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Published: August 10th 2014
Spending our first 5 days in Tokyo, we decided to allocate 2 of these days to sightseeing outside Tokyo itself and chose Nikko and Lake Kawaguchiko (for Mount Fuji).
Part 1 – Nikko…UNESCO World Heritage site and lots of renovations! After stopping off at 7-11 to pick up some croissants and jam for the train ride, we headed to Asakusa station. We were a little disappointed that the better value World Heritage Pass had been discontinued, so had to buy a 2 Day Nikko Pass (issued by the Tobu Railway) which includes the round trip train journey and bus rides around Nikko. The lady in the ticket office spoke excellent English, gave us a whizz-bang guide to Nikko and said the next train was leaving in 3 minutes…off you go! Knowing how punctual Japanese trains are, we paid up our ¥2,670 each (£15.34) and legged it to the train.
For something entitled ‘express’ the train really wasn’t an express, nor was it particularly fast and we chugged away through some nice enough scenery until we reached Nikko about 2 hours later. At this point we were eying the sky with trepidation as it was looking a bit ominous
Stash your kid seat
yes, they had these in the toilets...put your kid in this while you do your business ;)and it was a bit chilly! 😞. So we headed to get the bus to the main temple area only to be yelled at by a grumpy bus driver in unintelligible Japanese, he was holding his arms making a cross with them. Not understanding at all, a Japanese person explained to us and some other people we weren’t allowed to use that bus (even though the tourist office had told us we could) and we had to get another. Fair enough, we got on the other bus and had to re-jig our plans.
Rinnoji temple The first temple in Nikko was founded more than 1,200 years ago along the shores of the Daiya River. In 1616, the dying Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu made it known that his final wish was for his successors to build a small shrine in Nikko; he wanted to be enshrined as a God and said he would be the guardian of peace keeping in Japan (no illusions of grandeur there then?!). Nikko therefore became home to the mausoleums of the Tokugawa Shoguns, which are now on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
We had planned to see the Shin-kyo (a pretty red coloured Japanese
bridge) first, but with the bus issue, we headed up to the main temple complex and had a wander instead. We soon found some toilets and luckily they had seat warmers which were just the thing we needed in the chilly weather 😉 and tried to find Rinnoji temple. After a few minutes of looking around completely puzzled, knowing we were in the right place and gazing at a huge building with a temple painted on the front, we realised the building was Rinnoji and it was under renovation! The restoration people had built a huge corrugated metal building around the temple and helpfully painted a picture of the temple on the front, so we had to cut our losses with that one!
Tosho-gu shrine Onwards again we headed to the Tosho-gu shrine, this had an impressive stone tori gate and another gate a little further up some steps which lead into a courtyard. There was a 5 storey pagoda and the actual shrine. We were standing looking at a map and debating whether to pay the ¥1300 (£7.47) to go in and have a look around the Toshu-gu, which is quite a
lot of money for one shrine! We then noticed a small sign and overheard a Japanese woman telling her husband that the Yomei-mon Gate was undergoing renovation and couldn’t be seen at all. As this was one of the main things on our list to see, we decided to not pay the entrance fee…again cutting our losses 😞.
Taiyuin Mausoleum As if we hadn’t had enough bad luck, it then started to drizzle and the clouds were getting lower and lower! We headed over to the Taiyuin Mausoleum, which was built in 1653 by Ieyasu’s grandson. The Taiyuin shows the idea of Wabi (a Japanese aesthetic centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection), and harmony of art and nature. All the buildings in the mausoleum are based on a black and gold design and the main mausoleum is registered as the National Treasure of Japan.
We paid ¥550 each (£3.16) to get into Taiyuin and we were pleasantly surprised. The grounds were lovely, with little water falls and we saw quite a few of the 315 light towers that were donated by the Daimyo (feudal rulers subordinate only to the Shogun) from different parts of Japan.
At this point it was positively bucketing it down (we didn’t have an umbrella!), and as we looked around it really didn’t bother us that much at all. Mainly this was because the rain had cleared most people out and as we wandered around, it was very atmospheric with the low clouds coming down over the cedar forest and standing listening to the rain fall from the roof was mesmerising! We had a peak in the hall of worship and inner temple, we could go in and walk around, but people were worshipping and we would have felt a bit awkward walking between them and infringing on their time in the temple. No photos (understandably) were allowed in the hall of worship, this is the same for most shrines in Japan.
Shin-kyo bridge that we never saw We hung around for quite a while at Taiyuin due to the rain, when it didn’t look like it was letting up we legged it and got absolutely soaked. It was at this point we spotted the bus just pulling away from a bus stop and decided to wait for the next one. It had been our original plan to walk
down to the Shin-kyo bridge and then back into Nikko for food, this plan was scrapped in favour of getting the bus to the bridge which was then scrapped again when we got closer to the bridge and the rain got heavier!! Driving past the Shin-kyo on the bus and looking out the windows, we felt it had been a tad mis-represented…all the pictures we had seen made it look like the bridge was in the middle of countryside, when in actual fact it was located next to a busy main road! Back at the train station we bought an umbrella (what we should have done that morning) so we could actually walk and get some food!
Nikko town, food and observations Nikko town itself wasn’t really up to much and there was a distinct lack of restaurants. The whole of Nikko, along with the temple areas struck us as one big tourist trap. Maybe it’s a bit harsh but we aren’t sure we would recommend Nikko to people unless the renovations to the temples were finished!
Food wise, basically there was an overpriced and empty Indian, an overpriced and busy donburi restaurant and an overpriced and
busy café which served pasta and sandwiches. So we opted for the donburi restaurant and ordered a beef donburi (¥850 or £4.88), a chicken donburi (¥750 or £4.31) and two hot coffees (¥300 each or £1.72). By this point we were freezing and soaked by the rain so the hot bowls were just what we needed.
Donburi basically translates as ‘rice bowl dish’ and it does what it says on the tin 😊…rice with a load of meat on top. It was on our ‘food wish list’, so we were able to tick it off! This brings us to an observation about food in Japan; it’s very meat heavy! Not many dishes are served with vegetables and meat together, so in most instances we would have to add salad to the order or get a big salad from 7-11 or Lawsons convenience stores! On the plus side, when you did add a salad it was quite big and it wasn’t just bog standard iceberg lettuce and a bit of a tomato, it was usually interesting lettuce (nothing against iceberg but it’s a bit boring!), sweetcorn, carrots and a lovely sesame dressing.
The main problem we found with Nikko
Rinnoji temple at Nikko under renovation unfortunately
but helpfully, they had painted a picture of what you should see! (which we didn’t find in, for example, Kyoto) was that there were hardly any signs telling you what the temples were, so it was largely guess work with where we were, even using the maps and tourist leaflets we had been given! So if we have got any descriptions wrong, we apologise profusely!
We were surprised to hear a lot of Thais in Japan, not so much for the expense as we found it not much more expensive than Thailand for most things. They were so fascinated by the Shinto and Zen Buddhist temples which are so different to the ornate Thai Buddhist temples you see in Thailand.
The one major thing we learned was, if all the Japanese you see are carrying an umbrella accept that they know best and buy and umbrella…it’s probably going to rain 😉.
Part 2 – Lake Kawaguchiko and the shy Mount Fuji When we started planning our trip to Japan, we really did want to climb Mount Fuji. After researching, it was clear that we would need more colder weather gear than what we have and it would involve a night’s stay part way up Fuji
with a 2-3am start to be able to reach the summit. All things considered, we decided we weren’t equipped to climb Fuji-san (as the Japanese lovingly call it) and decided to go to the nearby Fuji-go-ko (Fuji Five Lakes) instead.
It took a while to find the bus station at Shinjuku station, after buying our tickets (¥1700, £9.77 each), we were informed that a bus was leaving in 5 minutes! The bus was quite cute and even had a toilet on board…best of all the driver didn’t think he was Nigel Mansell and drove very sensibly! The 2 hours journey flew by and on arrival at Kawaguchiko station we picked up some maps and walked to the lake area.
Kawaguchiko was a big lake surrounded by Swiss chalet type buildings, it always makes us laugh in Asia…where there is a lake there’s Swiss chalet type buildings! It was a bit of a strange layout and how it had been done was a bit of a shame. The car park was right next to the lake, taking up the best part of the lake viewing area! There were restaurants and shops overlooking the lake from over the road, and
we found our first flavoured kit kats!
We decided to use the ropeway (what the Japanese call cable cars) to go up Mount Kachi Kachi (really called Mount Tenjo). The ‘mountain’ got the name Kachi Kachi from a slightly sinister folktale about a hare and raccoon; this folktale was helpfully told in a picture murals on the staircase of the ropeway. We didn’t understand any of it, so made up our own story thinking it was completely ridiculous and we were misinterpreting the pictures…as it turns out we weren’t misinterpreting it! Basically, raccoon befriends a couple, raccoon murders the wife, hare consoles the husband and vows revenge. Hare sets raccoon on fire, hare rubs pepper on the raccoons burnt back and hare laughs when raccoon falls out of the boat and drowns. Well, that gives the Grimm brothers a run for their money?!
Anyway, we got the ropeway up to the top (¥410, £2.35 each, one way) which was the smoothest cable car we have ever been on. Up at the top there was an observation deck with lovely views out over Kawaguchiko and supposedly Mount Fuji. We say supposedly because there was no sign of Fuji-san, it
was covered in clouds 😞. Even without seeing Fuji, the views were rather nice! We decided to walk down, through the hydrangea walk and although a lot of the hydrangea’s had already been cut back it was still pretty.
We stopped off at the Lawsons convenience store and got what we thought was raspberry Fanta, it turns out it was lychee Fanta. It was strange as it looked like sprite but tasted like lychee…yummy! Kawaguchiko is a cute little village and we took the long walk back to the station to get our bus back, unfortunately we had a 2 hour wait as all the buses were full. We were lucky though, 30 minutes later we overhead the ticket lady telling people all the buses until 8pm were fully booked! So a tip, if you are going to Kawaguchiko in hiking season, make sure you book your bus back to Tokyo early! Another tip is to double check you aren’t travelling on a public holiday. We didn’t and it meant our 2 hour bus journey turned into a 3.5 hours journey with most of it stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the motorway!
Food and observations We managed to tick another food off the wish list – ramen with udon noodles, gorgeously flavourful broth and we slurped away at the thick chewy noodles! We ate at the Lakeside café, on the second floor of a building facing the lake. Considering where we were, the prices weren’t actually that expensive. This was the first place we had seen fully automated cash registers…the waitress fed the money into the till and it then spat out the change! Brilliant!
In the shop downstairs to the restaurant we saw our first flavoured Kit Kats, vanilla ice cream flavour and stupidly we didn’t buy them. Japan is famous for the different flavours of Kit Kats that are manufactured and we were on a bit of a Kit Kat hunt. We were silly thinking that other places would sell the different Kit Kats and from this point on, it became a bit of an obsession for Donna to find flavoured Kit Kats!
Japan was home to the most perfect fruit and veg we have ever seen in our lives, the pieces of fruit and veg we saw were so beautiful it was unbelievable. We even got a treat at Kawaguchiko,
PEACHES!! It’s been years (seriously, it’s been 8 years!) since we had a peach and we really miss stone fruit like peaches and nectarines. So when we spied 2 giant peaches for ¥480 (£2.75) we just had to. The only time we can remember having a peach like this was when we were kids, the peaches were so huge too, we felt like kids with the sweet peach juice dribbling down our chins as we ate them! They were unbelievably tasty.
We noticed on the buses and trains that the Japanese are really conscious about traffic/train noise infringing on towns and villages. Every road and train track had sound barriers built to protect the communities living behind them from the road/train noise…very thoughtful!
We have already mentioned the punctuality of transport here in Japan, not only was the transport punctual it was very regular as well (apart from the bus incident on our way back from Kawaguchiko) and it always seemed like a train pulled up almost as soon as we stepped onto the platform. Maybe we were just incredibly lucky or maybe that’s just how efficient it always is in Japan…whatever, it was a breath of fresh
Sorinto Tower behind Rinnoji
This is a 13.2 meter high Bronze pillar which is a symbol of world peace. It contains 1000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures (sutras). air!
At this point we will mention the restaurant chain Yoshinoya, which does all kinds of beef bowls. Our intention after Fuji was to return to Butcher Brothers for steak but it was a public holiday and closed 😞, we opted for Yoshinoya. A second food wish list was ticked off, with Japanese curry – a yummy dark gravy curry with bits of beef, potato and carrot in. It reminded us of the chip shop curry back in the UK! Yoshinoya is a top tip for cheap eats, they do the bowls of food in different sizes for different appetites and prices. As you can see from the receipt in the picture we took, it’s super cheap. A beef donburi, a beef curry and two salads set us back ¥1140 (£6.55) and it was really filling!
Our time in Tokyo had come to an end and although we were sad to be leaving such a vibrant and interesting city, we were very excited to be starting the next part of our journey - travelling on our first Shinkansen (bullet) train to Kyoto.
Notes about the Japan Rail Pass Japan Rail Passes are only sold outside of
Japan to tourists (or Japanese who can prove they live abroad), we decided on a 7 day pass at ¥29,110 (£167) each. This pass entitled us to unlimited travel on all Japan Rail (or JR) lines for 7 days.
You receive an exchange order which once in Japan, you need to take (along with your passport) to a JR office to activate the pass. The good thing is that you can activate it for a date up to a month in advance. We activated ours a couple of days before we wanted to use it at Shinjuku station and then went with a print out of the trains we wanted to book to the JR office across the way. You are then given smaller tickets with the train and seat booking.
Using the JR Pass is very easy, you just need to flash the pass at the guard station at the ticket barriers and that’s it!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Japan
The journey is key not the destination....with that said it is always nice having a fast train to get you there. :) Seat warmers sound great. Luck you. Glad you got your noodles & peaches. Life is simple isn't it?