I ended up waking up very early, like around 4:30AM, but then went back to sleep for a short while. Then I got up again and decided to write up the trip so far. After finishing that up, I got packed up so we could have breakfast and then leave. I went down at 8:30 for breakfast, and found a gorgeous meal waiting for all of us.
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| The nice Japanese breakfast that came with our room |
Arnond came down shortly after, but Chris had gotten out of bed around 8:25, since he slept through his alarm, and the rest of us just assumed he knew what he was doing, so didn't wake him. He didn’t come down until later, after he got dressed, and managed to make it to breakfast before Arnond stole any of his food. Our first stop after checking out was to leave our luggage at coin lockers at the station. We actually managed to fit all our bags into one of the large coin lockers there. We then traveled to Shimosuwa Station to see the remaining half of Suwa Taisha, being the lower Fall and lower Spring shrines. When we got to the Fall shrine, we found the main hall was under renovation, so we were only able to see the construction tarp covering it completely, although a 1:1 picture of the hall was on the sheet.
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| The main hall under renovation |
We looked at the ema again, and once again found many Touhou related ones. In fact, this location had the most, very likely due to the fact that this shrine was the most convenient of all the parts of Suwa Taisha to get to. I noticed here too that the main hall was surrounded by a rectangle created by the onbashira, and concluded that every main hall of Suwa Taisha was this way. This was confirmed upon our visit to the Spring shrine. We took a short side trip to an overlook, and Chris got some C.C. Lemon from a Boss vending machine featuring Tommy Lee Jones.
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| Tommy Lee Jones thinks you should drink Boss coffee |
Then we headed towards the Spring shrine. We passed by Raikou Temple along the way, and found many fire prevention items around it. Perhaps it’s in a very fire-prone location? Anyway, we continued onward to the Spring shrine, and completed our circuit of the 4 shrines of Suwa Taisha. Near Suwa Taisha though, we found signs for a statue of a Buddha that seemed to be one of the major attractions of this area of Suwa. Since it was close by, we stopped by it, and found instructions in front of it on how to get your wishes granted by it. We saw Japanese people doing so, so we tried it out as well. We then headed back to the station and took the train to Okaya for our final stop in the Lake Suwa area, Moriya Shrine. It was a fairly short walk to the shine from the station, and it certainly was not a shrine that seemed particularly well known or visited. It was a small shrine, with no reception office or anything, and had a small main shrine building.
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| The three of us posing in front of the main shrine building |
Arnond and I donated and prayed to the shrine. As we were looking around the shrine, we found an odd sign indicating that we were at the 18th hole. After further exploration, we found that the shrine was surrounded by a course for mallet golf, a Japanese-invented variation of golf similar in some ways to miniature golf.
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| The mallet golf map detailing the course layout around the shrine |
We then returned to Kamisuwa to pick up our bags from the coin lockers. Arnond and I had some kind of avocado themed hot dog there at a coffee shop, and then we left for Matsumoto on a local train. Upon arriving, we found our hotel, checked in, then headed out to see Matsumoto castle. Unfortunately, the castle closed at 5PM, so we simply walked around it, taking pictures, and also checked out Matsumoto Shrine next to it.
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| Matsumoto Castle as the sun sets |
We stopped in at a soba place next to the castle, Kawafune, and had some local specialties like the soba and the mountain vegetables. We returned to the hotel afterwards and did further trip planning and some laundry. I ended up conflicting with Arnond a bit that night partly because I was tired, and partly because there seemed to be a mismatch in the way we communicated to each other, leading to some delays in the trip. I think I expected Arnond to have the same kind of trip sense and initiative that I had, and so I left some things unsaid that should have been said, and then got annoyed when he couldn’t seem to handle something on his own. We more or less settled things for the night, and then went to bed.
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