Nikko and temples
There may be some dds missing from this post – the key is being quite tempremental…
We arrived safely in Tokyo after an 11 hour flight an the whole thing isn`t quite as daunting as I thought it might be. Nick sat next to the smallest lady in the world! Immigration took a while, but by the time we got through our bags were out so we headed to the train station. The train, metro, train to Nikko worked without a hitch. We even managed to get to Asakusa station before 2.30pm to buy our 4 day All Nikko passes, even if they did hide the pass office down the street and round the corner!
The train to Nikko took forever, but we got there eventually…2.5hrs later…picked up a map and found the hostel. What a great first place to stay. The lady was really friendly and the evening meal was delicious (especially as we hadn`t eaten since 9am!) and the place looks just like the photos http://www.nikko-narusawa.com/english-frame.html. Very pleased that I learnt some basic japanese – even if I can only remember please and thank you!
On the Wednesday we headed for the main temple area (photos to follow once Nick has uploaded them to the web). It is hard to describe what we saw – very ornate carvings and numerous temples, including the `See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil` monkeys an a sacred horse donated by Mauris from New Zealand (I felt this was quite approriate considering that is one of the main stops on our travels this year!)
The temples were amazing – so intricatly carved – and all in memory of one man – doubt I`ll ever be that important! We managed to find an area not full or tourists and spend some time contempating it all.
I was amazed by the number of Japanese tourists at the site. At least 95% of them were Japanese – including enormous numbers of school children on trips, all with different coloured hats on – I think to indicate what school they were from.
Later in the day we headed down to the river to see 50 or so jozi – buddahs for travellers and children – they were rotting away but still had red hats and bibs on them which was quite surprising.
As it hadn`t turned dark we headed up to some waterfalls (Kirifuri) behind the B&B…these weren`t as impressive as they could have been as the viewing station was quite a long way from the falls, it also didn`t help that we only had 5 mins there otherwise we`d have missed the last bus back into town and that was the last thing we wanted to happen after a fulls days walking!
The following day made up for the less than impressive waterfalls – 3 – a dragons head, a 5km walk to the next set and down 100m in a lift for the last one! The autumn leaves on the walk up to the second waterfall were impressive – even looked like the postcards (not that there are very many around – quite a hard thing to find – well in Nikko at any rate!) Again, the number of Japanese tourists v `westerners` was surprising – all in cars this time – worse than the Lake District on a bank holiay!
Tags: Japan, Nikko, Temple, Travel
Jenni
Ommmmmm
Never knew I had a french sister! Glad the travels are going well sofar! have you had to count to ten yet or just use itchy knee? just wondering! have you got yourself a funky little pollution mask as well? just wondering!