Nikko to Karuizawa
David and I were well rested and hungry this morning. We had an elaborate Japanese-style breakfast before we left the ryokan. We boarded the bus for a gorgeous drive on the "Romantic Road" to the Nikko National Park. We were all surprised at how much snow was still on the ground in this mountainous area. We took a cable car (called a ropeway in Japan) to the Akechi-daira observation deck to see Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls. Very, very beautiful!
This picture is of the two David's. Our tour leader is David Lovejoy from Pasadena, CA. He has lived in Japan for nine years and is fluent in Japanese. He is a great tour leader and a fabulous photographer. We really enjoyed being on his tour.
We left the observation deck and took the bus to the lakeside area itself and the Kegon-no-taki waterfalls, one of Japan's three most beautiful waterfalls, so we could see it up close. The views were breathtaking!
After viewing the waterfall we walked into the small town and had a hot chocolate. We then walked to the end of the street to see more views of Lake Chuzenji. Amazing!
Our tour leader finally drug us away from these scenes to re-board the bus for the gorgeous drive to our next hotel in Karuizawa -- an exclusive resort town famous as a holiday retreat. We were told the Japanese Imperial Family have a home here. It was a lovely hotel with beautiful rooms but I didn't take any pictures of the room because the views outside our window stole the show!!! The mountain in the picture is called Mount Asama, which happens to be an active volcano as well . The views were incredible and almost look like photographs.
Shortly after we checked in we had to board the bus again to attend a 90 minute flying squirrel watch. I did not know there were such things as flying squirrels so this was a fantastic experience! We went to The Picchio Wildlife Research Centre. First of all the man who educated us about flying squirrels was so enthusiastic about the subject that he just tickled all of us! He gave us a 30 minute power point presentation of the squirrel's history and habitat and then we had to hike about 2 miles into the forest to see one. They make their homes in hollow trees (or in this case in boxes provided for them in this particular forest). They are nocturnal so the flying squirrel manager has to make an educated guess every night as to what time they will fly out of their nests to forage for food. On this particular night he predicted the squirrel we were watching would fly out at 6:34 p.m. He was close -- the squirrel flew out at 6:40. The cool thing is that the manager has cameras in the nest and we were able to watch a closed circuit monitor that the presenter brought along which showed the squirrel's actions in the box as he was waking up and starting to move about. The squirrel stuck his head out of the box twice and looked at us, just like our presenter said he would. It really was an incredible experience. The squirrel itself from head to tail, stretched out, was about 3 feet long. When it flew it opened its body up like a parachute and glided approximately a couple of hundred feet to another tree. Regretably we were unable to get any pictures of it because of the time of night. Below is a picture I found online. This is exactly what the one we saw looked like! Pretty cute, don't you think?
By the time we returned to the hotel it was time for dinner. We were all seated at two tables in a very pretty restaurant. The waiters were in black tuxedos and the service was very fancy. Sadly I didn't have my iPhone or camera at dinner but Dion took pictures of the food and shared them with me.
The food was beautifully prepared and presented. It was a lovely dinner at the end of a remarkable day!
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