I finally saw the waterfall

Erik and I got up early and caught the bus up to Chuzenji lake. The bus takes about an hour and goes up the i-ro-ha slope, which is a series of hairpin turns going up and down the mountain (one way traffic on each) for a total of 50 hairpin turns. The sounds i, ro and ha used to be the first three sounds in Japanese phonetic script before the order was changed to make it a bit more logical.

Lake Chuzeji was cold and we arrived fairly early in the morning. The only thing that was open was a noodle shop where we had soba (buckwheat noodles) for breakfast. They were actually really good. Then we went to see the waterfalls. I have been to see the waterfalls three times before, and each time was unable to see them because of fog. Well, finally I had a good view and they are quite pretty. Of course I'm spoiled because of Niagara Falls, but these were still quite nice. They are apparently one of the three top waterfalls in Japan.

Then we walked the kilometer or so by the lake shore to the temple. On the way we passed the Belgian, French and Italian embassy cottages - must be nice. Geesh. I seem to remember the temple having lots of cool things on display when I went before. It is supposed to have a lot of swords that are classified as cultural treasures. Unfortunately, none of these were on display. After doing the temple walk-through we headed back to the main area for coffee and then headed back to Nikko train station on the bus. The way down the iroha slope is much more exciting than going up, especially because we were sitting in the front seat. Sometimes it seems you are going to fall right off the edge of the mountain.

We arrived back in Nikko about twenty minutes before the train left, just enough time to buy souvenirs, go to the washroom and get a bento... or so I thought. I wasn't paying attention and as we were going thru the ticket gates I looked at the clock, panicked and looked at the train to see it pulling out of the station. This was a problem because that was the train I needed to take to get back to Tokyo in order to get to work on time! Luckily there is an express train that gets there a whole whopping 15 minutes earlier... but costs twice as much! So I forked over the cash to upgrade our tickets and we managed to get back to Tokyo on time.

I guess I truly am Japanese now - everyone manages to miss an important train like that at some point (or overshoot their bullet train stop) and has to outlay a fair bit of cash to get to where they are supposed to be going.