Nikko!

 So I'm just a tad bit behind on posts, but what's so new about that..so stick with me. This time I've decided to override the Megabus approach and split this baby up into a few bite sized pieces of deliciousness for you. The first taste is going to be the gorgeous and awe-inspiring NIKKO!

    Last week, I so graciously received and welcomed with open arms a holiday on Thursday from the school for Waseda's Birthday (founding), and seeing since I normally have Wednesday's off anyways, I decided to make a trip of it! I did some research, and found that Nikko was supposed to be beautiful this time of year, perfect for 紅葉 (kouyou-fall colors). I woke up on Wednesday ready and set to go. I packed, and next thing I knew I was off to Asakusa station to catch my train out to Nikko. 

     After a 2 hour train ride, and an hour long bus ride, I arrived in Nikko! It was absolutely absolutely gorgeous. 

This is Kegon Falls, there were so many beautiful waterfalls as I'm sure you'll see in the following parade of pictures. 

Wednesday was chilllllly. I definitely put on all the clothes I brought with me and looked hardcore like a hobo. All the other Nikko tourists kept staring at me, it was awesome. The picture above is of the Lake, Lake Chuzenji. It was really foggy and I couldn't see very far at all. If you squint a bit you can see a green swan in the picture. They had lots of swan boats! It was hilariously awesome. 

Here is Ryuzu Waterfall, notice the beautiful colors! 

More Ryuzu! Gorgeousgorgeousgorgeous.

This is the top of Ryuzu. 

Here is the river as I was hiking up. If you look back, you can see the lake at the far end. 

Gorgeous.

Here's the start of my hike. It was through the Senjogahara Marsh. It was about a 2.5 hour walk up along the river and the falls up to Lake Yunoko. 

Here is more of the Marsh. It was gorgeous with the mountains in the background. Whilst walking, I didn't really see many other tourists because it was a Wednesday(apparently the weekends in Nikko are ridiculously crowded), but I did see/touch/talk to hundreds and hundreds of elementary school Japanese kids from across Japan. According to my host mom, it's a very popular elementary school destination (it is a World Heritage site). Anyways, I had to work hard to get past them on the little dock walkway. Every single kid I passed (out of hundreds I mind you) would wave to me and give me a very Japanese "Harrro" and talk to their friends about a gaijin. They were very excited to see me, some even asked to touch me. I soon realized these were most definitely not Tokyo kids, but a bit more rural and a bit more unaccustomed to seeing a white kid. It was cute the first few times, and then when they started holding up their hands to me E.T. style asking to "Touch?!" I started to get a little...

This was after I passed them. I very well couldn't take a picture of them, seeing as they were taking pictures of me. hahah. 

This is Yudaki falls. The picture doesn't show it's size and enormity very well, I apologize. 

Here is the top of the Yudaki falls, you probs can't see in this picture, but at the bottom there is a small blue crowd of school children. Intenseee. 

This is Lake Yunoko. It was amazing. So calm and refreshing. 

This is where things get....interesting. See, I had this plan. It was a great plan. An epic plan, if I do say so myself, but...well...things didn't exactly go on script. In my hiking book, I had read about this awesome hike that started at the Ski Slope (Pictured above) and took about 6 hours. It was supposed to be a great combo to the first hike I did and had a place along the route to spend the night (the "Emergency Hut") that was about half way in. So, I decided I'd go for it. I like hiking, I had a sleeping bag, and I didn't mind if I was hiking in the dark for an hour or so, I knew I had done lots of night hiking before, so I just brought a flashlight as preparation. Well, by the time I started, I was already a half hour behind planned in Lucy's head schedule thanks to distractions and wanderings of Lucy type, but I figured I'd still be fine. It was only 4:30 or so, and I'd be at the lodge (although it's called an "emergency hut", it's actually a free cabin that are pretty common in Japan on hiking trails) at around 7:30ish, which seemed reasonable enough to me. So I started off, and things were going alright at this point. It was a little bit...complicated for a hike, but I figured it'd probably stop being an almost straight up climb of roots and ropes and loose rocks and become a sort of trail soon enough, it had to, right? I mean, this guy in my book had said nothing about it being straight up climbing...so I figured I'd continue on. At about 5:00 or so, I ran into some hikers coming down (and mind you, it gets a lot darker earlier in Japan probably pitch black around 5:45 or so thanks to no daylight savings), anyways, so I run into these hikers and they are shocked that I'm going up, like concerned shocked, and I of course play it off no biggie, mentioning the fact that I have a flashlight and camping gear (all in Japanese), so they carefully warn me to be safe, and up and up I go. At probably 5:15 or so, it's starting to get dark, and the trail hasn't stopped it's rockclimbing acting game, so I now am working on the fact that my hiking author is a big fat liar. After another 5 minutes or so of debating and analyzing how concerned fellow hikers were, I finally realized that I had no idea if this lying author meant 3 hours, or 5 and no idea when the rock climbing would stop. While I normally don't mind night hiking, I knew this was a case to throw in the towel, or burn said liar of an author's book, and climb back down in the dark very carefully. 

So there I was, in the dark, cold, and emitting waves of despair from defeat. (I'm a proud hiker, I don't like turning around). To add troubles to my situation, I unfortunately had already missed the last bus down to other stops, so I knew I was camping out in the cold. I found the campgrounds, and although I had food and a sleeping bag, I slept a very very cold night. 

All in all, it was a hilarious experience that I wouldn't change for the world, but boy am I mad I didn't make it to that Emergency Hut.

After a cold, and slightly restless night, I woke up bright and early (5:30ish) and made my way wandering around the area waiting for the first bus at 7:30.  

This is where the hot water comes from for the onsen's . It's super smelly! 

The lake in the morning air. It was actually really peaceful being up around 6 am or so despite the background chatter of hundreds of little kids. 

After wandering around and eating, I finally made my way down out of Nikko National Park and over to the World Heritage Site, the Buddhist Temples, which are extremely famous.

Since I was there so early, the first two I went in to, were literally empty. I was the only one wandering around the fog covered sites. It was calm and peaceful and breathtaking.

This is the bigggg one. 

After spending a few hours there, I made my way to the famous Red Bridge (Shinkyo)!

This was the pretty walkway to get there. 

Dundundunnah!

The temples were absolutely beautiful. They truly matched their surroundings in grandeur and breath stealing ability. I loved all the moss hugging every single object. I am most definitely a sucker for moss. 

Since I was already out of the National Park and down in the city part (about an hour bus ride apart) I decided I would go on a different hike to fill up my Thursday, especially since I didn't have any time to do any big hikes up in Nikko. As such, I decided to try and to to the Kiryuu Highlands that was on my map. Apparently this was the trip of failed hikes, because..well..just wait. 

These are the first steps I went on, I was glad I was wearing my watershoes. It had rained in the morning, and the water was literally just streaming down the mountain. 

It wasn't exactly on par with Nikko, but it was still beautiful.

After about 25 minutes in, I hit my turn off point, which to my surprise, was closed off! It had a sign saying that the trail closed August 31st (which I then kindly thanked in my head the Tourism lady who when I asked about how to get to the hike, encouraged me to go an have fun!). I of course decided to sneak through just for a bit to get a sweet pic.

I actually couldn't really read all the sign, but it was going through another ski resort, and I wasn't sure if it was dangerous or what the deal was. If I had been in the US, I might have continued, but since it was already rainy and windy, and I wasn't sure the reason for closure, I decided to sneak my pictures, and then head back down.

This is literally what my trail was the entire time. It was like the trail became a spring in late fall or something.

After I got over the cold, it was actually kind of fun. Go watershoes!!

After making it down the mountain, I had about 15 minutes or so to wait for the next bus, upon which, I realized my stupidity and saw there was a sign right in front of the trailhead, the exact same sign at my turn off, that was prewarning me of the closure of the trail. 

This was my waiting spot. See the red minivan in the way back halfway parked? Yeah, that's creepy mini-van man. He kept moving spots all over the parking lot, at first I maybe thought it was a kid learning to drive, but no. It was an old singular Japanese man who would only pull in to the spot halfway everytime. It was super weird. 

Halfway back on the bus I decided to hit up another waterfall which had a small hike involved. What can I say, I'm a waterfall fiend. 

It was super foggy, but I met lots of really nice Japanese people along the routes. One thing that I really have come to love about Japanese hiking is the fact that everyone is so much friendlier than in the city. You always say hello on the trail, no matter what. Gaijin or not, and you can always ask people for directions. I had so many people literally be interested in me, they wanted to know where i was from, how I knew Japanese so well, where I was going, what I had already seen on the hike, etc etc. I read all this in my liar of a hiking book, and it was nice to actually see. I also have noticed, just like the book said (tricky half liar), that a lot of Japanese hikers are actually on the older side, most of them I see I think are retired and are really fit and active and in to the whole hiking scene. It's awesome to see, and it really makes it enjoyable to run into Japanese people out on the trail.