It has been a busy (and rainy) day today! We had a whole day tour (Zenkoji and the Snow monkey tour with Snow Monkey Resort company) starting at 9:35 and only ending at 17:30, but what an awesome day!
On the way to the meeting point we found a lovely breakfast at a local bakery, energy provisions needed to for the tour. The tour started off at Zenkoji temple complex. It is a non-denominational Buddhist temple and is the 3rd largest in Japan. We saw the largest one in Nara. The temple contains the first ever Buddhist statue to be brought to Japan when the religion was first introduced to the country, and is called the “hidden” Buddha which is actually is hidden from view. The original Buddha was placed in a temple on the little street market, exactly where our ryokan stands. However, after the temples burned down 10 times, the people of the time decided that it was not a good location for the temple and built the current one, which is very close by.
The temple also has a pitch-black corridor that runs under the temple. It is said that if you can touch the key which is attached to the wall you will be granted access to paradise. And apparently the hidden Buddha is hidden behind one of the walls there.
After the temple visit we had a quick stop to eat some delicious apple and custard pies with caramel sauce (yummy), before proceeding to a sake tasting session. And oh boy did we try a range of sakes, and in the process we learnt a bit more about it. There are 3 main factors that distinguish the quality of the sake:
- Source of the rice.
- How “polished” the rice is. Essentially you want to use the centre of the rice grain, and hence they will polish it to remove the husk and outer layers. The lower the number the better. Eg: if it is polished to 30% then 70% of the rice is discarded.
- The method of pressing/filtration. It can be mechanically filtered through a series of cloth plates, or it can be gravity filtered through cloth bags. Needless to say the gravity method is considered superior.
What is interesting it that the taste of the sake does change noticeable depending on these factors.
However Robyn decided that the best thing we tasted was the Plum sours, which we of course had to get a bottle of (and are currently enjoying)…
Part of the tour was lunch at a local restaurant. It consisted of a number of vegetarian sushi rolls and a miniature version of Shabu Shabu. It was a well balanced lunch set. However I think Robyn would have preferred the beef version as her chicken was of the “marathon” variety: a bit tough…
Our bus picked up us to take us to see the snow monkeys, the main attraction. And they did not disappoint. It’s around an hour out of Nagano, and also involves a beautiful walk through a forest to get to the hot springs that the monkeys frequent. Once we got to the hot springs, we encountered a large troop of snow monkeys. Most of them were out of the water, but eventually a couple got into the water and we managed to get some great pictures. The monkeys are pretty used to humans and will come very close while going about their business. However, we were told not to look them in the eyes or to go near the alpha male as recently he got a little threatening with a tourist too close for comfort. It was great to enjoy the moment with the kids, discuss how some monkey behaviour mimics human, and what doesn’t… Maxine will tell you the monkeys are disgusting as they are not toilet trained, and we saw one poop in the hot spring right after taking a drink! When the kids were small, I used to sing them a song from Matt Heaton, a local Boston singer, about “don’t drink the water that your bum’s been in”, and they were singing it all the way back down the mountain trail!
Eventually we got back on the bus and headed back to Nagano. There we parted ways with the rest of the group and went in search of food. We ended up going to a Japanese burger joint and devoured burgers and chips. Once tummies were filled we headed back to the ryokan, enjoyed a relaxing soak in the hot baths before putting the kids to bed.
Everybody is looking forward to tomorrow. As we found out that the Ninja village that we were planning on going to see is actually closed tomorrow and that we have been going non-stop at a high pace for the last few weeks, we decided to have a rest day tomorrow and focus more on relaxing and catching up on school.
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