Other side of the island -- Nagano and Niigata

September 05, 2022

For the Labor Day holiday we decided to visit the other side of Honshu - the Sea of Japan side - destination city Niigata. Seeing the sculptures at the Wara Art Festival was the main attraction for this trip.

In prior years students from a university in Niigata put on the festival by building several giant sculptures made from rice straw left over after the rice harvest. (Niigata is famous for growing rice) We had seen pictures of the sculptures in prior years and they looked very big and really cool! Sadly however, this year the festival only had 3 small scale sculptures (due to Covid - huh?). They were...ok.... but hardly worth a 4 hour drive.

But the good news is we did a lot of other things on our trip and overall it was totally worth the drive!

On Saturday we drove from Camp Zama to Nagano. Our first stop was to visit the Zenkoji Temple. It was built more than 1,400 years ago and is believed to have first Buddhist statue ever brought to Japan when the religions was first introduced. This statue is "secret" and can't been seen by anyone, even the priests. But once every 6 years they bring out a replica of the statue (called the hibutsu) and have a special ceremony where people can view it. That ceremony was held in April of this year...so we missed it. But visiting the temple was nice.

Dad had to take a pic of these guys pruning the trees and violating about 10 different OSHA safety standards!

This was pond full of lotus flowers. Some were in full bloom (they are really big) but it was hard to get a good picture of them from our angle.

Turtles sunning themselves on the other side of the pond.

Along the path leading up to the temple there are lots of shops with souvenirs and food. The most famous food in Nagano is called Oyaki and I love it! Its a vegetable filling inside a buckwheat roll that has been toasted. It reminds me somewhat of eggroll filling, although there are many different types and combinations of vegetable fillings. Dad is not a fan at all - but I ate 3!

After visiting the temple we went to our hotel to check in and get ready for the Kodo Taiko Drum performance held at the Nagano Arts Center. We weren't allowed to take any pics during the performance so I found a few online. It was crazy impressive - unbelieve really how they can play the drums like that. You just have to see it to understand what it's like. Most of the numbers they performed were super cool and/or very beautiful. But, during some parts of the performance it felt to me like a couple of the crew stepped into the realm of "fanatical".

The next day after church (and a delicious Japanese breakfast at the hotel) we took a drive into the mountains above Nagano.

We headed to the Togakushi-Jinja area - its famous for 5 Shinto Shrines all within about 5 miles of each other. There is path you can walk that takes you past all 5 shrines. We drove to the middle shrine - (Chusha) to park and start our hike. Our first stop was Kagami-Ike (Mirror Pond) and then from the pond we hiked to the 4th and 5th shrines - Kuzuryusha and Okusha, then we walked back down the main path to Chusha. It made a big 8 mile loop.

The most famous part of the trail is the section that leads to the 4th and 5th shrines. This section is lined with giant cedar trees and you feel so small in comparison to these huge, ancient trees.

Our last stop of the day was to visit Naena Falls. We got there late in the afternoon when most people were leaving. It was nice because we saw bus loads of people pulling out and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The path to view the falls takes you across two different suspension bridges. On one side there are large rocks you can stand on to get a view of the falls, but from there you can't see the actual bottom of the falls. If you hike up the other side of the river, and if you're brave enough to keep climbing, you come to a point where you can see the falls hitting the pool at the bottom (one of us made it that far)

I love the way this picture of dad on the rock gives you a perspective on the size of the falls.

Just a little further up is where dad hiked to get the pic of the bottom of the falls.

Monday morning we drove to the coast and came to the Sea of Japan. Although its too far away to see, South and North Korea and Russia are just across the water.

The drive was lovely and we stopped a couple of times to walk along the beach.

Once we arrived at the Wara Art Festival it was HOT and HUMID. Maybe its for the best that were only 3 small sculptures because we couldn't be out in that weather for a more than a few minutes anyway.

The kitty had two sides - one with eyes open and one with eyes shut.

I don't even know what this creature was - a horse/goat/dragon?

I think this was a bonsai tree.

We saw so many rice fields all around this area and they were in full harvest mode. We cannot understand how they can be out in that heat working! Oh man - it was unbearably hot.

Our last stop was to visit the Bandai Bashi. Its a bridge that was built in the late 1800s, then rebuilt in 1929. It was one of the few structures to survive the great Niigata earthquake of 1964.