Colin’s Visit – Part 5: Nagano

I am lazy, or I don’t have enough time, or both.  At any rate, here is our trip to Nagano, predominantly in pictures.  It’s like a coffee-table book, but so much awesomer.

Matsushiro

Our first stop was the castle town of Matsushiro, in the southern part of Nagano City.  The Sanada family ruled here for 250 years. Only the walls remain of the original castle built in the 1500s, but it was still fun to walk around in.  Parts of the castle grounds have been reconstructed over the years, including watchtowers and the main gate.  When we were there, a couple boys were climbing all over the place, despite the fact that the sign said, “Don’t climb the walls!”

Naughty boy.

Awesome old pine tree at the Chokuji temple of the Sanada family that ruled the area.

Mausoleum of Sanada Nobuyuki, first lord of the Sanada family.

A canal that ran through the cemetary.

There were awesome old samurai houses everywhere, so it we wore ourselves out trying to see everything.  Most of the properties that allow tourists (that’s right!  Some of these old houses are private residences after all these centuries) were donated by families that lived in the houses up until recently.  One such house we visited, and it was more or less intact from the Edo period.  It had a koi pond, and a ornamental and vegetable garden.  Maybe an orchard too, I forget.

You must be this big to enter the samurai house.

Colin communes with the koi at the samurai house.

A different house, but of the same period and probably a similar class. I assume this was recently donated to the city and was being repaired.

Yudanaka and the Monkey Park

The next day we traveled to the famous monkey park, Jigokudani, outside of Yudanaka Onsen.  The trip out was gorgeous, with snowy mountains, orchards, and small farms the whole way.  When we reached the park, it was snowing.  They provided lengths of hand-made rope (probably straw from the rice harvest) to tie around your shoes to keep from slipping on the path.  Awesome.

That's me in the foreground.

The monkeys ignored all the tourists, and people are strictly prohibited from feeding or touching the monkeys.  As per usual in Japan, everyone followed the rules.

However, on our way back to the gate, a monkey ran past and touched me. I didn’t see it, but Colin said he trotted by and tugged on my pants leg without even slowing down.  I guess he was interested in polar fleece.

The cutest monkey ever.

Colin with his monkey pal

Nagano City

That’s right, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics.  And boy, there are figure skaters all over the place, eating and doing stuff.

So, Nagano, in contrast to Matsushiro, is a temple town, that built up around the Zenkouji temple, which is a piece of fuckin’ awesome, if you ask me.  The grounds are HUGE, with temples and pagodas and ponds, and even Shinto shrines and little dwellings for pilgrims (or tourists) to stay.  Additionally, there’s an underground tunnel, directly beneath the altar, pitch-black and windy, with an enormous “key” mounted to the wall on a hinge.  Pilgrims go through the tunnel and feel around for it.  If you find it, you will get into heaven, so the line goes reaaalllly slowly.  At any rate, I’m getting into zen heaven now.

In front of the gate at Zekouji

At the Zenkouji there were these strange stone tablets with abacuses embedded inside... I am going to Buddhist hell now.

Downtown Nagano city is fantastic, in my opinion.  It’s everything Tokyo isn’t, or should be, at any rate.  It’s smaller, cleaner, and way friendlier.  There are fantastic, organic, local-vegetarian-food serving, chic buffets, international booze shops (Oregon Pinot, anyone?)…

In Nagano City. I love this guy.

The lovely little kappa I've met before.

… and a plethora of offerings at the other end of the spectrum:  cheap bars (izukaya), sweet/souvenir/pawn shops, and hostess bar/borderline sex parlors.   What?  You don’t know about Japan’s crazy sex industry?  Well, for starters, despite all the crazy pornography and other sex-related ephemera (in the form of toys, comics, movies, television, cartoons, collectible figurines, newspapers, magazines, “love hotels”, and restaurant/bars all readily available), genitalia is strictly forbidden from being shown.  Butts and boobs are okay, but anything in the front below the belt is blurred or pixelated out.  I rented Amadeus here, and they even blurred out a groin that was shown for a moment.  That, along with other aspects of Japanese society that are way to complex to get into here, social expectations and desires in the sexual realm are a little different.  Aside from the kinky stuff you’ve probably heard about, it’s not quite as taboo here to pay someone for simple companionship.  Business men that are more or less estranged from their wives, lonely female corporate workers, and others, flock to hostess and host bars and pay a hefty sum to have someone fancy come over and laugh at their jokes and fawn all over them.  The host bars are a more recent development, but many women shell out big bucks to have a fancy dude sit and listen to their problems.  Other activities include drinking (LOTS!), karaoke, and sometimes dating and sex (after a fair amount of time and money are spent, as well some choice gifts given).

Tokyo is the place to find all the fancy ladies and gentlemen of the night.  In Nagano City, most of the hosts and hostesses are a little bit homely.

Why are all these men so incredibly ugly? Note the sign for Club Bibulous on the upper left.

Ueda

The remains of Ueda Castle. Did I mention it was freezing?

Our final stop was Ueda, and it was nice and brisk that day.  Unfortunately, I had gotten us bus tickets for 6PM, which sounded like a great idea at the time, but around 4:00 we were tired, cold, and hungry.

Anywho, our first adventure was at the remains of Ueda Castle, which has a pretty interesting history.  It’s most famous for repelling multiple attacks against huge odds.  For the details, I’m sure you can read a book.  All that remains now is the moat, and various structures that have been rebuilt over the years, the oldest of which are about 250 years old.

As seen on TV.

While we were at the castle, I saw a TV star from the live-action Sailor Moon series.  She played one of the villains, and I remember remarking on how weird her face was.  I initially noticed her because she was dressed in much nicer clothes than everyone else (an expensive dress suit, probably for a funeral), and she was cutting right across the property and a much quicker pace than the other tourists.  So, yeah, there you are.

Canals like this are not uncommon in smaller cities in Japan.

After tromping around in the freezing cold for a few hours, we finally found some sort of “path of interest,” featuring numerous noteworthy temples and shrines, some of which were quite old.  My favorite bit was the last Shinto shrine we went to:  there were a trio of enormous, ancient trees, each over a thousand years old.

Whatever it was looked really interesting.

That would be the thing of interest.

Home again, home again…

Produce vending machines. Small-time farmers don't need a market!

August! Part 5 – Nagano, part deux

After visiting Nagano city, mom and I went on to Matsumoto, which is home to the famous Mastumoto castle, among other things.  Now, let me tell you that the train ride from Nagano City to Matsumoto is certainly the most beautiful ride that I have ever partaken of, and I highly recommend it to everyone.  The line winds its way through mountain towns/farming communities, and you can catch glimpses of rolling green hills in between the forested mountains.  Naturally, I neglected to take any photos.

See all those people on the bridge? That's just to get into the castle grounds...

In Matsumoto, we stood in line for about an hour to get into the castle.  Now, this should have been my first clue, but I naturally thought, “Once we get in, I’m sure it will be awesome.” Well, at least it was cool, as in temperature. Unfortunately, I forgot that this week was a national holiday for everyone, so the place was packed. We moved through the castle at a snail’s pace, and while it was interesting, we became so exhausted in the crush of everyone that we lost interest in lingering to inspect the details.
Not surprisingly, we ran into quite a few foreign tourists, and I got that feeling of conflict I always do where I want to distance myself from them, but I also want to talk to them. Mom walked right up and talked to some very nice, albeit very loud and fat (like, obese) ladies from the states. They were taking a crazy trip from coast to coast on a tour bus, and it sounded exhausting, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly.

Old pistol - a ten-shooter??

There were a lot of interesting old rifles and pistols, but they didn’t bother displaying any of the stuff American tourists were interested in, like swords and the like. Peering at the rifles reminded me of some evolutionary tree, with Japan being a section that branched off long ago. The guns resembled Western models, but the details were different, like something out of fantasy. For those of you that have seen Miyazaki films, with all of his crazy flying machines that bring to mind some sort of zeppelin/Spruce Goose hybrid, these weird cousins of our pistols and rifles might make more sense.

... and then this giant frog came along...

Afterwards, we found a cute little shopping street that was more or less unchanged for a million years, or something like that. Everything here is either super-new or -old. In any case, there was a frog theme to the street – I don’t know why, but Japanese people love any excuse to manufacture and buy mascot goods, so it probably had something to do with that. There was an awesome frog statue at the entrance, featuring weirdly cute samurai amphibians. The stores ranged from cutesy-pottery shops to flat-out junk stores, so it would have been interesting if we weren’t so tired from the castle foray. My favorite shop was crammed with junk from the ancient to the mundane – the most interesting of which was a porcelain couple, probably about two hundred years old, completely naked and in a very interesting sexual position.

Not the best one, but good.

August! Part 4 – Nagano

So, dear readers, the next day of summer vacation was a crazy trip to see an active volcano, numerous mountains, a hot spring, and a huge buddhist temple.
We started in Gunma, taking off at 7AM with Sarah and her friend, mom, and my bosses the Imais. Our first stop was the active volcano, Mt. Asama, or by the Japanese name, Asama-san. I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been, of the overwhelming sulphur smell everywhere – like rotten eggs.

Mt Asama

When I think of volcanoes, I imagine the hellish lava fountains, belching black smoke, and bizarre rock formations, but no particular smell comes to mind in my imagination. Well, dear readers, let me tell you, volcanoes stink.
Next, we went to the incredibly famous hotspring (onsen) town, Kusatsu. They’re really into telling you about all the famous people who’ve written about this place, how old it is, and the pH balance of the water (I kid you not – every onsen has detailed chemical descriptions of their water, something most Americans would probably be too dumb to ever figure out).

Sarah and Vasili

As this was an onsen near to and heated by Asama-san, it also smelled. Yes, the entire town smelled like hard-boiled eggs. Still it was a neat little place – very mountainous, which is rare for Japanese towns. They almost entirely build on the flat areas, so it was cool to see all the buildings in the hilly landscape. Through the center of town runs a river of heated water the color of pea soup, sluiced into troughs that eventually spill out from a man-made waterfall into a large pool. This is to cool the water, and it also looks really neat.

Water goes in here...

... and comes out here.

Sarah, mom, and I went for a soak in the public rontenburo (and open-air onsen bath), and poor Vasili went over to the men’s side all by himself. Since all the ladies are completely naked, they prefer you don’t take photos, so here’s one someone else took.

Kusatsu rotenburo

It was really hot, and then the weather was hot, but the water was so weirdly blue. It was awesome. We sat around in the rotenburo for a while, and then we went off to a lunch of okonomiyaki.
From what I’ve read, I think that okonomiyaki came out of post-WWII Japan (let me know if I’m mistaken). They are a kind of savory pancake, with a base of cabbage and flour. There’s usually an egg involved, as well as some meat, like beef, seafood, or sometimes chicken. I assume this is because, back in the day, cabbage and flour were some of the few food items that were cheap and readily available in war-torn Japan.
Now, okonomiyaki at an actual okonomiyaki restaurant is quite an experience if you have yet to have it. The closest thing I can think of in Oregon is a Korean barbecue, since that usually features a hot grill in the center of the table. In any case, you get a bunch of ingredients delivered to your table and make it yourself. It’s hot and difficult, but quite enjoyable. Well all tried our hand at making it, but Mrs. Imai was indeed the most skillful – a surprise to no one.
Next on our list was a hike up to the Yugama crater lake at Shirane-san (Mt. Shirane).

The road between Gunma and Nagano

The drive there was absolutely gorgeous. The mountains between Gunma and Nagano are beautiful, and relatively pristine. Some deer were spotted (not by me), and the hills rolled on forever in every direction.
The hike up to the lake was crawling with tourists – surprising to an out-of-shape American since most of us never seem to hike anywhere with a more than 5 degree incline. Anywho, the water in the crater lake was weirdly aquamarine and opaque. Once again, the familiar egg smell wafted through the air, but it was not nearly as strong as it was at the volcano.

Posing in front of the crater lake

From there, our next stop was Nagano city in Nagano prefecture. The drive was pretty long, and I think we all passed out in the car on the way there. Once there, the Imais bid us farewell after helping us check in to our hotel.

Zenkoji gate. Look closely at how it dwarfs the people nearby.

We all decided to hike up to the Zenkoji temple, which was pretty close. Since Nagano hosted the 1998 Olympic Games, the city has a lot of new buildings, but they were all built to look old-fashioned. The city is pretty awesome, nice and clean, and no where near as annoying and crowded as Tokyo. I decided that I sort of wished I lived in Nagano.
The Zenkoji temple compound is amazing. It’s huge, and there are so many buildings. Additionally, that weekend was Obon Week, a pretty big deal here where everyone goes to visit their family for a week and pay their respects to their deceased ancestors. It’s neat, because pretty much everyone gets at least a few days off from work, and they head out to the country to spend time with family and dance at nightly festivals.
Because of Obon, the temple was decorated with lanterns and other festival outfittings.

Obon lanters

It was beautiful at night, and strangely empty, so the grounds seemed to have more magic than they usually do… then I saw the vending machine that dispenses the good luck charms.

You're in luck!

Ah, Japan.