I'm in Nikko now, I stayed here last night and I'm staying here again tonight. Tommorow I intend to go to Tokyo and I'll spend my last ten nights in Japan there. This is worrying me as I don't actually have any idea where I am staying in Tokyo for that time. I'm just going to have to go in tommorow and hope I can work something out.
As I said I've already stayed in Nikko for a night, having arrived here just after mid-day yesterday. I came here from Yamagata (my last Shinkansen ride I suspect) where I posted the last entry but I didn't actually get up to date then. In fact I think I'm slowly getting further and further behind with the log. And I think it may get even further behind as I'm not sure if I'm awake enough to write a proper entry at the moment.
I believe I got as far as my first night in Sendai in the last entry. After my one night in Sendai, I headed for the train Station where I stuck my bag into storage and caught a train for Hon-Shiogama. From there I took a boat that did a two hour tour around Matsushima bay, taking in a lot of the islands and giving me a headache with the extremely loud engine and even louder guide trying to be heard over the engine noise.
On arriving at Matsushima at the end of the tour I walked around a few of the island that are connected to the shore by bridges and then in the afternoon took another train along to Nobiru where I spent the night in a Youth Hostel.
The next day I hired a bike from the Hostel and spent the morning riding out along to the end of the peninsular and climbing up a couple of the viewpoints to look out over Matsushima bay. After returning the bike to the hostel I returned to the station and from there caught a train back to Sendai. In Sendai I managed to find myself another nights accomodation in a hotel and so spent the night there.
The next day I took a train to Yamagata and arranged two nights in a hotel there through tourist information and wrote the last log-entry in the NTT place just upstairs from it.
With my full day in Yamagata I back-tracked slightly along the line to Sendai, getting off at Yamadera and visited the temple there, climbing up the 1000+ steps to the top before returning to Yamagata for my second night.
This now gets us to yesterday, the 13th June, and the last day of my rail-pass. I used the last day to take the Shinkansen from Yamagata most of the way here to Nikko (I had to change to a local train for the last part). I arranged for two nights here in Nikko then looked around the temple and shrines here that afternoon.
It seems I have caught up after all as we now come to today. I got up this morning and took a bus up the mountain to Yumoto Onsen, from where I walked back down to Chuzenji, along the edge of the lake and and river, passing marshes and waterfalls along the way. It was a very pleasant walk and used up most of the day, getting me to Chuzenji around 3. After taking the lift to the bottom of the Kegon falls it had started to rain, so I caught the bus back here to Nikko where I am now.
It's just gone 6 here so I'm probably going to go find something to eat soon, It's still pouring with rain though (but still warm) so I'm not especially looking forward to going back out.
Getting really nervous about Tokyo as I don't have any idea where I'm staying. But I'm flying home in ten days time so there isn't much time left.
Posted by Haifisch at June 14, 2003 10:06 AM