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We had planned to take it pretty easy between the 10am checkout at Shimaya, and the 3pm check-in at Kokuya. These late check-ins are often something of a problem in Japan. Fortunately, Mr Shimaya would take our luggage up to Kokuya. And he was most insistent that we should take a trip for the day to the nearby town of Obuse, ostensibly because much in Shibu Onsen was closed midweek. Obuse has a reputation as a place to buy fruit and chestnut sweets. It is also the place where the great Japanese woodblock print artist Hokusai spent his final years. Sadly, the town's Hokusai Museum was closed, so we had to content ourselves with the image painted on the ceiling of the Ganshoin Temple, at the foot of a hill on the outskirts of town.
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Ganshoin temple was pleasantly rustic (and bitingly cold in the hall where a monk told the tale of the painting in halting English). I took the time to add a stone or two to one of the many cairns around the gateway. But there were no frogs in evidence (the temple is the place where famed haiku poet Issa wrote one of his most famous verses, watching mating frogs in a pond by the temple).
Thin Frog
Don’t be defeated
Issa is here!
The cherry blossoms here in the highland were just short of blooming. Give them a couple of days...
And then it was time to walk back into town, in search perhaps, of lunch.
Thin Frog
Don’t be defeated
Issa is here!
The cherry blossoms here in the highland were just short of blooming. Give them a couple of days...
And then it was time to walk back into town, in search perhaps, of lunch.
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As we walked the 2km back into town we saw many farmers in the fields, tending and pruning their fruit trees and vines.
Back in town we found another Hokusai, this time a representation of the Great Wave at Kanagawa, as a manhole cover!
Back in town we found another Hokusai, this time a representation of the Great Wave at Kanagawa, as a manhole cover!
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Lunch was hard to find. All we could see were sweet shops in the main square. Minuk finally spied some huge sweet fuji apples in a small shop, and after getting a taste from the owner, we purchased one, in addition to some fried rice cake and snacks from the shop by the station (rice with chestnut) where we waited after a brief visit to the former home of Hokusai's local patron Takai Kozan, whose house and garden were a pleasant diversion. The we boarded the Snow Monkey Express back to Yudanaka, and asked the tourist office give Kokuya a call to come and pick us up! Which they did, so at 3pm we were all ready to check in to our swish onsen.