Waterfalls

This is our last planned walk. 

Breakfast: one of the items was boiled tofu heated over a flame at the table. They seem to be very keen on tofu here in Nikkō. I’m actually surprised what a difference adding the soy sauce (in this case a heated Yosa soy sauce) plus the green onion, ginger, and a Japanese sea salt makes to what is otherwise (to me) a tasteless item.

We left early to walk to the bus station for what was to be the 3rd bus of the day (3rd and not earlier because breakfast not earlier!). 

It is a long weekend and the staff at the hotel warn of very slow traffic today - ‘peak day’ they say! We go early as we want to be at the FRONT of the queue for the bus (with queues always forming early) because if you aren’t you may not get on the bus! Sometimes there is only room for two or three people!

Traffic already looks bad… we’ve been advised when the due time had arrived that the bus is 30 mins late (due to traffic…). 

MF-san and I coincidentally say we’ll take a photo of the bus - as we have nothing better to do 😀. The bus shelter is in the shade; I keep moving out into the sun to warm up!

Firstly the Ryūzu falls: packed with people - no surprises there. We walked to the top of the falls (1355 m).

Hit the trail! Bliss! Plenty of people hiking but really very peaceful nonetheless. Bear bells attached to passing walkers ring all the way. 

We follow the Yunagawa river (which is popular for trout fishing), gushing with water to empty into the Ryūzu falls and then it becomes peaceful as we head away from the Chūzenji Lake and then passes through the extensive Senjogahara marshland, then forest of beech, larch and oak before reaching the Yudaki falls. Nice views out to Mt Nantai (2486 m) (which apparently has a 4km trail from one shrine at the base to one at the top; takes 7 hours return apparently - pass!).

I like this sign: ‘Don’t Occupy’, this should be installed at every tourist attraction in the world!

Our walk is so varied and scenic. We practise our kon’nichiwa-s a lot today as we pass plenty of walkers.

The Yudaki Cascades are truly spectacular: 110 m long over a 70 m drop at a 45 deg angle. And I was more than happy with the view at the bottom. Unless I HAD to, I wasn’t walking up the stairs to the top!

Miraculously (for us) we found a bus stop by walking up to the road - not a particularly long wait and even more miraculous, the bus was not crowded!

And there were no hold-ups so it was not the nightmare journey back I was expecting!

We were thrilled to be back and off the roads by 2 pm; enjoyed a couple of coffees and a plate of gyoza at the hotel.

There is the last lake cruise of the day at 15:30. I wasn’t sure whether this would be something we could manage today given 1. the time we got back from our hike 2. the crowds 3. our energy levels.

However, I'm so glad we pushed ourselves to do this. It was so good!

We arrived EARLY at the jetty (of course) after a quick sort out back at our room after our walk (we in fact only had 20 mins) and this included rugging up warmly!! The cruise was part of our Nikko 4-day Pass so this was quire a nice ‘value-add’.

While we waited for the boat to dock from its previous cruise, there was a recorded warning over the loudspeaker to all the pleasure craft lolling about: ‘could all the swan boats please move out of the way of the cruise boat docking’. As the boat approached closer, there was a flurry of activity from the man in charge of the cruise company shaking his fists and shouting energetically in Japanese basically along the lines I think of ‘get those f***ing swan boats out of the way!!!’ Or words to that effect. And they say the Japanese don’t raise their voice and are ever so polite …

It was quite amusing.

It was a marvellous cruise: very relaxing and beautiful with the autumn colours and a lovely sunset despite it looking overcast about the time we were to set off. Mt Nantai had a layer of cloud on top and beneath was  a kaleidoscope of colour.

Back at the hotel, we had an onsen while a load of clothes went through the washing machine. Another snow storm - fortunately minor this time (and already cleaned up by the time we descended for dinner).

Started with some appetisers which were fascinating and yummy. 

Then main course which I think was sukiyaki: thinly sliced marbled beef with vegetables cooked in a pot at the table. Nice but I wasn’t a fan of the raw egg cracked in the bowl with the rice.

Finished off with Ramen noodles (pronounced ‘lamen’ - which probably explains why I saw a sign somewhere for an Italian trattoria spelt ‘trattorlya’🤨).

Dessert: a brown sugar jelly with powdered bean on top; a ball of sweet sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaf; some fruit including yummy melon.

Walked 9.6 kms today even though Strava said the walk was 6.2 kms from the 1st waterfall. This possibly makes sense as it doesn’t include walking to the bus stop at the start of the day and my App calculates the kms from the number of steps and the stride length (which would have been short at various times when we did the climb up to the top of Ryūzu falls and then the descent and climb at Yudaki Cascades where the steps were quite tricky).

We leave here early tomorrow and have a tricky day with lots of travel and transfers.