Golden Week Part II: Nikko

Check out Part I (Tokyo) of my mom's Golden Week visit to Japan here.

From Tokyo, Mom and I boarded a train heading north to the little mountain town of Nikko. The 3-hour ride there took us through a gorgeous (not to mention, extremely relaxing) slideshow of blooming gardens, farmsteads with pagoda-trimmed buildings, and rice paddies filling every corner of land while glistening in the sunset. It was beautiful.

Nikko, whose kanji spelling (日光) literally means "sunshine," is located at the base of the Tochigi mountains and is a popular destination for both the Japanese and foreigners. Needless to say, it is quite a contrast from the planet of Tokyo:

And the town's train station was even designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, further elevating Nikko's level of coolness in my book:

The big draw here, however, was built way before Mr. Wright had even heard about the place. Nikko's many shrines and temples (along with their awesome natural surroundings), are all on UNESCO's World Heritage list because of their history and architectural achievements. Some of them date as far back as the 8th century B.C., and although we had to fight massive Golden Week crowds to get our fill of them, they definitely didn't disappoint:

Out of all the structures within these complexes, a thick cloud of camera-snapping tourists almost always encompasses the base of this building: the stable:

And the reason for all the commotion? A tiny carving of the "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, and See No Evil" monkeys, which represent one of the tenants of Buddhism. Didn't you always wonder where those originated from?

It's pretty easy to get "templed-out" after awhile so to speak, but we throughly enjoyed the colorful buds and blooms coming out the whole time we were in Nikko. Everything from cherry blossoms to pansies, and a few unknowns in-between:

Nikko and the surrounding area are particularly known for producing high quality Yuba, the skin that forms on top of heated soymilk during tofu production. It's usually folded up into "noodles" or wrapped around other foods such as dim sum. Here, it even makes an appearance in my tasty bowl of ramen:

And speaking of food, I can't leave out the quaint little restaurant we happened upon. With only three tables and 20 years worth of traveler's memorabilia plastering the walls and ceilings, a mother and daughter serve up tasty hot noodle and tempura dishes. We even left our own "business card" and had a picture with the owners after chatting a bit. Definitely recommended if you make your way to Nikko with an empty stomach:

While in the area, we used one of our days to take a bus into the mountains and over to the town Chuzenji, which is located on the banks of a caldera lake of the same name:

The hot springs town is most famous for waterfalls (namely the famous Kegon Waterfall) and monkeys. We took in the waterfall, but the only monkey we saw was this one:

After another relaxing train trip back into Tokyo (followed by some not-so-relaxing scurrying through the subway with all of our luggage to the airport), we caught a plane up to our island of Hokkaido, and began in its gateway town of Hakodate, which will make-up Part III of our trip...

Golden Week Part I: Tokyo

The blessed genius of Japan's Golden Week (which consists of about five days off in a row due to national holidays) gave us the opportunity to have yet another family member to come and romp around the country with: my mom (below, fresh off of the plane from Kansas)! Jacob and I flew down to Tokyo to meet her, and we spent our first four days of Golden Week soaking in as much of the World's Largest City (and brilliantly sunny weather) as we could handle:

Fortunately (and unfortunately...later post to come) Japan's famed cherry blossoms were about a week to two weeks late this year. Because of this, we happened upon the last of Tokyo's beautiful sakura trees, and decided to pay our respects:

"Going to" Tokyo usually consists of a lot of walking, people-watching, fashion-gawking, food consumption, and dazed wonderment in general. We found that two of the best places for all of the above were the overly affluent Ginza district (I like to count the ugly Louis Vuttion bags), followed by some serious youth culture overload in Shibuya for the evening:

Fortunately, our chef, Jacob, was on hand to cook us a grand meal of yakisoba and veggies back at the hostel (he's so handy to have when traveling!):

Just like last year with my sister, we used the 4:30am Tokyo sunrise to pry us out of bed in order to make the journey down to the famed Tsukiji Fish Market on the harbor. This place truly is an incredible throng of merciless motorized carts speeding down the narrow lanes, busy wholesalers weighing and cutting their stock for the day, band-saws slicing through huge frozen tuna as if they were pieces of lumber, and local restaurant owners perusing the more than 400 different types of sea critters at their disposal. This is the single largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, and I highly recommend it if you find yourself in Tokyo:

And besides all of that, after dodging mucky water puddles and the above-mentioned demon carts, this place is, without a doubt, where you can get yourself the freshest sushi breakfast ever! Not sure if you like sushi? Leave it to a middle-aged, Kansas lady to tell you that, when it's this fresh, it's really actually pretty tasty:

The look on Jacob's face isn't from his bowl of sashimi...It's from waking up at the butt-crack of dawn with no coffee and a breakfast of only fish fumes:

Not having or owning a car for a couple of years now, I don't tend to think too much about all the public transportation we normally take here to get us around (including a ton of walking as well). It's nice to have visitors who again point out these things, especially if they come from a state where public transportation is a novelty at best:

My mom thinks the people on the subway, however, really need to lighten up:

Tokyo may be billed as one of the most expensive cities in the world, but there are actually quite a few free things for a visitor to do as well. One of them is catching the awesome view of the city (where, on clear days, you can see Mt. Fuji as well) from the top floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building:

Some scenes from the lovely area of Asakusa, where we actually stayed (below). Although it's not as central as some of the other districts in Tokyo, Asakusa tends to have retained a little more of its "old Tokyo" charm than the rest of the ever-modernizing city has, and that's why I like to stay here:

Our last day in Tokyo, Jacob hopped on a big bird back to Sapporo to beckon the calls of work, and Mom and I headed off to walk around the Meiji Jingu shrine, which totally makes you forget that you're walking around in the middle of downtown Tokyo. We got lucky and happened upon a couple of traditional weddings. And we even filled out an ema (votive tablet with a prayer written on it which are hung in Shinto shrines) for the ultimate in full shrine experience:

After some major fashion-gawking and an organic buffet lunch in Harajuku, we boarded a train to the mountain town of Nikko to spend a few days in Tokyo's opposite!

Part II of our trip to come...