Every October 24, on top of Mt Komagatake in Hakone, the Goshinkasai Motomiya Reisai festival takes place. It is an important festival for the Hakone shrine and it consists of lighting a fire of which burning coals will be distributed to all related shrines in the area. This year, the top of Mt Komagatake was covered in clouds which gave a special feel to this matsuri. In the photo to the right, two Shinto priests are using a bow drill to light a fire while two others are trying to keep them out of the strong winds. Once the torch was [View Full Entry]

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Shukubo experiences at Mount Koya, or Kōya-san (高野山), have been described in this forum more often, but I enjoyed my stay so much that I feel obliged to describe my own experience. The Okunoin Cemetery, Kongobuji Temple with the Banryutei rock garden and the area around the Konpon Daitō which make up the main sites in Mt Koya all are fabulous and have all well deserved entries in this forum and therefore I want to focus mainly on our temple lodging, or shukubo, experience. We had booked the Sanboin shukubo which has a 1200-year history via their webpage and arrived early [View Full Entry]

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We took the JR Hida line from Nagoya to Mino-Ota to change to the non-JR Nagara-gawa Railway; if you come from Gifu, you should take the JR Takayama Main line till Mino-Ota. Your JR Japan Rail Pass is no good on the Nagara-gawa line and you'll have to buy a ticket on the platform at the machine. The train meanders left and right of the Nagara river and the views over the river are beautiful. From Gujo-Hachiman station most of the town is at walking distance or a short taxi-ride away. When you finally get to walk around in Gujo-Hachiman, you'll [View Full Entry]

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Located in Akita Prefecture and no train station really close by, Nyuto Onsen is not the obvious choice for the tourist in Japan. However, if you developed a taste for onsen and want more, Nyuto Onsen is the place for you. Listed in Robert Neff's book Japan's hidden hotsprings, Nyuto Onsen might be different from what you would expect: No glossy swimming pool type baths and fancy ryokans, but ramshackle wooden buildings and perfect rotemburo (outside baths) instead. Ever wondered what onsen looked like in the time of the samurai? My bet is that it looks a lot like the baths [View Full Entry]

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Day 1 Ever since reading Desmond Bagley's Running Blind, I have been fascinated with Iceland and in the summer of 2006 I finally had the chance to book the trip I wanted. We flew from Heathrow to Kevlavik, were collected at the airport by a taxi, checked into our guest house in Reykjavik and reported to the travel agency to collect the details about the trip. A series of guest houses around Iceland had been booked for us and the details of the trip were discussed in detail. Soon enough we stood outside and found a nice restaurant where they served [View Full Entry]

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Section 3 Later that day we continued our trip south via the JR Sanin Honsen line via Masuda where we changed trains to Nagato and finally said goodbye to the JR Sanin Honsen line that had brought us all the way from Kyoto. The scenery from the train was still very dramatic when the train passed close by the sea. From Nagato we took the bus to finally arrive in Tawarayama Onsen which had been the main target for us. It is virtually unknown onsen town, a backwater literally, with great baths and nice ryokan. I had the feeling that not [View Full Entry]

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Taisoike pond - a photographer's dream We had taken the bus from Takayama JR station to Kamikochi and got off in front of the Taishoike Hotel where we had reserved a room in advance. Typhoon #9 of 2007 had just passed over the area and the weather was just getting better. The hotel was the usual small Japanese room but it had a pleasant surprise in the form of a nice view from the communal bath and an excellent dinner from a table with the same breathtaking view over the Taishoike pond. The next morning I woke up around around 5AM [View Full Entry]

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Section 1 We had come by shinkansen to Kyoto and our first stop would be Kinosaki. We found the platform for the JR Tokkyuu Kinosaki Express at Kyoto station, had time to buy some onigiri riceballs and we were off enjoying the long ride which brought us via the JR Sanin Honsen line passing the mountainous area to the other side of Japan. The views from the train were pretty but the weather changed before we arrived in Kinosaki and the rain started to pour down violently. From the station, the courtesy bus took us to our ryokan and it seemed [View Full Entry]

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Section 2 The next morning we got up early at 6 o'clock to be able to catch the early train from Kinosaki to Tottori. The courtesy bus was not running at that time and the people from the ryokan were very kind and drove us to the train station to catch the first train on the JR Sanin Honsen line. Quite a lot of high school students got on as well and it was amusing to see how the boys got their pocket mirrors out and started fussing with their hair endlessly while the girls just chatted away appearing much more [View Full Entry]

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