JR Rail Pass, 1st stop: Nikkō & Sendai

NIKKŌ

Before coming to japan I bought a three week JR Rail Pass (I constantly accidentally call it my Jail Pass, lol). If you plan on traveling around the country, it's be far the best and cheapest solution. It might seem a bit expensive at first, but it does mean you can ride all the trains (by JR) for free. 

A few days ago I activated my 3 week pass and took my first trip to Nikkō. It was kind of spontaneous, since I hadn't made a plan for the route I wanted to take, but instead just made a list of places I wanted to see. So anyway, I took the bullet train to Nikkō, and got there within an hour. I had reserved a bed at a hostel, but for some stupid reason, I hadn't looked up where the hostel was, probably because I thought Nikkō would be larger than it was. It's truly a little town! 

Anyway, luckily (after about half an hour of driving and several phone calls), a taxi took me to my hostel.

 

I spent two nights in Nikkō, so my second day there, an Australian guy I was sharing the hostel dorm room with, and I went to the national park and walked around the beautiful scenery for a few hours.

It was so relaxing and quite nice to get away from the city for once. Everything was just so green and peaceful! 

After walking around for a few hours, it started raining a bit, so we went back down though wanted to make a stop at a popular waterfall. Unfortunately because of the rain, there was so much fog, we literally couldn't see 5m in front of us, and definitely not the huge beautiful waterfall. It was the strangest experience standing a few meters from an enormous waterfall, barely being able to talk because of the noise from it, but not being able to see a single thing! 

Of course on top of the disappointment of not being able to see the waterfall, we missed the busby a few seconds, and the next one was first scheduled 40 minutes later :(

Luckily it's soooo easy to hitchhike in japan. We had been standing for all of 2 minutes before I car stopped and picked us up, and drove us to the station 20km away. Woohoo, go japan!!! 

People fly fishing 

SENDAI

Next stop on my trip was Sendai. Again it was completely spontaneous and I had no idea what kind of city it was. It's more north than Nikkō, and I guess I went because the northern part was supposed to be more traditional and have some samurai history. 

Anyway, Sendai was a bit of a letdown. I wasn't really sure what to see, it was cold and constantly raining, so I was just feeling super miserable.

After spending 2 nights there, my original plan was to go a bit more north, but my mom talked me into going south instead. Going south to the sun and warmth, which seriously was a great idea!!!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from Sendai; I really couldn't find any interesting things to take pictures of...

Next stop is Nagano...