Week 32
Hey, back again.
I'm starting this post on February 6th on the eve of my departure for Hokkaido and a few days of skiing. (And finishing it much later)
Where did I leave off?
Oh yeah, Nikko.
After the hiking the previous day we had a nice relaxed sleep and woke up to, amazingly, a light dusting of snow!
We started off the day by wandering along the path we hiked on the first day. The snow changed the picturesque landscape of the previous day into something even more prone to causing the release of shutter buttons. Winny and Sophie were psyched enough to jump for joy on several occasions. I recorded these historic moments as best I could.
Before we headed to the day's main event we stopped by a sight that we'd seen the day before but had not ventured into due to a lack of time. This destination was the right, esteemed, well appointed Nikko Imperial Villa.
It was incredibly beautiful. The inside of the building was amazing, very old, very serpentine and very cold. The building itself surrounds a number of interior courtyards and still contains many of the pieces of artwork and furniture that were used there by its inhabitants before it became a museum. The rooms were all labelled by their general usage, so we had an idea of how life in a house like this must have been. It was quite fascinating. Strolling along the tatami and seeing places where treaties had been struck and Emperors had taken dinner was awe inspiring.
The garden was even more beautiful. The lighting was perfect, the thin veneer of snow melting away slowly in the cool sun made for an idyllic setting if I’ve ever seen one. We ambled around the garden, stopping for photo opportunities here and there. I took a photo of the villa from across the garden that, in my opinion, may be the best picture I have taken thus far. It was just an absolutely beautiful morning. Although I will always remember how cold my damn feet were in that villa. Seriously, after taking off our shoes and swapping into slippers we were hopping from heated mat to heated mat trying to stay warm. It was to the point at the end where we would actually dash for the next one.
Thank god that finished.
The guards in the villa were very nice too, taking a number of pictures of us on various occasions. It was also kind of cute seeing their stations, each one equipped with its own little foot heater and (usually) a book and a few other accoutrements.
I think I'll probably remember this better than the attraction that Nikko is (world) famous for, the Toshigi shrine. It was our next stop, after lunch and although it was really quite amazing, it probably wasn’t quite as awe inspiring as it might otherwise have been.
Description, ho!
As I alluded to earlier, the Toshigi shrine is a World Heritage site. It was originally commissioned by Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was a Shogun in the sixteenth century and considered to be almost indomitable in his martial and political prowess. Among a few other things, he’s famous for popularizing the "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" maxim as a guideline for the general conduct of citizens in Edo Japan. The shrine itself acts as both a place of worship and the final resting place for the shogun himself.
We wandered around the temples for several hours, checking out the temple complexes. It’s always kind of interesting how the larger temple areas seem to subdivide into several individual but closely associated buildings. It’s never just one huge temple inside a wall, at least as far as I have seen, always a group of courtyards enclosed close by each other.
We checked out an extremely famous carving of three monkeys enacting the “no evil” expression. Made for a great photo opportunity! Afterwards, Winny and I paid the toll to see the "sleeping cat" a tiny (but very famous) sculpture that guards the entrance of the tomb of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The tomb itself lies beyond the guardian neko (cat) up a rather grand stone staircase that leads through ancient Japanese cedar.
There's sort of interesting difference between this section of the shrine and the main, more religion focused section. The shrine area is actually extremely showy for a Japanese shrine. Unlike Thai shrines, the standard for Japanese shrines is cool and reserved. The Toshigi is anything but, as the above pictures attest. Gold adorned gates guard cavities in walls that are etched with dragons cavorting in brilliant colours.
This is very much the opposite of Tokugawa's grave, which is incredibly reserved, very subtle in its design. The simple, earthy tones of his tomb clash somewhat with the bright and very wealthy looking ornamentation of the rest of the shrine. The effect is not unlike stepping out of a rock concert into an alpine field. Well, maybe not that extreme, but close. It’s quite the interesting dichotomy I think...
The rest of the temple was entertaining as well. Sophie found a GIGANTIC sword exhibited in one of the temples. It must have been about 6 feet long, really really huge... It looked like it was meant to be used by a cave troll or something. We all tried a few luck-divining devices, and we all ended up more or less breaking even. After an hour or so, we left the second to last complex for our final destination of import that afternoon.
The last shrine in the complex closed at something like 4:30. We must have made it through the front gates at like 4:29. Our group was the second last through before the entrance closed for the day. We headed up a few flights of stairs to the temple, again placed in a stately grove of ancient cedars. Taking off our shoes for the last time that day, we entered the temple and examined the relics contained there, including a very impressive old set of samurai armour. After a few minutes we departed and were greeted with an absolutely idyllic scene upon our exit.
While we had been inside a light snow had begun to fall, which was perfection itself in my opinion. It had been cold all day and this was just the chocolate glazing covering the cherry of this visual sundae. To make that chocolate swiss in origin, it was just a couple days before Christmas and this was the first snow I had seen this year. It was still to be a green Christmas for me, but at least I’d felt a couple of flakes melt on my skin before that ideally snow-buried day of the year rolled around. It really added an amazing, dare I say enchanting, sheen to the shrines.
But that was pretty much the end of the trip! We left the shrine and hoofed back to the station, pausing to take one last look at the crystalline waters of the river. Then the only thing left was the long ride back to Utsonomiya and Tokyo. What a fantastic trip!
The rest of the week was surprisingly ho-hum. Christmas is not really all that busy in Japan due to the traditional holiday being the New Years break , from the first to the third. It was more or less business as usual during the week baring the speakers I brought into school to rock out some Christmas music and a few small gifts that got exchanged. The Thursday before Christmas I had had my youngest kids class decorate a 4 foot Christmas tree with all the decorations in the school. It was pretty awesome, as the tree came out looking like it was being choked to death by garland and bulbs. I kinda liked it though, and it was cute watching them over engineer the decoration pattern.
Working during Christmas wasn't a huge problem for me either. As my family knows from the past 5 Christmases, movie theatres don’t close down over the holidays. I’ve worked on Christmas day before as well as Christmas Eve. In both cases it was a drag but this year it was actually really good. It kept me distracted from the fact that I was (and am) thousands of kilometres away from home!
Sophie and I celebrated Christmas the traditional way. I brought home a cake on Christmas Eve and we ate it together while chatting about what was going on back home. It was a bit heart-wrenching I suppose, but damn if the cake wasn’t delicious. And the cake I bought was perfect too! The last container in the super market when I went there, and only two pieces! It was quite clearly meant to be.
After work on Christmas day I came home for a few hours of webcamming, first watching my family open up their presents and me opening the cards and other little gifts that had been sent to me. I really appreciated it and it felt pretty close to sitting in my living room, smelling the spruce tree and wadding through mountains of wrapping paper.
I’ll talk about what I received in the next post as it applies to some fairly important stuff.
And that was pretty much it! The weekend was sort of slow, Sophie and I just sort of relaxing after having such an awesome time the week before. That weekend also signalled the start of my winter holiday, so I we didn’t get up to anything particularly awe inspiring. I took Sophie to Shibuya for the first time and we wandered around through the various stores there before walking to Harajuku. I bought a nice hoodie at American Apparel (I think Dylan owns the same one) to replace the grey one I bought the previous year. Unfortunately that grey one got a bit sun bleached while out hiking, so it’s now my OFFICIAL hiking hoodie.
Not much else, other than a slight cold that lasted most of the week. I blame that on wearing a wind breaker around Nikko. Le sigh.
Stay tuned for the next update which includes awesome tales of New Years!
Edit: As I finish writing this it’s February 19th and I’m about to head out to Nagano for two more days on the hills!
Edit: Check that, February 25th and I’m back from Nagano. Took a long time to write this one, too many holidays I guess.
Exhibiting the utmost of my alpine ability...
Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello
Photos: 1. The photographer, as shot in the mirror of his hotel room, 2. Sophie and Winny Jumping for joy (Sophie on right), 3. The Abyss, again, as shot the next morning, 4. Winny admiring her well appointed Nikko Imperial Villa, 5. The shot outside the garden, 6. Self-explanatory, 7. The reflecting pool in the garden of the villa, 8. The Villa. Best shot I have taken thus far perhaps, 9. Moss on the stream, 10. Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil, 11. The gate to the Toshigi shrine, 12. the tomb of Tokugawa Ieyasu, 13. Descending from Tokugawa Ieyasu's tomb, 14. Snow over Nikko, 15. The famous bridge of Nikko
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