Tokyo - Part 1 - Adventures In The Rain

Monkeys in the rain.

When I was learning Japanese back in the UK, we used the “Japanese for Busy People” textbook. The book is primarily aimed at business people which meant that, stupidly, I knew how to say “I am a lawyer” before I knew how to say “I’m from England” or “I’m 30 years old”. Anyway, in the style of all classic language text books, there is a chapter about going on vacation, in this case, to Nikko. Ever since reading it, I’ve wanted to go to Nikko. I have a similar wish to visit La Rochelle as described in 5 years of the Encore Tricolore French textbooks at secondary school, but anyway.

Nikko is about 2 hours outside Tokyo and getting there was a big hassle. It was Golden Week, which meant that half the population of Japan was either leaving or arriving in Tokyo. The situation wasn’t helped by torrential rain and signal failures which caused big delays on the trains. By the time we arrived it was late afternoon, pouring with rain and we were irritable with hunger. But we managed to track down some awesome deep fried azuki bun things and jump on a bus to a sightseeing area not far from the centre of town.

We decided to go for a hike. This was what is technically known as a “mistake”. The rain continued at a frightening rate. After about 5 minutes of walking, it became clear that my umbrella was somewhat faulty. Rain trickled down my neck and soaked my arms and legs. Clearly, the T-shirt and suit jacket look was not appropriate today. Still, we continued. Nikko is so green. There’s moss everywhere and the other tourists had (wisely?) stayed away due to the awful weather. We crossed over a terrifyingly strong river and made our way onwards, with a forest to our left and a cute, deserted park on our right. I was squelching by this point-Converse shoes are not built to withstand a puddle, let alone a thunderstorm. But we traipsed on.

(By the way-sorry the photos are such low quality- the iphone pics didn't upload in the correct definition - but hopefully they give the general idea - that we were very wet!)

Hopefully you can make out the torrential rain here.

The further we went, the more it felt like a brilliant act of folly. Yes, we were wet, but man, Nikko is beautiful. Yes, it was probably a mistake but it was also a little adventure and the rain made it more private and satisfying. We cowered under doorways and jumped over huge puddles before eventually making it to a row of monkey statues, all dressed in red bibs, worn down but looking perfect in the rain. Many photos were taken and I continue to be impressed by my friend’s tiger umbrella, pictured here. It even makes growling noises when you press a button (and sometimes by malfunction when you don’t-tiger social faux pas alert!). That umbrella would be an ever present right until the very end of our trip.

The tiger umbrella!

By the time we made it to the hostel we were exhilarated but a little grumpy. The hostel is run by an American guy called Scout who made us feel really welcome. And thank god, for the kotatsu, Japan’s greatest invention of all. My feet were toasty warm within half an hour.

No swimming for us...

My favourite thing about this hostel was that it was located right next to a huge river. We had hoped to go swimming, but as you can see from the photos, the storm had made that impossible. It was cool to sit outside by the water though, having to shout over it as it battered against the rocks. Even better, the men’s shower area overlooked it, so you got to expose yourself to it the following day.

In fact, the following day was mostly spent sitting in onsen and being extremely lazy. Being lazy is one of my favourite things. This was also nice because it meant that K got to spend some quality time with her friend who was visiting as I was starting to feel a bit guilty that they weren’t getting enough time together just the two of them. Maybe this splitting down the ranks by gender is part of the appeal of onsen, like a gentlemen’s club or a hen weekend. One of the guys in the onsen had a huge tattoo covering almost his entire back which no-one seemed to react to in a bad way. Tattoos are generally not welcomed in onsen and those with them are sometimes prohibited. It’s reasonably likely that the guy was yakuza but you can’t exactly ask in that situation. “Excuse me, I can’t help but notice that you have an incredibly intricate tattoo covering your entire back-is that because you are a member of an organised crime organization or do you just like snakes a lot?” Anyway, it was nice to hang out with my mate from back home. We probably should have talked about sport, guns and women. I don’t think we talked about any of those things.  I’m rubbish at being male, I really am.

I loved all the moss in the forest.

Cowering from the rain.