Japan day 2: Journey to Mt Minobu

The sky was bright when we woke up close to 6AM, checked out from hotel and started our journey to Mt Minobu. (I wished that we had more sleep!) It took another 6hrs train ride to reach our final destination. We met up with Chien at Shinjuku St. enroute to Mt Minobu. The 1000 Yen (RM30) train from Narita airport to Nippori St took us 2 whole hours as it stops at each and every station on the way out to the city. What to do...that's the cheapest among all transportation from airport to city.

All of our stomach were growling loudly at midway point to Shinjuku. Once we reached Shinjuku and met up with Chien, we had breakfast at a small noodle shop in Shinjuku St. It was SO nice, at least to our stomach as we were all so hungry by then. There's a bakery just beside the noodle shop, we happily bought a few buns for our next 2.5 hour journey. There's so much variety in the bakery to choose from. All looks so appealing...dont know which to buy, if I had the $$$, would have bought one each to try! Haha...

Scenery on the way to Minobu was so serene. You see farm land where they plant vegetable and also grapes. The sky was clear and we managed to see Mt Fuji from the train. There were still snow on top of the mountain. We reached Minobu train station at 2PM and had to wait for another 20 mins for the next bus to Minobu town. While Chien and I looked after all the luggages at the bus stop, the rest of the gang went off snapping pictures.

It was a 15 mins bus ride to our final destination - Mt Minobu. BUT, it will be another 500-600 meters up hill to reach Hino Sawa Bou, where we will be staying! It was pretty challenging for the older folks, so we had to stop a few times to catch our breath.

Mt Minobu is where Nichiren Shu's main temple (Kuonji) is. This place is also one of the top places in Japan for cherry blossom viewing, especially for weeping sakura (branches of sakura that drops downwards). Loads of cars and buses ferrying local tourists come to Mt Minobu during sakura season for sakura viewing. One who intends to visit this place actually need to have a special permit for parking in this area! If you do not have this permit, you are not allowed to park in the area! Tourists start visiting this beautiful serene mountain as early as 7-8am! By 9am, you will see cars waiting PATIENTLY in line. I meant patiently as in the Japanese will just stick to the queue, you don't hear a single honk, and they don't cut queues! I wonder when ever will Malaysians' mentality and civic mindness reach that level?

We checked into Hino Sawa Bou and the lady caretaker of this Inn still remembers both Chien and I. :) She is a nice lady and is able to speak some simple english. We were given 2 rooms for the first night and 3 rooms thereafter. Mind you, it's mens one room & ladies one room la. It was a bit cramp for 5 ladies to share the room but it was bareable. There was afternoon tea ready for us in the room already - Japanese tea (ocha) and also biscuits for each of us. We rested our tired legs while enjoying the tea.

Not long after at 5pm, the lady caretaker came and informed us that furo is ready, which means bath is ready. Yes, it's public bath! As the caretaker knows that we are not so comfortable with the culture of taking bath together, she was courteous enough to let us have our bath 1hr earlier than the usual bath opening hours. In Japan, hot water is expensive, hence, you do not get to take your bath whenever you like.

Chien took the gang up to Kuonji temple grounds and also the surrounding areas to walk around while I stayed back to settle some things. Dinner was served at 6pm daily and we adjourned back to our rooms after dinner and called it a day.