Day 7: Magical forest Togakushi

Today was incredible, according to my phone I walked nearly 9 miles and climbed 40 floors. I think that is more than I completed in an entire year living in Florida, and that's including working on the second floor. 

I got up early and took the bus an hour up the mountain to Togakushi. Togakushi is a really cool town in the Japanese alps. It contains a shrine at the base of Mount Togakushi, in Myoko-Togakushi Renzan National Park. The shrine consists of 5 shrines, known as the lower, middle, and upper shrine area. It is especially popular during the fall because of the incredible fall colors, but is also a Shinto pilgrimage. In the shinto belief system, the Sun Goddess hid herself in a cave nearby after her brother mishehaved, and brought darkness into the world. To get sunlight back, the deities lured the Sun Goddess out by performing dances, and throwing away the door. Togakushi, means 'hiding door'.

First I went to the upper shrine, Okusha. It worships the diety who threw the stone door and lured the Goddess of the Sun away from her hideout. 

It is a 2 km walk up the mountain through towering Cryptomeria trees (a member of the cypress family, often called the Japanese redwood, aptly so). These towering trees are absolutely incredible, many have to 10-12ft wide at the base, and while not as big or tall as the California redwoods, they allow for much more understory to peak through, and are very very impressive. They tower over a midstory of trees, which in any other forest would be canopy height, containing Japanese oaks, Japanese maples, Downy Japanese maple, Mono maple, kousa dogwood, and many others. All of these trees were in the peak of their fall color transition, painting the forest shades from light green to bright yellow to dark red. 

After the 2 mile hike I arrived at the shrine and enjoyed the beautiful view.

On my way back I took a detour through the botanical garden, I pretended like I understood the red signs with pictures of bears on them. I assume they said something like "the bears here are really friendly, feel free to feed them all your snacks". Luckily I had apples and nuts and jerky in my backpack in case I came across one. Unfortunately,  unlike most of the other hikers I saw after I started my hike, I did not have a dinner bell attached to my backpack to call the bears in, so I didn't see any. lol.

When I made it back to the main road, I jumped onto bus to the middle shrine Chusha. Luckliy, it was a much less far walk, just a few flights of steep stairs.It honors the mountain of Togakushi, and worships the deity of dance performance to lure the Sun Goddess out of her hiding case. Many of the trees around the shrine are over 800 years old and incredible. 

Togakushi is known for its soba noodles, as the buckwheat are grown in the mountains below. I planned to get lunch at a local soba restaurant, but the wait was 2 hours for all 4 restaurants in town, and I did not want to wait. So I continued to my final shrine, its a lottttt of stairs to the lower shrine, but I made it to the top. 

Sore feet, and ready to head back I went to the bus... and all the seats were full... so I had to stand for the hour trip down the mountain. Firstly, a short Japan road ramp. The roads in Japan are so small! How small are they? Well the first night when I walked to my hostel, I was like "oh this is such a nice pedestrian corridor! It awesome they have these narrow walkways so people can walk without being bothered by cars". Incorrect, it was just a road that everyone was walking in. Except major roads, most streets are barely wide enough for 2 cars to fit next to each other. It took me 2 full days to realize they drive on the left side of the road because the roads are so narrow that everyone is just driving in the middle except when they pass each other. 

Anyway, back to the bus ride down the mountain. Take a super narrow road, from Nagano (1600 ft) to Togakushi (6247 ft). That is a lot of switch backs, on narrow roads. Standing on tired feet and trying to balance as the drive has to slam on the brakes everytime we hit a corner and a car is coming around it. Scary. Exhausting. But it was also beautiful.

I made it back to my airbnb and after a short rest, decided to go find some dinner. Well, turns out, nothing is open Monday evenings. I walked a mile looking for a restaurant before I ended up at the grocery store and picked up some ramen, and walked back. Not the most exciting end to a great day, but it was a great day, and I'm looking forward to more adventures soon!