Is ninja 007!?

When hearing the word, Ninja, what comes to your mind? Some of you may think about “You live only twice” of 007 series, Ninja Turtles, or bad guys of kang fu movies. Mostly, they are in black, wear a black mask, and carry a sword on the back. Please don’t say you thought that ninja in black outfits were still on the wall of skyscrapers in Tokyo.

Ninja really existed about 150 years ago during Edo period. At that time, Japan used to be a united nation that contain many small countries. Until Tokugawa Ieyasu united Japan as one country, each country had wars, and ninja were people who engage in the espionage activities.

Ninja were pretty knowledgeable on detective skills such as disguising techniques and psychology, how to use fire and magic, pharmacy, astronomy, and a lot more. In addition, they had trainings everyday and were really good at fighting as well. This is because they needed to be on duty alone due to the nature of the espionage activities and thus needed to know how to fight against multiple enemies. The hard trainings were required in order to gain the extraordinary jumping power and master how to use shuriken.

“Throwing shuriken quickly” and “explosion” are well known ninja’s skills. However, such skills seem like only in movies, novels, or comic books. They may have associated enemies but they usually wore normal clothes and did espionage activities secretly.

Why don’t you go to “Nikko Edo Mura” if you wanted to walk on the street wearing ninja outfits because you come all the way to Japan? To go to the spot, where the times of Edo period were replicated, you take a train of Tobu Asakusa line from Asakusa and take off at Kidogawa Onsen station, then take a cab for ten minutes. But first, stop by at Sakura Currency Service that offers the best rates, and then leave for the attraction!