After an hour bus ride up the windey road to Togakushi Mountain Range (cost 1280 yen) we exited at the botanical forest the lead to the Togakushi Okusha shrine. Its a thirty minute walk so we stored our backpacks (at the restaurant next to the exit stop) to lighten the load.
It's a gradual incline up the road until you enter the Cedar forest. The road becomes lined with tall cedar trees that are so beautiful. I can see why its a Nagano treasure. Yohko says that the area is also magnetic because of the magnetic stones that are found in this area.
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Old Japanese myth said that in Shimane Area of Japan (southwest area of main island), a goddess hid in a cave and covered the entrance with a huge rock. Only one god could remove the rock after the other gods failed. With his strength, he threw the rock all the way to Nagano in Togakushi and broke it into millions of small pieces. Thus the myth because these sort of magnetic rocks are only found in Shimane area.**
It was a tough 2 kilometer walk up and it got worse because the road suddenly turned into steps.
We were pale with exhaustion by the timel we reached the Okusha Shrine.
There we payed our respects to the shrine. W asked a monk for a fortune slip. He went to the back, meditated and prayed, then returned with white fortune slips in long envelops. My fortune was... explained to me by Yohko as of normal fortune ranking which means my fortune will be be average for the rest of the year. But it sounded like good fortune to me 'coz it wasn't bad fortune. But Yohko's, she says, was not a happy one. I hope her luck changes. After a few pictures and rest, we headed back down to catch our bus back to Nagano station. But of course, we had to eat Togakushi Soba at the restaurant were we deposited our bags.
They claim this Togakushi soba is the soba is best in all of Japan. I've eaten lots of soba here in Japan. This soba noodles had a different dipping soup made of white raddish and other herbs. I liked it and I'm proud to say I've eaten Japan's best. Across the street was a Ninja town. Given that we were almost out of time and it was beginning to get cold, we skipped it. But in ancient times, real ninja's used to live there. I wonder what a typical day in Ninja town would be.... "Have you seen Fred? No? Hey where did you go?" Bah, I'll just read about it on wikipedia.
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