{"id":44,"date":"2007-11-05T22:18:14","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T03:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2014-08-18T17:20:25","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T22:20:25","slug":"nagano-and-togakurushii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Nagano: Zenkoji and Togakushi: Part One, Zenkoji and Nagano"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another day in Nagano. Lots of walking. <\/span><\/p>\n

LOTS of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got up late. I slept in until 9:30 a.m. because I was tired.<\/p>\n

I’m sure Nagano has a lot of great Olympic-related sights, but I decided to skip those. It just didn’t do anything for me, and if I can’t ride the bobsled, what’s the point? (Also, I didn’t want to risk injury on the skating rink at M-Wave.)<\/p>\n

Zenkoji<\/h3>\n

First off was Zenkoji Temple. It’s famous. Or at least the mobs and mobs of people there led me to believe that. It was pretty, but I didn’t get much more out of it than that. Maybe I’m suffering from temple burnout. It was just a huge crush of middle-aged and elderly people shuffling around in tour groups having their pictures taken in staged settings. The photographer would have bleachers set up in the standard “Here’s where I take the group picture” place, and they all lined up and dutifully went through with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Definitely not my cup of tea.<\/span><\/p>\n

I did take a few pictures of it:<\/p>\n

Heading to the temple:<\/p>\n

\"Outside<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking back in the direction I just came:<\/p>\n

\"Heading<\/a><\/p>\n

The outer gate is impressive:<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see the inner gate in the distance. Here’s a shopping street full of restaurants and souvenir shops:<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

Getting closer to the inner gate, but there’s nothing to see–it’s closed for renovation.<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

Entering the temple (more shichi-go-san, but no children present today, just tour groups of seniors):<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

Turtles Chillin’ Out:<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

Shots of Various Temple Buildings:<\/p>\n

This is a backlit shot of the inner gate, if I remember correctly.<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

Heading out to JR Nagano:<\/p>\n

Passing down the souvenir shop street again:<\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Zenkoji<\/a><\/p>\n

After the 1.4 Km hike there, I took the bus to the station to get lunch and get some ideas for seeing mountains and scenic stuff. Something that didn’t<\/em> involve mobs of tourists and bleachers. Since it was noon, the department store was open, so I bought some sandwiches and a chocolate croissant.<\/span><\/p>\n

I took a few photos of the area around JR Nagano:<\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, this post is getting long. Time to break it into two parts. Togakushi is in Part Two!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another day in Nagano. Lots of walking. LOTS of it. I got up late. I slept in until 9:30 a.m. because I was tired. I’m sure Nagano has a lot of great Olympic-related sights, but I decided to skip those. It just didn’t do anything for me, and if I can’t ride the bobsled, what’s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,823,5],"tags":[282,894,827,283,281,273,278,280,895,279],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-photos","category-travel","tag-crosswalk-timers","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2007","tag-japanese-crosswalk-music","tag-japanese-road-construction","tag-nagano","tag-togakushi","tag-togakushi-chuu","tag-travel","tag-zenkoji-temple","category-3-id","category-823-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}