Takasaki Autumn Tour

Another public holiday today! Today my mum and I were going on the autumn tour held by the same volunteer tour group that had taken us ALTs to Haruna shrine and stuff earlier. There were a lot less people today than the previous tour – probably because most of us have gotten cars and are able to explore by ourselves now, whereas when we first arrived we all didn’t know where in Takasaki we should go! Woke up at 7:00am, got ready and drove to Takasaki Station where the meeting point was. Bought lunch at a convenience store and then went to the meeting spot outside the police box on the West side of the station! We took the local buses to the tour spots today instead of going on a tour bus, which was actually quite nice since I haven’t even taken the bus yet in Takasaki because having a car is just so much easier. At least now I know how the buses work here in terms of fares and everything (the bus we took was a loop bus with a flat rate of ¥200)!

Our first stop was the Kannon Cave – a 400m long cave/tunnel filled with different Kannon Buddha statues. Then we got to see absolutely gorgeous autumn foliage in a garden just next to the cave. The leaves were truly beautiful here – just at their peak! The weather was a bit drizzly and gray but that actually accentuated the reds and oranges and made them stand out even more. Plus since it wasn’t such good weather, there was hardly anyone around. We spent quite a while in the garden taking a lot (A LOT) of photos, and then moved onto the next event which was walking up to the giant Kannon statue at the top of the mountain. It was only a short 20 minute walk up the stairs, so it wasn’t too bad. People who hadn’t climbed up the Kannon statue went and did that, while the rest of us just enjoyed the views and more autumn leaves. After that we walked across this scenic bridge to the Dyeing Botanical Garden, where we ate lunch, and then got to dye our own bandanas! It was pretty fun to use the natural indigo dyes, and the method was quite time consuming (had to dye and rinse the cloth several rounds) and interesting. We all ended up doing different designs so the group photo of us holding our finished products at the end was really nice!

Our scheduled tour finished up and we took the bus back to the station together. We then said bye and departed. We did a bit of shopping at the station first before going home – Uniqlo, glasses at Jins, and then some more clothes at Honeys. Had ramen for dinner before calling it a night.