Author Topic: Tohoku Japan 日本東北 (Read 105654 times)

hangchoi · « **Reply #50 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:22:37 »

They have other flowers indeed.

BTW, they also have ice cream with Wisteria flavour. I tasted it and found it like tasting 紫花油.........

hangchoi · « **Reply #51 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:25:20 »

Utsunomiya is the captial of Gyoza. There is a Gyoza dumpling statue at the train station.

In total, we tasted 3 different Gyoza shops and they are all good.

hangchoi · « **Reply #52 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:31:36 »

The main reason that I came to Utsunomiya was not because of Wisteria, but because of Toshogu 日光東照宮, a world heritage and the bury place of Tokugawa Ieyasu 德川家康.

We went to Nikko 日光市 next morning. The entrance of Toshogu has a nice bridge called Shinkyo 神橋.

hangchoi · « **Reply #53 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:34:19 »

Again, Toshogu contains a number of different temple. You have to walk through a number of other temples and walkway before reaching it.

hangchoi · « **Reply #54 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:37:40 »

The first one is Rinnoji 輪王寺. It was a surprise that there were some sakura alive.

hangchoi · « **Reply #55 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:43:22 »

Of course you have to pay the entrance fee for Toshogu. Due to public holiday, a long queue was expected. However this queue broke my record in Florence.

The first picture shows the queue. Can you find the entrance? I am sure not because the picture does not show the entrance. The gate in the far middle is just the entrance gate, where there are at least 50 meter to the ticketing booth and the actual entrance. There are about 100 people behind me too.

The next picture shows the entrance gate you see in the first picture.

hangchoi · « **Reply #56 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:48:04 »

After we entered Toshogu, the first must see spot is the 3 monkeys graving. It is used to teach student about an old Chinese saying 非禮勿視，非禮勿聽，非禮勿言

hangchoi · « **Reply #57 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:52:02 »

The main temple is full of people. It is nicely built, detailed support, gold plated finishes, layers of load sharing latches.

The last two pictures show the front and back of the main temple entrance.

hangchoi · « **Reply #58 on:** 23 May 2019, 21:53:55 »

The inner temple. It is the place for the shogun to worship. They really like golden furnishes for decoration. Maybe it reflected how rich they were in the early Edo era.