We packed our bags once again and headed to Nikko which is 5 hours away from Himeji. It was a bit of an ordeal to buy the tickets to get here but we eventually worked it out after about 2 hours in the travel agent.
Nikko is a wonderful, pleasant place to visit. I definitely would put this as a must place to see in Japan. It is famous for it’s bridge, many temples and shrines as well as waterfalls, lakes and mountains. We spent the 2 days we had there exploring as many of these sights as possible. Nikko is a little cooler than other areas in Japan. The Daiya River that runs in Nikko is probably the reason for this. It is quite icy as we found out when we stuck our feet in the water. I tell you what we couldn’t keep our feet in there for long. They were numb after about 10 seconds of being in there.
The river runs under the Shinkyo Bridge. It is very beautiful. The water is so clean and fresh that you just feel like jumping in. You can’t imagine how cold it would be though.
Dragon flies are everywhere in Nikko and seem to like people. They just keep buzzing around you. It’s amazing how many there are.
We visited Rin-no-ji Taiyuin, Futura-san Shrine, a 5 Storied Pergoda, Toshogu, Yakushi-do and Rin-no-ji Sanbutsu-do, which are the main temples and shrines in Nikko. These temples and shrines were unlike any that I have seen before. They were just amazing to look at with so much detail on each one. Instead of being wooden they were made with a lot of gold. Most of the temples and shrines were set in a forest or had mountains as backgrounds. They were just beautiful to look at.
Rin-no-ji Taiyuin Front Gate
Rin-no-ji Taiyuin Sacred Water
Rn-no-ji Taiyuin Koko-mon Gate
Futara-san Shrine Cleaning Water
5 Storied Pergoda
Toshogu
"Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil"
Kegon Falls was next on our list. They are 97m high and 7m wide. There was 3.0 tons of water falling per second the day we went. It was pretty spectacular to see these falls. You were even able to catch an elevator right down to pretty much water level. It was good to see the falls from this perspective. The temperature drop from the top to the bottom was 10 degrees. It was 25 degrees at the top and 15 degrees at the bottom which was a little chili for my liking but well worth being cold.
Lake Chuzenji was the next thing we saw. This was another beautiful sight in Nikko. It too was surrounded by mountains and absolutely breathtaking.
Food was hard to find in Nikko for some reason. The “7 Eleven” served it’s purpose that’s for sure. We ate about 4 meals there and we managed to find a Korean Restaurant that was open to eat tea one night.
I loved Nikko and would love to come back again in the winter time when everything is covered in snow. I guess we will see if we have time.
2 comments:
I loved Nikko too. It had everything - from shrines, to temples, to bridges, to waterfalls, to snakes coming in all different shapes and sizes!!! Beautiful town, that Nikko!!
I loved Nikko too! Especially the wild life! Dragonflies are beautiful and it was my first time to see a Japanese snake! Wow!
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