[Day 12-13] Nikko
Nikko was slightly ruined by the fact that I wanted a sleep-in. Hence, I didn’t arrive there until about 2pm and therefore my first day was, more or less, a write off. I had already been to Nikko once and had seen all the World Heritage sites, which are beautiful temples and shrines nestled in amongst cedar forests. But Nikko is also famous for its nature - the mountains, lakes, forests and plateaus in the Nikko National Park. And this is what I wanted to focus on this time.
However, after arriving at Nikko, I was told that it takes about an hour to get to the Senjogahara Plateau (which looked like the most interesting part of the national park) and that the hike was three hours long before you took another hour-long bus trip back. Couldn’t fit that in before the last bus left Senjogahara at 6pm, so I walked along the river til I came to the Kanmangafuchi Abyss (although it was hardly an abyss, just a gorge). I hadn’t visited this part of Nikko the last time I was here. It’s a path that runs along the gorge with many jizo - Buddhist statues - lining the path. The saying goes that there is one particular statue among them that mocks travellers that try to count the number of statues, as it’s said to be impossible, that it’s constantly changing.
That’s probably due to the fact that some of the statues seem to be ancient - some have been reduced to rubble or the heads have fallen off or the statues are missing altogether and there’s just a stone foundation left. There’s still others that are nestled in bushes and you may not even see them. So this statue will mock you because you probably can’t always tell if it’s a statue, a rock or just the foundation that you’re counting.
That, and it seems that Nikko is a pretty boring town, so I reckon that the locals get drunk and start moving stuff around in the middle of the night for a laugh.
I couldn’t tell which one of the statues was the mocking one. Took some good photos, though.
My hostel was the Nikko Park Lodge, which I stayed at - kinda by accident - the first time I came to Nikko. Lonely Planet listed two backpackers hostels in Nikko. One I couldn’t find and the second told me that I couldn’t stay. It seemed like they only accepted big groups, like school students on camp. They were nice enough to point me in the direction of a nearby lodge - the Nikko Park Lodge - which thankfully wasn’t expensive but it is out of the way of everything. There isn’t even a combini nearby, so I knew that this time I needed to get dinner and snacks for the night before going up there.
So heading back to town from the Kanmangafuchi Abyss, I stopped by the budget restaurant that, according to the Lonely Planet, everyone goes to. The walls and even the ceiling are plastered with notes, autographed business cards and graffitied train and airline ticket stubs of foreigners - all singing the praises of this place. It’s a little kitschy but you’ll always have something to read while you eat. I spotted a Metlink card amongst it all.
The mama-san of this place has very limited English ability but she certainly doesn’t let it stop her from bustling around, serving and chatting with everyone. I ordered the Lonely Planet’s recommendation of yakisoba. When it arrived, I had to admit that it didn’t look very appetising. But it did taste really good. It was a huge serving too, I just managed get through it all. Cheap too, at 650 yen. Mama-san talked at length about how the Lonely Planet made her restaurant famous. Personally, I think it has to do with being one of the mere two English-friendly places I spotted in Nikko. There’s isn’t a lot of choice in places to eat here and they’re generally situated somewhere inconvenient. Still, I would probably eat there again if I ever visited Nikko again.
Which I probably will do because I didn’t end up going to Senjogahara Plateau the next day, either.
After spending the night at Nikko Park Lodge (which has changed slightly! It now has snacks available and a bar - still a bitch to get to, though) and meeting a Canadian girl who I found out will also be at K’s House in Tokyo with me, I was dropped off in town. Looked up at the mountains….which weren’t there! Thick cloud everywhere. Nikko seemed to be free of rain but I was sure that the Senjogahara Plateau would be covered in cloud and probably drizzly, which is not good hiking weather, thanks very much.
Well, crap. Did I come to Nikko just to look at a statue that was laughing at me?
Decided to send the day looking through the World Heritage area again. I could refresh my memory and take some better photos than I had last time. One of the most impressive sights in Nikko doesn’t let you take photos - the huge golden statues in Rinno-ji temple. I was hoping to get there early to ninja some photos in while it was empty and no-one was looking. However, there was a man standing at the base of the statues, praying. Hung back a bit, waiting for him to finish and move on. He finished…but didn’t move on. Just hung around, looking at the statues, looking at some artifacts nearby, looking at the walls. I did the same, playing the part of Interested And Respectful Foreigner Wishing To Experience Japanese Culture (Then Secretly Desecrate It By Taking Photos).
This guy, however, just wouldn’t move on! He just stood there, he wasn’t even looking at the statues anymore, just generally looking around. A full 10 minutes we were playing the waiting game. I eventually gave up. It’s only so long I can pretend to be interested in artifacts, the signage of which I can’t even read. Hang on, maybe he’s just waiting for me to move on so that he could secretly take photos? What’s Japanese for “I won’t tell if you won’t tell”?
I moved on and left the man behind. As soon as I tuned the corner though, I waited. More statues and artifacts to feign interest in. Oh goody! A gift shop! Okay, that should be about enough - I backtracked to the statues and peeked around the corner.
Dammit, he’s still there! And not even looking at anything! And not taking photos, it seems. Is he on the payroll of the temple? Is it is job to stand there and discourage rule-breakers? Bah humbug.
Moved on to Omotesando, which is nothing like Omotesando in Harajuku.
Nikko is a city of deja vu for me. The last time I was here, walking along Omotesando, elementary school kids (who must’ve been from the countryside because they all had big eyes when they spotted me, the white girl) yelled out “Hello! Hello!” at me and got a kick out of me replying. The same thing happened again on this trip, while walking down Omotesando. Nearly fell down the same steps that I nearly fell down last time. My camera battery went flat in the same temple that it did last time. A lizard crossed my path at exactly the same place one did last time I was here. It was probably the same lizard.
I skipped quite a few things in the World Heritage area this time. Finished the whole thing in under two hours and headed back to the station. Stopped by the Tourist Information Centre where I learnt with some bemusement that a bunch of rock walls holding back the river had been marked ‘Important Cultural Properties’ by the Japanese government. This Information Centre seemed to take it to heart and had video presentations, scale models and informative pamphlets about these rock walls. I don’t know if these walls were Important Cultural Properties as such. They were more like Things That Help Protect Important Cultural Properties, but then again, so is barbed wire.
I think that it was probably just the campaign of some locals to have these walls protected under the Cultural Heritage laws so that hydro-electric plants or similar couldn’t move in. What they have against them, I don’t know. Nikko already has Japan’s biggest hydro-electric plant, I think.
It certainly has a lot of water.
The main river is fed by dozens of little creeks coming down from the mountain, and every path you walk down, there is the sound of running water in the drains beneath your feet. There are special wells that line one particular street, that is meant to give cold water in the summer and warm water in the winter. None of them were working, which was a bit disappointing, but I would’ve been more interested in seeing whether the water was really warm in the winter anyway. Water, I think, is considered quite important to the town’s identity.
It’s quite a holy place, Nikko, even speaking as a non-religious person. You can see quite easily the significance of that mountain that looms over everything - Mount Nantai. There were thousand-year-old relics found on top of the mountain, from the time of hermits and priests establishing sects. The temples are really beautiful here, and even more so for the forests and mountains that surround them. In Kyoto, the temples are generally surrounded by concrete high-rises. The Ichihime Shrine actually has an apartment block built over it’s torii gates, as if the shrine entrance was just the way to the car park! You wouldn’t get that in Nikko.
I’ll probably come back. Not for the temples, because I’ve seen them all now. But I want to have a better look at the mountains, forests and plateaus in all the different seasons.
Urk. This means that there’s only three nights left til I’m meant to climb that other holy mountain….Fuji-san.
Random Tidbits Part Deux
- I replaced the Astro Boy handbag, Maes Hughes sticker and Buster-kun keychain that were stolen from me. Buster-kun, however, is now glow-in-the-dark. I kinda liked the old one better
- Everyone who sees my laptop feels the need to comment on how small it is
- Shinkansen make my ears pop
- I think my shoes may be dead. They certainly smell like a dead thing!
- Baby turtles may be the cutest things in existence
- A Hawaiian saved my holiday from disaster <3
- I never actually tried the Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki…eep
- Earplugs are possibly the most awesome invention, ever
- Shooting past suburbs on the shinkansen, I notice that quite a lot of Japanese homes have solar panels on the roofs. Good on them
- Sawao Yamanaka is a sexy mofo
Nagai Youth Hostel
I’ve been in Nagai Youth Hostel in Osaka for just under an hour now, so let’s list what I already hate about it:
- There’s an 11pm curfew - this may be due to the fact that it’s inside a stadium, and the stadium managment need to shut it down at 11pm, or it could just be one of those stupidities of Youth Hostels.
- The rooms can’t be locked - What your key is for is a locker, whose number corresponds to your bed number. The lockers are admittedly big enough to take a lot, but it is still annoying as hell to have to hoist my backpack in and out of it every time I want to get something. Also, you are supposed to leave your key at the desk when you go out. Why? So they can look through my things?
- The bathroom is a communal tub, Japanese sento style. I do not like participating in group nudity, I’d like to have a private shower cubicle, thanks very much. There are some shower cubicles here, but there’s a communal changeroom before you can get to it.
- Check-out and get-out-of-the-hostel time is at 10am. 10am?! I get UP at 10am! And you want me out of the hostel by then? I understand that hostels want people to get out during the day so that they can do a decent cleaning job but all the other hostels I’ve been in have an 11am check-out time. They let people back in at 3 or 4pm. And even then, K’s House was lenient and if you wanted to spend all day in bed, it wasn’t an issue.
- The bathroom has opening hours. What. The. Fuck. If I want a shower at 6am because I have to be on a shinkansen by 7.30am then I should bloody well be able to take the shower then, or whenever I want to! This bloody stupid rule probably has to do with the sento style of the bathroom but we already know what my feelings about that are and at any rate, I know of sento that are open 24 hours, so you could actually sleep there cheaply, like a manga kissa!
- LIGHTS OUT AT MIDNIGHT! It seems we’re in the prison system, not a youth hostel where young travellers from all over the world meet each other and chat, drink and socialise, sometimes - shock, horror - after midnight! Am yet to find out whether this midnight curfew also includes the small lamps we each get in our bunks.
- The internet is restricted to two old computers, with no access to USB slots and no free WIFI. This means, that despite the fact that I’m writing this about 1 hour after I arrived at Nagai, I won’t be able to post this or any other posts until after I get out of here and back to Tokyo. Keitai posts only til then. Oh, also, the internet here is more expensive than any other place I’ve stayed at.
- It seems to be in a dodgy area. My roommate told me that she felt like she was being stared at and followed while walking through the park and that two guys had actually pulled down their pants at her. Admittedly, she was dressed like a complete slut but I wouldn’t want the same thing happen to me. Not only is the area dodgy, but it’s also bloody far away from Osaka. It’s near Tennoji, which is a half-hour train ride away from Osaka, where everything is. Couple this with the curfew and it means I’ll have to leave the Tenjin Matsuri festivities at about 10pm, which is probably just when it’s hitting its peak.
- Bed sheets are not included with the room charge - which, I might add, is also higher than guesthouses. The bed sheets are also not standard sheets but this sleeping-bag type thing so not only do they regulate what time I can shower, what time I can enter and leave the premises and where I can keep my belongings - they also dictate how I can sleep. The pillow goes in here and you crawl into this bag bit. So if you’re too hot, or if you want to if you wanted to share your bed, or move your pillow, or even yourself - YOU CAN’T. That, or you can’t have sheets. Bring your own. Pfft.
There are some nice things about this place, but not many:
- It’s in a stadium! That was the main thing that drew me about this place. It’s so unique. The ceiling slopes down to the playing field and it’s located in a large park. But, as I mentioned earlier, that park seems to be dodgy. Homeless people generally set up camp in Japan’s metropolitan parks anyway.
- The bed setup is cool. The bunks are built into the wall and each have a curtain so that you can block out light or have a bit of privacy while in bed. It’s the only thing I wish K’s House did. However, they are numbered and your bed is assigned to you, instead of being able to choose where you want to sleep. I’ve been given a top bunk with a viciously unsafe ladder that is a right pain in the ass to get in and out of.
- There’s lots of nearly everything. Lots of washing machines and dryers available (perhaps another one of K’s House failings), lots of tables and chairs, lots of room in the kitchen, lots of vending machines with lots of choice. This is probably due to th fact that it has quite a lot of space. It takes up about a quarter of the perimeter of the stadium. It does also mean that you have to walk a long way if you were unfortunate enough to get one of the furthest-away bedrooms.Oh yeah, there isn’t enough internet access here. One thing it doesn’t have enough of.
- The staff can speak decent English.
So even the few good things have their downsides.
TAKE MY ADVICE, those of thinking of staying in Osaka - DON’T. And certainly not at Nagai Youth Hostel. Stay in Kyoto, which is only about an hour away from Osaka by train (less, if you take the shinkansen or some rapid express service). Kyoto has more interesting things anyway. Osaka should just be done in day trips. It’s also cheaper in Kyoto (most guesthouses are 2500 yen for a dorm) and if you get into K’s House - it’s awesome. The staff are friendly, helpful and great with English, it has no curfew or other stupid rules as outlined above. In fact, due to it’s popularity and success, K’s House Kyoto have bought and demolished the property next door so that they can expand with an annex, which promises to be even more awesome.
This place has shown me the huge difference between hostels and guesthouses. I generally thought they were one-and-the-same, until now. Guesthouse > Youth Hostel. I will not be renewing my YH membership next year.
The only reason I decided to stay in Osaka was because of the Tenjin Matsuri, which is a mainly night-time festival on the riverbanks. I thought that it would be a hassle to have to leave the festival early to get the last train back to Kyoto. But after looking at this curfew and train timetable to Tennoji, it seems like I could stay one hour longer at the festival if I was staying in Kyoto than if I were staying in this bloody Nagai Youth Hostel.
So why am I still staying and not running back to my friends in Kyoto? Ah, well, that’s due the first rule on the list, here at Nagai:
1. Once a payment has been made, it cannot be refunded.
2.40pm Sunday 22nd July
At SETSTOCK’07 in Hiroshima Prefecture. Current band: Chatmonchy. At least, I think that’s their name.
2.40pm Friday 20th July
An elderly Japanese man stopped me in the street and told me emphatically that I needed an umbrella. It was raining but only lightly, so I felt I could walk through the rain to get myself a small compact umbrella to keep, since tsuyu doesn’t seem to want to quit yet. He shoo-ed me into the nearby kiosk where he told me I could buy an umbrella. I thanked him and went inside. No umbrellas were visible but I picked up the paper to read with lunch. Suddenly the man appears behind me and asks the staff for an umbrella and pulls out his wallet. I tried telling him that he didn’t have to pay, but he did anyway and refused to take my money. He then smiled and waved at me and disappeared before I could protest or thank him properly. Hiroshima is messing with my head.
