*crosses fingers for rain*
So, it's been a while, I guess. Mostly what happened was the five-day weekend, which was pretty excellent, although admittedly it messed up my hard-won school-matching sleep-schedule. ^^;
Yep, I trekked it out to Nikko (which is written with the kanji for "day/sun" and "light/shiny/bright", so I guess you could translate it as "Daybright", but who would?) on the Sunday. It was pretty awesome, although I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the day. I biked over to Shinmachi Station, took the train to Takasaki, then took the Ryomo line from Takasaki to Tochigi and then switched to the Tobo system to get to Tobunikko. On the way back, I did all of that in reverse. >.>
The ride over was pretty nice- I actually got to see some mountains and countryside! (Although the train mostly skirted the mountains.) It was pretty, but it took forever- like 2 1/2 or 3 hours. Luckily the Ryomo line wasn't crowded at all, so I had a seat for the long part.
When I got to Nikko I was slightly confused, but then I worked out that I should just follow all the people who were walking up the hill. ^^; Doing this, in fact, led me straight to the reason for all of this tomfoolery, ie, the area of Nikko that is chock-full of temples and shrines. There are three major areas- Futarasan, the Toshogu Shrine, and Rinno-ji. Probably the biggest reason I went was the Toshogu Shrine, which is where Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined. (History guys! I love it!)Basically, though, Nikko's advertising should say, "You want temples? WE GOT 'EM!" because holy crap, do they ever. Each of these areas has, like, eight million shrines (or temples, in the case of Rinno-ji, which is Buddhist.) within them. They were pretty much all really pretty, but there were way more than I was expecting. ^^; I pretty much exhausted myself walking around them in the heat, and I still didn't actually go to all of them. >.>
Part of this was probably due to the day on which I chose to go, ie, the Sunday of a five-day weekend. It was ridiculously crowded- there were people everywhere, and lines for a lot of the stuff, like getting in to Ieyasu's grave area (up a really long flight of stairs- think Wreck Beach, y'all). The line for this was kind of hilarious, though, because it was mostly caused by people taking pictures of a the famous "Sleeping Cat" carving on the cat, and pretty much everybody who saw it was like, "Wow, that's really a lot tinier than I was expecting." XD Cracked me up.
It was really interesting though! Also, there were trees and hills and things, which I find I'm really missing living in Tamamura, which is pretty much really flat and full of rice. On the way home, I had an epic, probably two-hour long battle with Lavos, which ultimately came to naught. So I'm having to level up all my characters, qq.
Then I kicked around for a day. On Tuesday I went to I had been planning to go to some other places in Ueno too, but the zoo itself took several hours, and again I didn't see it all. (It closed at five. I really cannot handle living so close to the equator, you guys. The sun goes down at five-thirty, even during the summer, wtf!) It was really cool though! I especially liked the small animal house and all of the birds, like the hawks and owls and things. ^^ I'm definitely gonna go again sometime, especially since it was only 600 yen!
Then I kicked around for another day, and then it was back to school for two days before this weekend, in which I did nothing except watch Sasuke (aka Ninja Warrior). Man, that is one tough obstacle course. >.>
This week should be pretty busy, although I'm still pretty much hoping for rain on Wednesday, so that the sports day will be moved to Thursday and I can actually go.
In other news, I possibly sabotaged my own efforts to get internet by included the phone-line in the box I sent back with the modem. ^^; I mean, my pred told me to put everything in, and there was a picture of the phone-line on the sheet which told me what had come with the box, so I threw it in, but. When I managed to get across to my supervisor that my phone hasn't been hooked up since then, it seemed like that might be the problem? >.>
Yep, I trekked it out to Nikko (which is written with the kanji for "day/sun" and "light/shiny/bright", so I guess you could translate it as "Daybright", but who would?) on the Sunday. It was pretty awesome, although I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the day. I biked over to Shinmachi Station, took the train to Takasaki, then took the Ryomo line from Takasaki to Tochigi and then switched to the Tobo system to get to Tobunikko. On the way back, I did all of that in reverse. >.>
The ride over was pretty nice- I actually got to see some mountains and countryside! (Although the train mostly skirted the mountains.) It was pretty, but it took forever- like 2 1/2 or 3 hours. Luckily the Ryomo line wasn't crowded at all, so I had a seat for the long part.
When I got to Nikko I was slightly confused, but then I worked out that I should just follow all the people who were walking up the hill. ^^; Doing this, in fact, led me straight to the reason for all of this tomfoolery, ie, the area of Nikko that is chock-full of temples and shrines. There are three major areas- Futarasan, the Toshogu Shrine, and Rinno-ji. Probably the biggest reason I went was the Toshogu Shrine, which is where Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined. (History guys! I love it!)Basically, though, Nikko's advertising should say, "You want temples? WE GOT 'EM!" because holy crap, do they ever. Each of these areas has, like, eight million shrines (or temples, in the case of Rinno-ji, which is Buddhist.) within them. They were pretty much all really pretty, but there were way more than I was expecting. ^^; I pretty much exhausted myself walking around them in the heat, and I still didn't actually go to all of them. >.>
Part of this was probably due to the day on which I chose to go, ie, the Sunday of a five-day weekend. It was ridiculously crowded- there were people everywhere, and lines for a lot of the stuff, like getting in to Ieyasu's grave area (up a really long flight of stairs- think Wreck Beach, y'all). The line for this was kind of hilarious, though, because it was mostly caused by people taking pictures of a the famous "Sleeping Cat" carving on the cat, and pretty much everybody who saw it was like, "Wow, that's really a lot tinier than I was expecting." XD Cracked me up.
It was really interesting though! Also, there were trees and hills and things, which I find I'm really missing living in Tamamura, which is pretty much really flat and full of rice. On the way home, I had an epic, probably two-hour long battle with Lavos, which ultimately came to naught. So I'm having to level up all my characters, qq.
Then I kicked around for a day. On Tuesday I went to I had been planning to go to some other places in Ueno too, but the zoo itself took several hours, and again I didn't see it all. (It closed at five. I really cannot handle living so close to the equator, you guys. The sun goes down at five-thirty, even during the summer, wtf!) It was really cool though! I especially liked the small animal house and all of the birds, like the hawks and owls and things. ^^ I'm definitely gonna go again sometime, especially since it was only 600 yen!
Then I kicked around for another day, and then it was back to school for two days before this weekend, in which I did nothing except watch Sasuke (aka Ninja Warrior). Man, that is one tough obstacle course. >.>
This week should be pretty busy, although I'm still pretty much hoping for rain on Wednesday, so that the sports day will be moved to Thursday and I can actually go.
In other news, I possibly sabotaged my own efforts to get internet by included the phone-line in the box I sent back with the modem. ^^; I mean, my pred told me to put everything in, and there was a picture of the phone-line on the sheet which told me what had come with the box, so I threw it in, but. When I managed to get across to my supervisor that my phone hasn't been hooked up since then, it seemed like that might be the problem? >.>