Ouchijuku, Fukushima!

6/18/17

Katie and I woke up quite early and got ready to drive out to Ouchijuku in the Aizu region of Japan.

On the way, we stopped at a little shrine on the side of the road, but the shrine itself was no longer there, but the entrance still was.

Ouchijuku is an old, traditional town that was a stop along the traditional Tokaido road for pilgrims and people traveling between Kyoto and Tokyo. 

This small restaurant was selling Soba and ice cream. It was one of the few buildings that didn't have a thatched roof.

a typical old-town gutter.

A pretty hornets nest that is being preserved in this glass case.

Enhance!

Ouchijuku is built in the old style, or I should say that it has always been rebuilt/remodeled in the same traditional style and has never been remodeled to look modern in any way. There are still inns and the main street is lined with shops. It is like taking a step back in time. It is so pretty!

You can see some of the shop-fronts to the left.

One of the shops had drinks sitting in these baskets in the gutter to keep them cool!

It has traditional and new items for sale, such as pottery, toys, foodstuffs, lacquer ware, mobiles, phone charms, chopsticks, hats, handmade woodworks, and much more!

So man different kinds of Kokeshi Dolls!

When I was in Osaka several years ago, some of the students told me that you hang this plant from the eaves of your roof to protect the house from lightning strikes and the fire that would probably result from that. I don't know if that's true, but many of the houses had this plant hanging from the eaves.

 We walked along the main road checking out all the shops and sampling some foods, like ice cream and sembei crackers.

The inside of one of these shops. Many of the interiors looked like this.

Inside the hollow string baubles are small cloth dolls.

Here you can see the dolls a little better.

I loved these mobiles and decorations made of cloth and string. So fun!

I absolutely LOVE this Hot Pink Daruma!

There was quite a lot of lovely pottery here.

And here we have a cloth representation of that plant to hang from the eaves of your roof.

I especially loved this shop with cloth trinkets and decorations.

All the roofs are made of thatch, and there were even some men re-roofing a restaurant while we were there. There was a museum off to one side about halfway down the street, but we didn’t have a whole lot of time to check it out.

One of the things you must do when you go to Ouchijuku is eat their famous “Negi soba.” Negi soba is soba that you eat with a large leek onion instead of chopsticks, although they are available if you are struggling. It is quite difficult to eat with just one cylindrical object. But it was still fun and interesting and the leek certainly gave the soba an extra, tasty flavor. The restaurant we ate the negi soba at was the same one that was getting a new thatched roof.

You can see the restaurant getting it's new thatched roof in the back.

A shop to the right and a little bit better view of the incomplete restaurant roof.

The first thing you see when you enter the restaurant. A traditional fireplace with fish cooking around it. 

Negi Soba and Tea.

How exactly am I supposed to eat this?

I feel like Katie was better at eating with the leek than I was.

All done!

When we were done eating we walked back behind the restaurant and climbed the stairs leading up to the hill behind the town. This hill had a shrine at the top.

The shrine was small and not too interesting, but its roof did have plant life growing on it! It looked so cool!

We walked along the path on the hill and were able to see a beautiful overlook of Ouchijuku. It was lovely! I bought myself a noren (doorway curtain) of this view of Ouchijuku.

When we were done we walked back down the main road and back to the car. 

Storing sake in these paper and bamboo barrels.

Tiny little frog altar in front of a shop.

From here we drove about twenty minutes away to a shrine called Tonohetsuri.

I can't get over how beautiful this area is!

Tonohetsuri is a small Buddhist shrine nestled into the cliff side of a small river, that I cannot find the name of. The cliff side if relatively famous for its ten protruding peaks and eroded sections of the cliff wall from the river over time. Near the place I parked my car there is a small porch where you can look out over the river, and the bridge and see the area around the temple surrounded by trees.

The water is so blue and beautiful! And there is a cute little bridge that spans the river so you can cross to the other side to go see the small temple.

We walked down the cliff side of our side of the river, where we walked through a little shop that sold nick-knacks for tourists before we made it to the bridge.

When you cross the bridge you can feel the steps and the swaying of the bridge from the movement of anyone else on the bridge. It freaked Katie out, but she liked it. I loved every second of it!

When you get to the other side, you have to walk along this narrow path that has a steep drop down to the river, so you must be careful. It was so much fun and so beautiful. We were passing an old couple on our way and they cautioned us to be careful. They were so nice.

Here you can clearly see the narrow path you must traverse along the river to get to the shrine.

We saw a place that had a bunch of cairns assembled from small stones and sitting on a stone “shelf” underneath a stone overhang. It was pretty cool. From here you take a stone staircase up and you emerge in front of the Buddhist temple.

The stone "shelf" is to the right.

Here you can see all the cairns.

The temple was small and dark. There is a wooden wall erected around the cave where the shrine is located, so you have to pass through a door in the wooden wall before you see the Buddhist temple.

When you enter, you see some Buddha statues and an altar in the cave to the left.You also see the temple right ahead of you. Because it is in a cave that is surrounded by the wooden wall, it is kind of dark, but you can still see clearly.

You can see a diagram of the 10 peaks on that white sign at the entrance.

That was a monk working at the shrine.

I love the detail of the writing at the top!

Very unique shrine. 

There was a monk standing to the right as we entered, and he welcomed us when we entered.

Because the temple is small and there is not much to see, we didn’t spend much time there. But it is quite a unique little temple.

A diagram that better illustrates the 10 peaks, along with the placement of the path and the shrine.

On the way back we were the only ones on the bridge so we decided to have some fun with it. We decided to run across the bridge to the other side while creating as much movement with our feet as we could. The bridge was sturdy so we were not worried about breaking it.

While we were stomping/running across the bridge the sunglasses that I had in my shirt neckline nearly fell out, which caused me to cry out briefly, which scared Katie. We had a good laugh about it on the other side.  We snapped a few more photos before going back to the car.

On the way back to the car we passed through the little shop once more. This time we saw a snake wine! It was an alcohol which had an entire snake pickling inside of it!

We looked at the shelf below that one and saw two more jars with snakes in them. The snakes were till alive, and I suspect they were waiting for the snakes to starve to death before creating the snake wine. Or maybe not. I don't know what the process is for creating snake booze. I don’t think I would ever drink it, but maybe.

This one is marked for selling a small glass of this snake wine for ~$3.

When we got back to the car we drove to Koriyama on local roads, where we were then able to hop onto the expressway to Fukushima City.

I dropped Katie off at her house, and then made my way back to Minamisoma.