東京から離れて日光へ行ってきました。温泉と日光東照宮がメインの一泊二日の小旅行です。東照宮、行く前に写真で見た感じではゴテゴテしててなんだかピンとこなかったけど、実物を見たら、ただただすごい！細かい！このゴテゴテ振りは圧巻でした。ラアナンは日本に来てから見たどんな寺やら神社よりもワォ！を連発してました（私も）。この日の日光は寒くて、東照宮に着いたあたりからさらさらと粉雪が降っていて（最初スギ花粉かと思った）、それが妙にマッチしていてかなり素敵でした。



そして本日の温泉宿へ。各部屋に専用の露天風呂がついているのです！外は雪！雪景色見ながら露天風呂なんて素敵ねぇ、と思いつつ足を入れたら熱い！そして外はマイナス５度で寒い！水をジャージャー入れて調節。硫黄の匂い、ひさびさに嗅ぎました。日本にいるんだなぁと実感。一泊二日で３回ほど入りました（温泉宿っていうのは温泉に浸かる以外これといってやることがないんですね。。）。よるご飯はもりだくさん。湯葉料理やら刺身やら霜降り牛の鍋やら蕎麦やら穴子のお茶漬けやら。写真を撮るのを忘れました。朝ご飯（写真右）は撮りました。



前の日に深々と降り積もった雪が止んで快晴（３０センチは積もってました）！中禅寺湖（写真右）に山が反射してました。車を止めてしばらく湖沿いを歩いて写真を撮ったりしつつ、家路につきました。そうそう行きに金谷ホテル（写真左）によってランチを食べたりもしました。この２日で撮った写真を見るとどれも素敵なものばかりです。なので今日は写真多めです。そうそう、ラアナン、浴衣が似合ってました。持って帰りたがっていましたがそこはきちんと、できないと説明しておきました。持って帰れたとして、どこで着るつもりだったのか。。

ワークショップ、お申し込み受け付け中です（１４日のみ）。くわしくはこちらを。

Raanan's

Well, Nikko. Nikko is an UNESCO world-heritage site, located north to tokyo. We took a large car, a lot of good mood, some food, cookies for Kiyu and ourselves, and went on a lovely trip.
I am going to use the pictures rie posted, so, take a good look there and come back :-).
At first we went to eat (i think i mentioned already that food is extremely important here), and then went to the Nikko Shrine. I am not going to get into the history of japan, Samurais and other things, i would just recommend to go there and experience it with your own eyes. What people could do with wood 1000 years ago still shocks me. I think no one today has the patience to construct something like this. The careful details on each and every aspect of those amazing colony-buildings is amazing. I enjoyed quite a lot, even thou i had to remove my shoes. Twice. It takes a lot of time, removing the shoes all the time. I wonder what the samurais would do if they had to go really quick to fight some war or something. What shoes would they wear quick enough to react? ... The things that i think of...
Anyhow, after that we went to our Onsen hotel. Onsen are baths with warm water that emerges from the earth itself (the form of hot spring in japan). There are many of those hotels scattered throughout japan, if you like this kind of experience, you should try. The onsens are not only hotel based, there are public ones too, just pay attention that you will require to be somewhat naked, surrounded by other people whom you don't quite know...
Anyhow, our onsen was right on the porch of our room (as seen in picture-strip number 2! :-) ). The water temperature was ca. 60 degrees, even though outside was around -2 degrees and heavily snowing. It quite an experience, to go into a very warm bath outside. Just a note, 60 degrees water are too hot, don't try this at home or anything. We had to add cold water to the bath to be able to just get in there...
The 2Nd picture on the 2nd strip is the japanese breakfast, which i skipped. I took the continental breakfast, which, not as in many London hotels (Now, why would they think continental is bread and butter?!), was actually rich and tasty!
Oh, and in this hotel we got this cool japanese outfit, which i wore to dinner and breakfast. Sorry, no picture attached to this, i will just let you imagine.
On the way to the hotel and back from it, we passed a very famous japanese road. This road has in total 48 big turns (big are ca. 180 degrees turn), 21 on the way there and 27 on the way back (two different roads), which together, represent the 48 old hiragana order (the japanese simple characters). So, every turn there was a sign with a number, a character, and a flower. The view from this road, which was only visible to us on the way back (the way there war very snowy) was amazing. All white, with lot's of lakes and mountains and endless terrains. The area is also famous for some kind of a famous samurai fight, but i wasn't getting into that too much.
Anyhow, on the way back we ate some good local Soba noodles and arrived home happy and tired.
I have so much more to write, but... well, just accept the fact that this can easily go into your to-visit-before-i-die list.

< Prev		Next >