Oh! Nikko

This week we had a week off from classes due to some nicely timed national holidays and the Waseda Festival. I mostly enjoyed this time by being lazy, but on Friday Jessi and me went to Nikko to check out the autumn leaves. I'd often heard Nikko was a beautiful place that wasn't too far from Tokyo and that it's especially nice during Autumn. So, we decided to go.

I know daylight saving has just ended in the UK so you're all having darker evenings and whatnot. But in Japan there is no daylight saving and the sun sets really early. When I first arrived here in September I was surprised by it being dark by 6.30pm but now it gets dark as early as 5.00. With this in mind, we decided an early start made sense to make the most of the daylight. Alarms were set for 5:45am (ouch), we set off at 6.30 and we made it to Nikko for about 10 (walk to Takadanobaba, Yamanote to Ueno, change to Ginza line to Asakusa, then the 08.10 limited rapid to Nikko on the Tobu line which took about 2.5 hours. Phew).

The weather was absolutely gorgeous when we left Tokyo, clear skies, bright sunshine and just a bit of mist on the horizon. The Japanese woman sitting opposite pointed out to us my first glimpse of Mount Fuji seen from the opposite side of Tokyo, looming out of the mist. She said it'd been the first time she'd ever seen Fuji from this train, and it was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to getting a better look at Fuji-san later this month!

So, we finally got to Nikko, in glorious sunshine, and began getting our bearings.

The first sight we came across was the bridge. I'm not sure of its name, but it sure was a pretty bridge. You could stand and look at it for free or pay 3 or 400Y to walk across it, which we did. And so I got my first slight feeling of being ripped off. You literally walk across and then back again across this bridge, you can't exit the other side and there's a rather busy road running along side it.

On a positive note, when we were promenading across the bridge a family with their little girl in a kimono turned up:

She was so so cute! We asked her mother if she'd mind if we took a photo of her daughter, which she didn't and she proceeded to take a photo of the gaijin taking photos of their daughter. Weird. But nevertheless, the girl was super kawaii.

Once we left the bridge we walked up some stone steps towards where the shrines were. This is the first shrine we came across:

Lovely. It was a building sight, they were doing a massive renovation of it. We had bought a special train ticket which gave us entry to about 5 or 6 shrines in Nikko, this being one of them. We didn't particularly fancy walking around a building sight so we paid to enter a Japanese garden which was located opposite this.

The garden was utterly stunning and made the Nikko trip for me. I'd wanted to visit a Japanese style garden since arriving in Japan, and seeing this one with the autumnal leaves was gorgeous. The only problem (to which we were contributing) was how crowded with tourists it was. And this was early on in the day, before they'd all arrived. Anyway, on to the pretty leafy photos. If you don't like leaves, you might as well stop reading.

When we first arrived the glorious sunshine which we'd enjoyed in Tokyo and on the train seemed to falter and it went a bit dull. Me and Jessi would get very excited when the sun came out from behind the clouds as it made the photos look so much nicer :)

 Leafy.

Me with leaves.

Some more leaves, this time with water.

Then we left the garden and went to look for more shrines.

Jessi and I both had different aims for things to see in Nikko - I wanted to see a carving of the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkeys which get a mention in just about every guidebook, whereas Jessi wanted to see a carving of a sleeping cat.

I found my monkeys, complete with a huge crowd of people in front of it taking photos of it. It was sort of unimpressive, I'm not really sure of its significance. But it got ticked off the list nontheless.

Me in front of a pretty building, trying to use my head to hide an ugly 'no smoking' sign. Yeah, I get that smoking by these wooden world heritage buildings is a silly idea, but I think spoiling the view of them with 'no smoking' signs is destructive in its own way.

A very heavily decorated shrine.

It was up these steps that you get to a courtyard that leads to the carving of a sleeping cat that Jessi wanted to see. Which, of course, you have to pay another 400Y for the privilege. I was starting to feel fleeced so I didn't bother to see it, but Jessi did and she seemed happy when she got back.

Carvings of peacocks are just as good as carvings of cats if you ask me.

A coach load of biddys arriving.

The settings of the temples was stunning, surrounded by ancient cedar trees.

 It was nice to get out of the pollution of Tokyo to some fresh air.

We walked into a bit I don't think we should have (possibly staff accomodation). But the building was pretty!

 
We also found a guy sweeping gravel. Yep, sweeping it to make it neater. Fully worthy of a photo.

We also quickly visited the Imperial Villa but, sadly, this is the only photo I took and we didn't enter.

After an early start and a long day walking around mountaineous shrines, we started to head home. As the sun was setting, the view of the mountains surrounding Nikko was gorgeous as the autumnal leaves were bathed in golden sunsetty light. And then we went home.

Food and drink in Nikko:

I tried my first (and long overdue) cup of matcha green tea. Very tasty!

We also tried a Nikko speciality which is yuba (tofu skin) which is the circular thing in the bowl on the right. I'm not the biggest fan of tofu (it's pretty boring) and, I have to admit, I enjoyed the shrimp tempura more.

And I finally tried a fish on a stick which I'd been too scared to try at the Kawagoe Matsuri. We saw a guy cooking them on the street in Nikko so I thought I'd give it a go. It came whole, with head, tail, and guts. I guess I was lucky they'd taken off the scales! It was tasty but pretty tricky to eat.

And that's it for my adventures in Nikko. I did enjoy the day and I'm glad I went, but the sheer amount of tourists everywhere made it all feel less special and having to pay for entrance twice for some things made me feel a bit ripped off. Hey ho, I never thought Japan would be cheap.