Japan Days: nine, ten, eleven, twelve

Day Nine

On our way to Miyajima Island we stopped in Hiroshima. To get there we had several different forms of transportation.

First a normal subway train to this platform.

Here is the first bullet train we rode in Japan. They are super super fast and the inside looks like airplane seats complete with trays for food.

We also rode a bus and took this trolley.

This is The Dome, which is the only standing building after WWII dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It was strange to see the gutted building.

As you can see it is located right next to this pretty river. 

We also visited a memorial building that showed pictures and movies of the people who were hit and affected by radiation poisoning and cancer and such. I was not alive when any of this happened but it was starting to make me tear up. I couldn't see how there was ever a war with Japan when the people here are so nice.

This is a memorial for a little girl who got cancer from the bomb when she was four and died of it when she was twelve. Behind it are encased colorful necklaces and peace signs that were brought over by the hippies so in the 1960's. 

This is what Chris called a fence-bench. I think it's a fitting name. Here he is waiting for the trolley. 

We also took a ferry across the ocean to reach Miyajima island.

The ferry got real close to the famous torii gate that sits in the water. 

This is a replica of the island.

This place, similar to the deer park we visited, had deer that simply walked around town and were not scared of people. However these deer don't have the benefit of deer crackers. We were not allowed to feed them and there was not much grass. I saw some of them eating seaweed after the tide went out. A couple of them were rather skinny. 

Amanda pays too much:

It is a bad idea to tell Amanda to pay the entrance fee at the Daigonji temple when she is hot and tired. When we reached the gate to this the total cost for two was 600 yen. I looked in my wallet and saw a five and an one and pulled them out. The only bad thing about this was that I had pulled out a five thousand and a one thousand and was totally overpaying the guy. He just sat there a bit confused and Chris took the extra money back.

But we did get to take a totally candid shot of these two people getting married there. At least it looked like they were getting married. The bride is colorful and the groom is the guy closest to her with his head towards us wearing black.

After walking through the temple and up a few streets we made it to our hotel. Our one night accommodations looked like this. The pillows here had mostly cotton stuffing with only a little bit of that grain/seed that was in the monastery pillows so it wasn't very noticeable when you slept on it.

After laying round by the air conditioner on the wall, we got to ride this ropeway zipline to the top of a mountain. Unfortunately for us the lady selling us tickets at the bottom of the mountain would not let us buy it one way. The plan had been to ride up and hike down, but she said it got dark at seven (it was four) and we wouldn't make it down before dark so would only sell us round trip tickets. 

The top of the mountain looked like this once we reached it by two separate rope ways. The little island that you see is one of the very few uninhabited islands of Japan.

Enjoy a small panaramic view.

This is the other sky way car, funicular, that we transferred into to reach the top of the mountain. It had only two cars and ran every fifteen minutes.

After making it back down, (the last car was at 5:30) we decided that we should hike up the base of the mountain a ways. While we did some lady who was by herself insisted on taking our picture for us. Here we are!

If you look at our first Japan food post you can read the story of how we got dismissed from our hotel for accidentally eating another person's reserved dinner. We walked around for an hour and took pictures of this torii gate in the water before we headed back. This is the eighth rendition of the gate as over time the base rots. The tide was much lower in the evening so you could almost walk out to it.

In Japan people are not scared to take public baths. But me...I was. I had not set foot in one the whole trip, but this hotel had a public bath that was more private. There were two separate doors that could be locked and only two could be in the place at a time. So I tried it out. Below are the bath tubs.When you step in, the wood at the bottom of the floor wobbles to and fro like a see saw.

To take a proper bath you first sit on the stool and get wet with the shower head that is attached to the wall. Then you apply the soap that is in the bottles, body, shampoo and conditioner and then rinse off again. It's not all that easy being accustomed to a shower that stays above my head to wash my hair with one hand while holding the spraying water with the other. 

After you're clean then you relax in the tub like sitting in a hot tub. I knelt in it. I was a little hesitant to fully sit down in water that had been used by another person even though that's the reason you shower before going in. Plus there was hair floating in my tub.

Day Ten: Himeji castle

We visited Himeji Castle and left our bags in a koin rokka at the train station. This was our favorite castle because it had white walls, versus black, and you can take pictures inside and it was very well fortified for protections. There were triangular and rectangular holes in the walls for archers and standing platforms to throw boulders. It was home to an actual princess too.

This is the main keep which had about seven floors to it. Here is a picture of a hallway. There were other places with lots of wooden hooks on the walls that we assumed were for holding weapons. Climbing stairs in this place was hazardous. The stairs were set so that as you walked up floor beams would suddenly appear at your head. In a few places these were so low you had to bend literally half way over to duck under the board as you climbed the stairs. We also got to climb up through a trap door in the floor/ceiling into the highest floor. That floor had a shrine at the top and was the most crowded one because it was the smallest and the stairs going back down were narrow and steep.

Here is a view looking out one of the windows. You can see the roof tiles and the town below.

This castle has been under renovation for lots of years and just reopened this year (2015) so it was pretty neat that we got to see it.

This is not the main keep but a hallway that connects to the princess's rooms and her servants' rooms. These buildings were located down a few paths. 

These are statues of women playing cards in the room the princess would have gotten dressed in for the day. 

Random note: My journal reminds me that I had dream about Barbie doll dresses this night. They were on sale for two dollars and I couldn't decide which one I wanted to buy my girls back home. Pretty random, but they have started to get into Barbie dolls.

Day Eleven: Iga Ueno (Ninja Town)

We toured inside of an actual ninja house. These people would have been farmers and they slept and woke practicing their ninja skills. They were all vegetarians so they could limit the amount they smelled and they slept on their left sides to protect their hearts.When they walked silently, they walked in a crouched position stepping on top of their hands.

The picture above is of a secret hide out revolving door. Here is one of the people in our group who got to use the door. He was not as fast as the demonstrator and did not manage to stop the door behind him in a few seconds.

This is secret door in the wall. To open the door you had to use two pieces of paper, the demonstrator used leaves, to flip up the hooks that held it shut. Then you jumped out.

Here is the tunnel under the house that we did not get to go down. It would serve as another secret exit for the ninja.

Here is a triangular hide out that I got to go inside inside the side of a closet. It was pretty small and there were two small slits in the brown boards on the wall that I could see out through. I had to duck down a little to view through them. Ninjas back then were rather short people.

The secret floor board where extra weapons were kept. It could only open if the sliding door was open.

Valuables were kept outside under the porch buried under sand in a pot since bad guys wouldn't expect to look outside. To open it you had to remove the base of the sliding door. They stored coins tied on a rope (the coins had holes in the center) and recipes for crafting things like poison for their darts.

After the Ninja house, we got to tour a ninja museum. Chris is standing on shoes that ninjas used to cross swamps. They would be hard to walk in.

Ninja clothes. We also saw lots of weapons and learned how they passed secret messages by color coding grains of rice.

After that we saw a ninja show. Here is a dude cutting through reeds that have been soaked for 24 hours to be thickness of a human neck. He cuts through in one slice.

There were also demonstrations of fight scenes using other weapons against each other, using climbing items to scale a wall, blow guns and throwing stars.

Ninja town is the only place you can see these really fancy colorful trains. I bet you can see the ninja eyes.

And this one is just cute!

Day Twelve: Last Day

Our last day before our over 24 hour trip back home was my birthday. Happy birthday to me! I am 27 if you want to know. I got to dress up as a maiko, a geisha in training. I had an hour long photoshoot and an hour long getting painted and into the gown. We had trouble coming up with new poses to do. There wasn't much room for movement. Here you can see me pretending to pour traditional Japanese tea. 

The sleeves are really long.

At the end of the hour, I was ready to take off the full wig. It was starting to get heavy! It also left a mark on my head. 

Then we had to go down shopper streets to pick up last minute presents for everyone.

Here is a little girl all dressed up. Her mom is dressed up in front of her but the dad is blocking it.

And more dressed up people complete with umbrellas that you don't want to poke you. They use umbrellas all the time to keep off the sun.

Typical walking around.

Day Five, Six, Seven, Eight in Japan

Day Five Friday

We climbed a large mountain to get to the top where we could meet monkeys. They are not in the cage. We are! In order to feed the monkeys people had to stand inside a building that had two sides made out of this wire where the monkeys could climb and reach through for food. We were not supposed to get that close to the monkeys outside but they didn't mind walking right next to us.

 Here is Amanda feeding a monkey.

 Here is Chris feeding the picky eater monkey. This one would not eat apple seeds or peanut shells. He would hand them back to us, so we fed them to his friend beside him who didn't care. 

 Here is a cute baby monkey.

There three newborn ones that are a month old and we got to see this one.

Next on our list was a walk through a bamboo forest.

 Here is a graveyard that is attached to a temple; Adashino Ninbutsuji. There was not anything all that different about the actual temple. The graveyard was the main attraction. By day five all the temples and shrines start to look the same.

 But this place was different. This is at Otagi Nenbutsuji. It is surrounded by hundreds of stone faces. With the moss they look to be ancient but they were really created in 1980-1991. 

 While we were walking up to this place we met a guy who wanted to know what state we were from. The last time anyone asked they had proceeded in giving us a confused look, but not this guy. He knew exactly what we were talking about and asked us to confirm if that was home of the Badgers. Bucky Badger yes sir! Then he started dancing around saying he liked football and pretended to throw an imaginary ball. It was pretty great!

Day Six

Here is what Japanese coinage looks like.

 We climbed Mt. Kurama. We should have timed ourselves. It may have taken us about an hour or so. This mountain reaches 570 meters above sea level. The Kurama Temple is located halfway to the top. There are also other pagodas and temples on the mountain  It is said that a great king Mao-son visited this temple from Venus. And power, light and love emanate from the mountain.

The picture above are some cool steps with lanterns. 

This one below is what the actual path looked like.

 The path is winding and twisting and you walk on dirt, rocks, and tree roots. This is not something I would want to climb in the dark.

But my favorite part of the hike was at the end when my legs were starting to feel like jelly from all the stairs. I had not been doing stair interval training or anything. This mountain would be a good place for that. My legs were literally shaking if I stopped moving (although they did not hurt). I tried to take a movie if it, but you couldn't see it. Either way, I thought it was pretty cool. 

Back at the hotel we spent three hours doing laundry because the free dryer took forever. 

Day Seven:Ekoin

As you may have noticed the amount of things we did in a day went down after Kyoto. This is due to travel time. We had to spend three hours for a way one trip to a lot of our destinations. This trip to Ekoin monestary had three trains, a bus, and this funicular. 

 It's hard to see how steep the route actually was that we climbed mostly because the funicular is slanted to match so you are right side up. 

 The same thing here where everything is slanted to match the slant of the mountain. It climbed about 960 feet in five minutes.

Here is the room inside Ekoin. Due to the fact that our window patio was closed off with rice paper screens, the sun was in our room at 4 am and our neighbors were up too making noise. However, it was still a great experience. 

 This is the outside of the place. Under the taller part of the roof is the main office. Off to the left is where you enter. There is a place to take your shoes off and put them on a shelf. Everyone has to wear slippers inside the monastery. There is an additional pair of slippers to change into when you enter the rest room.

 When we were there two large tour buses were also present. We had our meal brought to us in our room. You can see the first post about food for more information on that. This table is the welcome table that had hot water and tea bags to make tea. It was pushed to the side for the food trays and pushed aside when they brought in the futon beds.

 Before bed we walked through a really long graveyard that lead up to the tomb of Kobo Daishi who was the first monk to introduce the particular sect of Buddhism that the monks practiced. He is also not called dead but in "eternal meditation." The tombstones here looked like small temples and shrines with some being long wooden posts with words on them. It is a really long graveyard/ mountain walk because everyone wanted to be buried by Kobo Daishi for good luck.

Here are the beds. To get the full experience we had to wear the yukatas that were there specifically to sleep in. The futon mat was soft. The blanket seemed to be a bunch of pillows that were sown together and tossed inside a cover like a sheet. The pillows were not traditional at all. Well not western style. Inside the pillow was filled with a type of grain that was the size of corn kernels. I was able to sleep just fine even though it was bumpy. 

 

 Day Eight: Deer Park

I never did get a deer to give me a good bow on camera, but these deer will bow back to you and then you feed them a deer cracker. 

The deer are very good at swarming you if you have crackers. They also don't care if they are laying in the middle of the sidewalk in your way. They were everywhere. 

Todai-ji Temple

Connecting to the deer park was the Todai-ji temple.This is the entrance to it below.

He appears to be a statue warrior. 

Even though we are on day Eight Chris and I were still amazed at how many school field trips there are to tourist sites. It made navigating through them a little hard at times. 

This temple contains the largest Buddha statue. His ear is 8 feet and his eye 3 feet, so basically my kids are a little taller than his eyeball and I am shorter than his ear.

The wonderful deer.