Yasu-chō

This was SUCH a fun day! We left pretty early this morning to make our way to Lake Biwa still in the shiga prefecture. We took a few trains a grabbed a sandwich for breakfast from 7/11, very luxurious I know! We then visited a few shrines and temples along our way to meet our guide to go kayaking on the lake, and not just any kayaking, we got to kayak up to Shirahige Shrine Torii!! This is a torii gate that has appeared in art for 2,000 years but only in 1937 was the torii gate actually placed in the lake!

Super excited to see this, we arrived to the “beach office” which is more like a shed with one man in who spoke no English at all, using Google translate we managed to communicate and he introduced us to our guide who spoke no English either! He gave us wellies and waterproof trousers, and of course mine are BRIGHT YELLOW, very attractive I know. Our guide then gave us a long safety brief in Japanese, nodding away to make him feel better I was hoping he didn’t say anything too important ! I took the approach that if we fell in we know how to swim so we’d be fine!

We clambered into our kayak, me in the back and Jacob in the front and we set off following our guide. The wind was not our biggest fan today making the paddling a little harder but it was only about 30 minutes to the torii gate so not that far really.

As we zigzagged a little along we began to see the torii gate in the distance with beautiful mountains providing the perfect backdrop and it was breathtaking. We weren’t allowed to kayak through the torii gate but we went around it and it’s huge!! Our guide took lots of pictures and videos of us so you can see the scale! It was so peaceful on the lake and the wind died down so we glided through the water and enjoyed the peace and winter sunshine. We stopped on a little beach to enjoy the view before kayaking back.

It was SO much fun and it was just us and the guide again so we were very lucky, it was such an impressive structure up close and definitely worth the trek up to see it!!Read more