Nikko 日光

To celebrate Ben's visit, we went to Nikko [日光] for the weekend. It's not too far from Tokyo (only a couple of hours on the limited express) and has some nice temples to give you feel of Japan. So, we thought it would be a nice introduction for Benny...

After we got to the nearest train station, we wandered around for a bit to try and find the tourist information centre, to work out where the Ryokan that we booked was...Turns out that it was a bus ride away, but there was a free shuttle or we could buy a ticket on the public bus system...we chose to have lunch while waiting for the free shuttle bus to take us up to our ryokan. We had some Soba [そば] with yuba [ゆば] - tofu skin, sounds horrible but was really tasty....very soft and tender.

After some of the tourist information people really went out of their way to check that we got on to our bus, we spent about 20mins in the bus before we got to our ryokan. The bus wound its way up the mountain, into the snow...

We settled into our room, then went for a walk around 'town'...which turned out to be pretty small... we found a few little temples, the source of the onsen [温泉] water for the ryokans [see photo], closed foot baths, a cafe by a lake (which we had some Umai shou - sweet warm sake [甘酒]to warm ourselves up)

source of onsen [温泉] water for the local ryokans

a poor attempt to dispose of Ben in the (rather sulphurous) onsen [温泉] water

Greg trying to give a temple bell a good whack, about 50yens worth of whack...despite the fact the bell had kinda been tied up didn't stop us.

A frozen puddle on a stone (just to show how cold the place was...)

We then went back to the ryokan when it started getting dark (not before a little snowball fight...) and had our 'traditional' Japanese dinner. In the general tradition of Japanese dinners at ryokans, it was very colourful. We had soy milk based nabe [鍋], which had some tofu making syrup to pour into the nabe pot afterwards to make the remaining soy milk [豆乳] into soft tofu. there was also ikura [いくら] (salmon roe) in a very small cocktail-looking shot glass, the standard rice, fish, sashimi, some unidentifiable green cuboidal substance (which didn't taste of much except the soy sauce that I put on), some fish-cake...and other needlessly colourful foods... Basically, there were lots of small plate of things, which didn't look like it would fill you up, all beautifully arranged which was very hard to finish, because we were very full when we were only about half-way though...

Anyway, after that we tried the onsen [温泉] and then went to bed; ready for a day of walking tomorrow....

So, the next morning we took the shuttle bus, put on by the ryokan, down to the centre of town, from where we started our little tour. The first site (which was just opposite the road from where the bus dropped us off, was this rather famous land mark of Nikko (which name escapes me). Which, I might add, you are not allowed to walk on...


We were actually lucky enough to catch the end of the Momiji season (red leaves of autumn...) [紅葉]...hence the tiny red maple leaves behind Ben...who is standing in front of some stairs to a temple...

At the top of the stairs we immediately ran into a ticket booth, from here we proceeded to buy a pack of tickets for all the major temples in the Nikko area.

Inside the Japanese garden, moss seems to line everything...it's much friendlier than grass....sooo soft and inviting - especially when it carpets the floor...

Making a full 180degree turn we then went into a Japanese garden near the entrance to the first temple along our route... [see above photo] . Just outside another shrine...there were lots of stone laterns, also nicely covered in moss... [see photo below]

We also came across the famous Nikko carving in one of the biggest Temples (over the horse stables) of the Hear no evil [聞かざる], Speak no evil [言わざる], and See no evil [見ざる]. Better yet, there were lots of very weird carvings all over the temple gates and other wooden buildings, which had apparently been designed by a guy who was told to draw elephants and had never seen even a picture of the things...which would explain why they didn't look like elephants at all...
We also managed to find the 'deliberate mistake'; which had been put into the temples to satisfy the Gods, where one of the white pillars of the main gate was put in upside-down...which could only really be seen if you looked closely at the pattern carved on the pillar....


The upside-down pillar was on the other side of the gate you can see further up in the center of the photo...the large thing you can see on the far right (and a bit of one being hidden by some huge trees on the left) just in front of, and on either side of the main gate are drum towers.

The drum tower and the tori (shrine entrance)

Just a small fraction of some of the ornate and colourful carvings which adorn the temple.

a large store of sake casks...

...a couple getting married in traditional Japanese dress...

In the grounds of one of the other temples...people making garlands out of dried rice stalks (hay/straw) getting ready to be hung outside the temples and on gates for some local celebration...

Greg also found a small shrine dedicated to all things French...

and here are some more photos (taken by Greg, obviously...) to give you a feel for the place...