Day Three: Nikko

The first thing I did when I woke up was open up the window blind and look outside. It blocks the light super well - it's impossible to tell if it's day or night when it's closed. I look down at the alley, and I see this:

Just a businessman sleeping off his Friday night on the side of the road. Orange shirt was checking on him. I'd read that sometimes salarymen just sleep wherever since the trains stop at midnight and the izakaya (bars) are open later, but I didn't think I would see one. He was gone after a half hour or so after I looked - probably staggered off to catch the train home, regretting every drink he'd had the night before.

The trip to Nikko meant I got to take the shinkansen - the Japanese high speed rail. They run exactly on time - definitely to the minute. And they're so incredibly fast! I know that sounds stupid, because they are famously really fast trains, but seeing one blast past you and feeling the wave of air it pushes is a whole other level of "wow, that's fast." But they are also incredibly smooth. You almost feel as if you're not moving at all.

Basically what I'm saying is the entire world should have shinkansen. Let's all hire the Japanese to build them (and then run them).

Nikko itself is higher up the mountains, about a two hour trip from Tokyo. I got there a little after eleven. The JR Rail station in Nikko is one of their older stations, two stories and made of wood. I walked up to the second story, which the sign said used to be the first class waiting room, but there wasn't much in it.

Except those beautiful chandeliers.

I ate an early lunch at a ramen place Cody recommended (it was delicious), and then I walked up to the shrine. There were buses, but I was like "pfft, who needs buses? I haven't been walking to work these past however many months to catch a bus."

The first thing you see is that famous red bridge.

Shinkyo Bridge

You have to pay to cross it, so I didn't, but the water below it is crystal clear.

Across the road from the bridge is the path up to Toshugo Shrine.

Once there, well. I'll just show you. There are no pictures inside, as they are actual shrines/holy places, but while I can't show you the beautiful statues of the god, I can show you the beautiful outsides. I took approximately one hundred billion photos, so this is really just a random selection of shots picked based on thumbnails.

Elephants, according to the records.

Carved from one piece of wood!

This is the ceiling to the entry gate.

Sacred dance hall

Sleeping cat

207 stairs and my thumb.

The stairs were tough in the heat, but halfway up I saw a man carrying on his back approximately five boxes of something. At the top of the stairs, there is a fountain for water and a vending machine full of cans of green tea. The man was carrying five boxes of cans of green tea up 207 steps on his back. And they aren't even steps, either, this is Japan and seismic activity has shifted them so they're all sort of wonky. Impressive as heck. And when I went down after paying my respects to Tokugawa Ieyasu's remains, he was on his way back up with another load.

He must have thighs of steel.

After I finished at the shrine, I wandered around the grounds for a bit. There was a group of schoolchildren, probably around nine or ten who stopped to talk to me, clearly practicing their English. "I am very hot. Are you hot?" They were using the same script on everyone not Asian who walked past. So adorable.

After that, I wandered up to a small falls. I took a path of uneven, moss covered stones.

They led to a temple built in 1645 - a reconstruction of a previous temple. Along the entire path, there were little shrines everywhere. No one else was around, and it was nice and peaceful and as cool as it can get.

The waterfall wasn't really that big, but it was pretty.

Then I wandered back down to town. The roads were super narrow and winding.

And then I ended up back in town! I bought some ice cream and another egg sandwich because I didn't have time for a sit down meal before the next train, and then I sat and ate my ice cream and watched the sun go down.

Final steps tally for the day:

Yeah my feet hurt a little.