Best of - part 1: Japanese Nature

Work has been keeping me pretty occupied recently so I have not been able to get anywhere for the blog so I decided to do the first in a "Best of" series.  I will add to this series from time to time with a different theme or an update to an existing theme.  The first in the "best of" series will be about Japanese nature.

When I first came to Japan, 16 years ago, I had the impression that Japan was a concrete jungle.  All skyscrapers and neon, shiny, plastic and new.  Maybe most people who come to Japan are under the same impression and there is a lot of that.  But scratch beneath the surface and there is a whole lot more waiting to be found.  Get away from the cities and you will be surprised.  There is a whole lot of beautiful nature here and living in these big cities makes the Japanese appreciate all of the beautiful nature around them.  They cherish it and protect it, wanting to maintain and preserve it for generations to come.  Following are just a few photos I have taken to highlight some of the naturally beautiful places that I have been to.  Let's start with Japan's 2 favourite seasons.

Spring time means only one thing in Japan.  Cherry blossom time!  Time to get out and enjoy the flower that has come to symbolise the country more than any other.  One of the best things about Cherry blossom time is that you don't have to get out of the city to see it!  The following couple of photos were taken in Yanaka cemetery, in the middle of Tokyo.

This next one was taken near the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo.

Cherry blossom season is also party time.  Troops of office workers march out of offices and into nearby parks setting down picnic mats and eating and drinking to their hearts content, enjoying the beautiful cherry blossoms.  Now in a city as big as Tokyo, that means a lot of people as this photo from Yoyogi Park shows.

But the crowds are never an issue as everyone is simply out enjoying the season just like the folk on the picnic mat next to them.  It is a fun, festive atmosphere.

You can find some full blog posts about cherry blossom season here, here and here.

The other season that is celebrated is autumn.  With autumn comes autumn leaves as everywhere in Japan is turned into a sea of reds, oranges and yellows!  This first photo is at the foot of Mount Takao, within the limits of Tokyo.

You can read more about Mount Takao here.

The next 2 were taken at Nikko a beautiful town less than 2 hours by train from Ueno in the north of Tokyo.  Nikko is home to an area of temples and Shrines that is World heritage listed.

To check out more about Nikko, check out some past blog posts here, here and here.

Last year in July I escaped Tokyo and headed deep into Nagano.  Nagano is an area of Japan that I love and that is rich in natural beauty.  Here are a couple of photos taken from that trip.  This first one is a river running through a beautiful, old, small town called Tsumago.  The day we visited was the day after a typhoon had passed through and there had been a little rain that had fallen.....

Just a little.....

Nearby Tsumago is the quaint old town of Magome and on the outskirts of Magome I was greeted with this view.

Stunning!  This trip was made in July, just after rainy season, so the greens were so deep and vivid!  You can read some more about and enjoy some more pictures of these 2 stunning towns here. 

A little further north into Nagano is Togakushi, in the mountains outside of Nagano city.  I went here on the same trip as Tsumago and Magome.  These next couple of photos are of some huge old cedar trees in the area.

Not too far away from this area was a beautiful lake called Kagami ike, or mirror lake.

I am told that early on a still morning, the view here is spectacular!  Unfortunately, I am not such a morning person......  Anyway, you can read some more about Togakushi here.

Now, not all of this stunning nature is found outside of Tokyo.  The big city has it's fair share of hidden gems too.  One such place is Todoroki valley, a hidden oasis of green in the sleepy suburbs of Setagaya.

On a hot summers day, a visit to Todoroki Valley is just the cure!  Check more out about Todoroki Valley here.

Just a couple of months ago I had the pleasure of visiting Ise in Mie prefucture.  Ise is home to one of the most important Shinto shrines in Japan.  It also has a stunning river running through the town.

Please feel free to read more about Ise and it's beautiful shrine here, here, and here.

The final photos I would like to share with you come from an area just outside the beautiful old city of Kyoto.  The area is called Arashiyama and is famous for its natural beauty, especially in autumn when the area becomes a patchwork of vivid autumn colours.  It is, however, a beautiful place to visit any time of year.  One of the other things Arashiyama is famous for is its bamboo walkway.

I was lucky enough to visit the area a day after a typhoon had stormed through the area (I swear I don't plan these things!) so it was not at all busy.  Continuing on past the end of the bamboo walkway I found this little hidden gem.

This place was simply stunning and nearby was a temple or shrine as I could hear the bell sounding every 30 seconds or so.  I sat here for a good 5 minutes just taking in as much of the tranquillity as I could.  What a find this place was!

Also in the Arashiyama area is a river called Katsura river.  I reached the other side of the river at around dusk and it proved for some wonderful photos.  Here are just a couple of them.

I did manage to get another photo while I was here and this is one of the most beautiful photos I have taken, although, quite a different kind of beautiful!

If you would like to read more about Arashiyama and Kyoto, you can find their blog posts here and here.

Well, I think that will do it for this post.  I hope you enjoyed that photographic tour.  As I said at the start of the post, there will be more posts with the "Best of" theme so please keep an eye out for them.  Thanks again for reading.  Please leave a comment and share the blog with someone you know who will enjoy it.

Se you next time!

Nagano - the Nakasendo and Magome (The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray - Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a weekend trip to Nagano.  You can read Part 1 here.

I woke up early in the morning the next day, the day I had been waiting 6 months for, the day I was going to walk along the Nakasendo.  I woke up to sounds that sent chills down my spine.  I woke up to the sound of rain.....very heavy rain.....  I opened the curtains and looked outside to see torrential rain and my heart sank.  It looked like the typhoon had done a 360 degree turn and come back to haunt us again.

We trudged downstairs for breakfast, an extremely good breakfast I must say!

We had a solemn discussion over dinner about what to do.  The problem was there was nowhere in town to buy a poncho to keep the rain off and not all of us had brought umbrellas.  Even then, a danger in mountain areas that have just received a lot of rain is that there is a small risk of landslides so we decided we had no choice but to cancel the walk along the Nakasendo.  It was a disappointing decision to have to make, but one that was unavoidable.  I immediately thought "Okay, this just means that I have to make another trip back here another time", and that was not such a bad thing.  I was in a beautiful part of the world.

Walking back down the stairs to my room, I glanced outside and it looked as though the rain might be lifting.

It was only brief, however as pretty soon it started up again.

We decided not to let ourselves be totally defeated by the rain and grabbing a loaner umbrella from the ryokan, we headed out into the rain to look around the village in the gloomy daylight.  Evidence of the amount of rain that had fallen came in the way of this.

The previous night as we were walking around, this wheel had not been turning at all.  Today it was spinning so madly that I feared it would come off and go racing down the street leaving a path of destruction in it's wake!

We walked further along the street and we passed what Miwa told me was a place for the upper class to stay on their journey along the Nakasendo in the old days

and a little further along, a place for the royals or the ruling class to stay.

All the way along the street there were examples of the beautifully manicured Japanese gardens that I love so much.

Soon we arrived at a temple that had been closed the previous night when we had been exploring and now we found it open so we walked inside

and poking our heads inside we found this.

Miwa got her temple and shrine book signed by the resident monk (who looked like he had just woken up.  I thought the life of a monk was a harsh life, with early starts and prayers under freezing cold waterfalls!) and we left the temple and headed back out onto one of the streets.  This street was quite beautiful, lined with rustic old houses dating back at least a couple of hundred years.

Stunning!

Continuing along the path, we began to hear the roar of the river, much louder than it had been the previous night, so we walked in that direction and soon enough, the river came into view.

There was much more water and it was flowing much more ferociously than it had been the previous night.  Another sign of just how much rain had fallen overnight.

Soon enough we decided that we had had enough of walking in the rain and found a coffee shop and wandered in and out of the rain.  The owner greeted us and totally surprised me with his perfect English.  He asked me where I was from and I said "Adelaide" to which he replied "Ah, the capital city of South Australia".  Now there are not many people who know Adelaide here in Japan, and even less who know that it is the capital of South Australia!  Naturally, I asked him why he knew that and he said that he had worked for SAFCOL (The South Australian Fisherman's Co-operative Limited) for 32 years!  Amazing, in the middle of nowhere to meet someone who I had a connection with was surreal.  We sat down and he left us to enjoy our coffee.

Most of the shops were now open (I guess they carefully coincide opening time with check-out times of most of the ryokan) and we came across a guy who was working a lathe and making beautifully crafted pens from a huge variety of different kinds of wood.  They ranged in price from about 1,000 yen all the way up to 10,000 yen, depending on the wood used.

We stopped for a quick snack of beef skewers and pickled cucumber

before jumping in a taxi and making our way to Magome.  As we were driving along the road, every now and then we caught a glimpse of the Nakasendo and a reminder of what we were missing out on.....

We arrived in Magome and while it was an old town, just like Tsumago, it had a completely different feel to it.  Part of the reason for that might have been that the rain had eased somewhat and the place appeared a little brighter.  Most of the reason was that Magome was a more polished offering.  It was a more pristine, tidy place, a place that had prepared itself to be an attractive tourist town whereas Tsumago had a much more rustic, authentic appeal to it.  While both were great examples of small country Japanese villages, I think I preferred Tsumago with it's innocence and "this is what life was really like" attitude.

We started out along the main shopping street that was lined with shops, ryokans, guesthouses and restaurants.

As you can see from those pictures, Magome really markets itself to a different kind of tourist than Tsumago does.  Each has their own special charm and while Magome had more of a small town Kyoto feel to it, Tsumago was more like a Takayama or a Narai.

At the end of the street there were some beautiful rice fields.

Stomachs had started rumbling by this time, however, so we made our way back up the street to a restaurant we had see earlier and sat down to a delicious (late) lunch.

The chicken and spring onion rice bowl was great, with the chicken having a beautiful smokey flavour to it.  We set about enjoying lunch being cooled by numerous fans (the restaurant had no air conditioning.  Well I guess that was authentic!), sweating away in the stifling humidity that is the Japanese summer.

Finishing up, we caught a taxi back to Nagiso station and jumped on a train to go to Nagano city.  At this point Lydia left us to make her way back to Tokyo, work beckoning her the following day.

Yuuki and I were able to get front row seats for the ride to Nagano!

A couple of hours later we arrived at Nagano and Yuuki and Miwa made sure I knew where to catch my bus before they headed off to nearby Ueda city where Miwa's parents live.  They were to spend the night there before meeting up with me the next day in Tagakushi which was to be my next destination.

I jumped on my bus for the one hour ride to Togakushi readying myself for the next phase of our adventure, hoping that Mother Luck would finally smile on us and we would have a trouble free day.

Thanks again for reading this update.  Please leave a comment below if you enjoyed this post, and please join me back here again soon for my next post.  See you soon.