The scenery around Nagano is beautiful.
On Saturday, we went up to the small village called Togakushi to see the shrines, especially the uphil one called Okusha, and see whether we could get far enough into the mountains to get on top of one.
Here I am heading out from the Togakushi Chuusha bus stop.
They have a lot of bi gcedar trees around Togakushi!
The entrance to Togakushi Chuusha.
We quickly figured out from the amount of snow (a number of inches had falled the night before) we weren't likely to get anywheres near the top of a mountain.
There are some steep stairs leading up to the main part of Chuusha (middle shrine).
They're intimidating whether you look at them from the bottom...
...or the top.
Shrine guardians, left...
...and right.
Himanshu outside the main shrine building.
There was a singsong sound coming from the main shrine building.
It turned out to be a ceremony in progress.
Next we headed up the road a mile or so to the entrance to Okusha. This turned out to be a lot of walking through beautiful wintry woods.
Much of the time we were alongside the road... I forgot to take so many pictures of that.
A pretty mountain stream on the way into Okusha.
More guardians, left...
...and right!
We're following the track in. You can see the fresh-fallen snow! Everybody was walking in the wheel tracks.
At one point this cute little truck came boudning out through the road. It was incredible he could make it through the snow!
As you can see, the snow was pretty much as deep as the truck was high.
This gate marks the entrance to the main attraction at Okusha, the cedar lane. This family was taking pictures, so we helped them out by taking pictures of them as a group.
Here's the view up the lane of cedars just after the gate. It's really awe-inspiring.
These are big, old, cedar trees.
The family helped us out and got some pictures of me and Himanshu in front of the cedars.
Another view up the approach to Okusha.
Looking through the cedars.
Okusha itself is quite a ways up the mountain, and nice enough. However, the journey really was the reward for us, since we didn't know enough about Shinto to appreciate the spirit of Okusha itself.
A random tree near the shrine itself.
