United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I understand they even hoe the drilled-in wheat. The rice, the staple of the country, is so cared for and tended that it sells for much more than other rice. Imported rice is the common food. As our guide said, we must go to the "Proud of Japan," Nikko, to see the most wonderful temples of their kind in all the world. We took the cars at Yokohama for Nikko.
It has been related how largely Ieysau was aided against the Osaka party by Tengai, abbot of Enryaku-ji. This priest it was that devised the singular accusation connected with the inscription on a bell at Hoko-ji. He received from Ieyasu the diocese of Nikko in Shimotsuke province, where he built a temple which ultimately served as the shrine of Ieyasu.
When we were in the Orient, I used to hear of them ever so dimly I didn't think we'd all be talking of them so soon " "Oh, you've been in the Orient do you know the China Coast and Nikko and " "No, only India." "I've never been there and I've heard it's the kernel of the East," he said with his lips. But his mind was puzzling something out and finding a solution.
The fashion of making bridal-tours is not Japanese. Many a lovely spot might serve for such a purpose in everywhere beautiful Japan. The lake and mountains of Hakone; the peerless scenery, trees, waterfalls and tombs of Nikko, where sleeps the mighty Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line; the spas of Atami, all these are spots which if in America would be thronged with bridal-parties.
The first half of the distance to Nikko is perfectly level, in fact one vast rice field. The journey was divided by stopping at Utsonomiga, where we passed the night in a native tea-house. Our sleeping arrangements were very simple. A Japanese bed consists of a thin cotton mattress spread upon the floor, and a similar article with big sleeves for the arms, which forms the covering.
When visiting the famous temples of Nikko, in Japan, the author saw a priest sitting before a temple in the open air, beside a collection of prepared pine chips with which he was feeding a small fire upon an open stone slab, and accompanying the burning process by beating at intervals upon a tom-tom.
Nikko, the incomparable, with its glorious scenery and its still more glorious temples, the meandering Daynogawa, the beauteous Lake Chiuzenji, on which a quarter of a century or so ago a European provided with a passport and having his headquarters at a neighbouring tea-house might gaze at his leisure, and meditate in a glorious silence broken only by the sound of the ripples of the water or the cry of the birds from the neighbouring woods, all are now vulgarised.
The next morning we took our guide and three natives to each foreigner to assist in getting us up the Nikko mountain. It took from 7 o'clock in the morning until 2 in the afternoon to reach the summit. Every mountain peak was covered with red, white, and pink azaleas. Our pathway was over a carpet of the petals of these exquisite blooms.
A pleasant excursion of a hundred miles inland, with Nikko as the objective point, enabled us to get some idea of posting with Japanese ponies, which are the most nervous and vicious little creatures of their species upon the face of the globe. One little rogue required six men to harness him, and then was dragged forward by his mate for a long distance.
But from the artistic point of view such a change is one impossible to contemplate without a feeling of regret. There is, of course, no human possibility of temples such as those at Shiba and Nikko ever again being erected in Japan.
Word Of The Day