Thursday 14th of May; Onegai Tour and Walking Fest

As mentioned in the previous post, within a few days I would post something about the Onegai Sites Tour and the Salt Route Walking Festival. Location is Kizaki Lake, Nagano prefecture. Important bit of advice for people who would like to go to Nagano prefecture, consider bringing along a jacket! I went there twice without a jacket, second time I even went there with a T-shirt only. Guess you could call me either stupid or special ~_^! Getting to Nagano prefecture is somewhat difficult, there’s no shinkansen going there. Fastest way is using the “Azusa special super limited express”, don’t ask me about the name, about 2,5 hours from Shinjuku to Matsumoto. In Matsumoto it’s hop onto the JR train for another good 1 hour ride (passed Omachi). I tried using only the JR-trains to get from Shinjuku to Kizaki, but that is over 6 hours! Halfway I just jumped on the Azusa…
Today’s post will be a little different from all the other posts, more links towards pictures! Here is the first link, some pictures of my train-trips. More accurate, my first trip outside Tokyo (towards Kizaki Lake), my shinkansen trip towards Kyoto, and the trip from Kyoto towards Kizaki Lake again.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v42/moonlight2002/Traintrip/

To make it even more fun, a youtube-link of my shinkansen travel! Although I made the movie while I was in the “slow” shinkansen (Hikari), it’s still nice. Enjoy the few minutes of Japanese scenery from the shinkansen! In Japan there are several different types of shinkansens, Nozomi is the fastest one. Hikari is the second fastest I think (that’s the one I used to get away from Kyoto).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUWrWdX3HME

*Towards Kyoto I was in the Nozomi, but didn’t make a movie cause I wasn’t sitting at a window.

Now up to the topics, first is the Onegai Sites Tour. I used to watch anime, this turned out to be very useful. Thanks to anime I know little Japanese and I found out about this location! A long time ago I watched the anime “Onegai Twins”, a small village was used as setting for this anime. And that’s where Kizaki Lake comes in. Visiting this place is the best part of my stay in Japan. I got to see a real Japanese village, totally non-tourist place. People here are very nice, scenery is great, and it’s very quiet. I needed to get used to the place first, missed the Tokyo living-style. But right now I kinda miss the village T_T
At the village I visited most of the locations that appeared in the Onegai series, it’s amazing how everything got copied 1:1 for the anime. Not to mention that after 5 years not much has changed, except for the broken bridge (it wasn’t there anymore, didn’t survive long enough for me to see it).
Here are the names of the nice people I met in that village:
Yuri-san, Yuki-san, Momoe-san, Sinjo-san, Sasaki-san, Kenro-san, Youko-san, and Sakura-san + a few more I can’t remember the names of -_-; Specially for this location I made a small web-page. Very well organized pictures and comments. I even bothered making a few sketches of some location!!! Haven’t touched a pencil for years, so sketches aren’t that great. Here’s the link towards the Onegai Site I made:
http://onegai-kizaki.freehostia.com/

Special moments there I should mention are the first impression people had of me. It started at me trying to leave the train, to put it in simple words: Becoming a fun chat-topic for happy Japanese schoolgirls. Surprising the youth hostel owner: Why is this Japanese guy speaking English?! At the H-shop: Whaaaa, you not Japanese?!! And the H-shop owner thaught me how to play Shogi ^_^ I spent quite a while at the H-shop, a really nice place. Food there is very nice as well!

O well, check the Onegai Site and read the Onegai Tour story there. I will continue with the Walking Festival story here. The second time I went to Kizaki was for some Salt Route Festival. A long time ago there used to be a salt route towards Matsumoto Castle, the festival at Kizaki was walking a part of that route near the three lakes. Another reason I went there, was just because I wanted to go there again.
In order to get to Kizaki a second time, I had a very tight travel-schedule during Goldenweek. Just read the previous post to see what I mean ~_^! The walking festival gathering started at around 8:00 AM at the beginning of the biggest lake. From there it was a walk towards a small Shrine at Kizaki Lake (near the hostels area). A map of the walking route can be found in the set of pictures I have from this event (DSC01973.jpg).
In total there were two pause locations, here everybody could get something to drink and some small foods. Although only about 200 people joined, it turned out to be quite pushy around the drink/food collection tables. (In Hotaka about 4000 people joined the event I heard, can’t imagine how it was here >_> )
After almost 4 hours we arrived at the shrine, here we got lots of food, some sake, and a tea ceremony. And we got to eat fish from Kizaki Lake, delicious fish! Ow yeah, learned that Kizaki Lake is about 40m deep. The big lake is even 60m deep O.O
After all this, there was more, towards the salt museum. Everything was free btw, including bus trip towards Omachi for the museum (free access). The museum was very special as well, not only pictures were allowed, the building was kinda old and not-museum-like (check the pictures, can’t really put it into words).
I will stop my post here, still need to prepare for Japanese course tomorrow… it’s 11:30 PM already >_< Here’s the link for the Walking Festival pictures (added comments to some pictures).
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v42/moonlight2002/Walking/

PS. I might go to Kizaki one more time before leaving Japan, really love the place!