuzenji-ko, you must take the historic Iroha-zaka. This road is so steep and is so narrow that it is actually two separate roads- one going up and one down. The road up is pretty cool- twisty, turny with great views (and a lot of cool sediment retention structures), but the highest parts of it are cut off by a long tunnel under the mountain. The way down is indescribable- it's just awesome!!! Picture the impossibly steep cliffs seen in many Japanese scrolls and put a single lane road on it. The highway is basically a series of hairpin turns steeper than anything I've ever seen- and we were taking them on a BUS. I could just feel Andy itching to have his car. Driving back, it was just starting to rain and the mountains were shrouded in mist. The trees are just starting to turn colors and the whole scene was out of a painting. I loved it!

this isn't my photo (I found it online), but it shows one section of the road

Andy & the students got off the bus at the base of Ryuzu Falls- just above Lake Chuzenji, then hiked up the fall, through the Senjogarahara marsh (an old lake, now filled with volcanic sediment), along another river with 2 more big waterfalls over lava flows, around another lava-dammed lake, and ended up in an onsen town. Catie & I took the bus for 2 more stops, then did the same hike ending at the top of the 2nd waterfall. She was a rockstar and walked the entire ~5 km by herself! Andy's group didn't catch up with us until 0.3 km from the end of the walk, so she didn't have daddy to carry her. Of course she was exhausted and slept the entire bus ride back. 

It was a beautiful walk! Waterfalls, trout creek (with lots of fly fisherman), a huge upland marsh just turning golden and red for the fall, and awesome volcanic deposits everywhere. The weather was cool (70s) and it was over cast all day so the mountains were covered in mist. It was a perfect day to walk. Apparently everyone else thought so too, since the trail was quite crowded. There was only one small stretch where we couldn't hear the steady tinkle of hiker's bear bells (apparently a necessity whenever one is off pavement in Japan). We didn’t see any monkeys, but that was probably for the best given that I was alone with a small child covered in snack crumbs. 

Unfortunately, our trip was not without strife. The first night I got a phone call from the 6 girls in the dormitory bunk room of the hotel, while Andy was out at the store buying our breakfast. Apparently the "6 bunk, female dorm" advertised actually had 8 bunks with 2 Dutch guys in them! The girls were not happy. I went down and sorted it out with the acting manager and the guys were evicted. The girls were even more upset when they called us at 7:30 AM to tell us the room was infested with bedbugs. Ugh. Unfortunately we happened to there over a very busy 3-day weekend, so Nikko was fully booked. I asked at the Visitors Bureau, we looked online, and Andy went into a couple of hotels but we could not find another room anywhere! Eventually he went to talk to the acting manager of our hotel to get the girls into private rooms. 1 ended up in the room adjacent to ours and 5 of them ended up in another hotel owned by the same people. Andy went to see the place before committing to anything and found it to be considerably nicer than the run down place where the rest of us slept. But alas, when we met up again the next morning, they were complaining of more bedbugs. After a bit of investigation, it appeared that they carried the bugs with them to the new place.

The hotel people were incredibly apologetic and keep giving us giant dishes of free shave ice, transporting the students back and forth, and even bringing 2 of them to the health clinic (one girl got over 20 bites and had big welts all over her). Because of the bedbugs, Andy stayed in Nikko to help the students do their laundry the last morning of the trip. I took Catie and went up to Chuzenji to the Natural History Museum. I’d planned on going to Ryuzu Falls- the huge waterfall over the lava dam that formed Lake Chuzenji, but it was pouring rain when we left the museum and Catie was not happy about her lack of daddy time, so we caught the bus back into town. The road was just as exciting as the previous day! This time it was raining, but the clouds were higher so you could see more of the mountains. Unfortunately, the group couldn’t get it together, so we never did get back up the mountain to see the falls.

Nikko is a lovely place and I’d like to return someday when Catie is older. Right now, she’s just too young to do much hiking and cannot go into any of the hot springs. Plus, there are a lot of things we just didn’t get to because of the weather and time. I’d love to stay in an onsen near Lake Chuzenji, do some more hiking, take a boat tour of the lake, see Kegon Falls, take the Akechidaira ropeway up to see the view, explore more in Nikki Sannai, and take a river boat ride from Kinugawa Onsen. Maybe in a few years!