G8 Online

Today we discovered another use for our Japan Rail Passes : travel on the shinkansen or bullet trains. Having dragged ourselves out of bed before six o'clock to get on one, we were hugely impressed when we did. Fox had no complaints about legroom - a rarity in itself. The train was a little taller than British trains, which enabled it to house two floors rather than one, and about a million times quieter and smoother than British trains - not to mention being quicker. Having enjoyed this luxury for an hour, we then disembarked to get a local train to our final destination.

This was the ancient Japanese religious centre of Nikko, generally considered a must-see for tourists as it contains all manner of historic temple and shrine-type stuff. As a bonus, the scenery was pretty impressive as well, and given the excellent morning weather, we decided that we should go up into the hills first and take a look.

After another long bus ride we were all a bit fed up of travelling, but we were now up in the hills at Chuzenji-ko (i.e. Lake Chuzenji).

As you can see, the scenery was great; it was a welcome change from Tokyo and the air was much more pleasant. (Picture 1) (Picture 2) (Picture 3) (Picture 4) We then headed off to a nearby 100-foot waterfall which included an elevator down the hillside to let you look at it from the bottom as well as the top. This was suitably impressive and provided a few photos-for-the-relatives opportunities (Picture 1) (Picture 2) into the bargain.

Sultoon and I then took in a meal, although we had to eat it at indigestion-inducing speed in order to get the bus down with everyone else. Having just about succeeded, we headed back to the shrines. We purchased the shrine equivalent of an all-zones ticket, which let us access any religious site of interest, and started wandering around.

There were the usual etiquettes to observe (removing shoes, cleansing before entering shrines) and the usual gags to recite about Shints, but the temples were genuinely impressive. Among other things, we saw the original "three wise monkeys" in their "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" pose. Japanese religion and artistry seem to be even more closely linked than in Christianity, so there were lots of other attractive things to see - here's a couple of samples (1) (2) - I won't bore you with too much!

The place was swarming with schoolchildren, just like every tourist site in Japan - Japanese kids seem to get more school days out in a week than I had in my entire school career. George dipped into a Y100 fortune-telling bowl, which allowed you to choose a little piece of folded card which allegedly contained details of whether you would be fortunate in the near future. The alternatives, according to the guide-book, were "Good Luck", "Luck" (still pretty good), "No Luck" (you aren't due any good fortune) and "Bad Luck" (poor). George opened it with some trepidation, only to find, predictably enough, that it was all in Japanese. Undaunted, he asked a nearby Japanese religious fellow, who managed to communicate to him that it was "No Luck". Yuhei would later give a full breakdown of the rows of Japanese script which explained just how fortunate George was set to be in every aspect of his life.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were all shrined out by mid-afternoon, and settled on a trip back to Tokyo to catch the final group match of the day, the Japan v Belgium game. We even managed to catch quite a bit of South Korea v Poland as well, but ended up having a bit of a quiet evening... unfortunately, I didn't make any diary notes for the day, so that's why I can't remember any other comedy anecdotes. Never mind - on to Day 10 ...>