It's a tired expression which I've heard lots but never used. Well, Yonezawa deserves the term. gNestled in the mountainsh means that wherever you stand, even in the city centre, you can see the distant mountains rising away. They would be the backdrop for the many hours of walking that lay ahead of me, sometimes laden like a packhorse as I searched for my hotel, sometimes just regularly laden with the bulging contents of my pockets.
There were plenty of hours to kill before sunset no matter how knackered I was, so to I got the tour office to circle things on my map and set off. I wasn't sure what the places were, but that wasn't about to stop me.
First port of call was what I thought was a rice wine museum. The place seemed deserted and I wasn't sure which building was the actual museum. I wandered past a small allotment until a dog started barking at me. Thinking I had gone in a private house, I turned around to leave, spotting an old lady peering at me from the box office window. With what dignity I could recover, I failed to speak Japanese at her for five minutes until through much waving of pamphlets I realised that this was not a rice wine museum but a samurai armour and weaponry museum. Ka-ching!
A small semicircular room displayed a dozen or so excellently preserved suits of Japanese armour. Of all the world's knightly warriors, the samurai probably the most... gay. His vestments are brightly coloured and embroidered with flowery designs. This is covered by banded (lacquer?) armour, strung together by gaudy threads, the extremities wrapped in patterned chain mail. His helmet will have a highly elaborate and impractical pair of horns or crescent moon or similar design. The only manly bit is the terracotta face mask, depicting a fearsome demon face complete with bristly horse hair moustache. Hell, the Samurai is known to be as skilled in Origami and Flower arranging as he is in Kendo. As pretty as it all is, it strikes as much fear into my foreign barbarian heart as Graham Norton... No, actually he's pretty scary.
In the other building was a selection of weapons. There were no swords, but there were a selection of sheathed polearms, and even some ancient muskets, which look as much like a modern rifle as the don't look like a log. There was also a very very tiny shoulder barge. Either it was made for children, or the Japanese used to be even smaller than I thought...
Next I visited the shrine where the festival celebrations would be. The shrine itself was huge, and crowded with people wandering from the festival stands that clustered around it and kept at bay only by the moat surrounding the shrine. Nothing much was happening at the time though, so after wandering among the stalls I left to find some beef.
Yonezawa beef is the famous local delicacy. Its also well out of my price range. I eventually managed to find a ramen noodle house that served a beef meal. The stuff is tender and tasty, but nothing amazing... more to be eaten to say you did.
My room was at the cheapest hotel in Yonezawa. Unfortunately, it was the cheapest hotel in Yonezawa... Thankfully no six legged friends wanted to sleep with me, but the air conditioner sounded like it was about to explode, the walls were black, the carpet threadbare and the pillow filled with what I assume were peas. Advice: when faced with such a situation, make sure you've been awake for 36 hours straight. I slept like a log.Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/www/Auhipoon/entryBuilder.php on line 19