Shrines and Temples, a trip to Nikko

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So we left Tokyo with a new found excitement for everything Japanese, next stop Nikko.

Nikko is a small town up in the hills about 2 hours North West of Tokyo, it's a huge draw for the Japanese population as it has some of the countries most important shrines and temples. It was completely different from Tokyo, think somewhere like Fort William but on a lot smaller scale than the Scottish town, a lovely place to spend a couple of days, in fact we could have spent weeks here as it was beautiful and the hospitality fantastic, they don't get many foreign tourists up here.

Before I forget I need to tell you about the stares you get here, everyone is amazed by Europeans, even in Tokyo where there are loads of tourists, well not loads but a few, Fiona got stopped in the street by this women and her baby and got Fiona to hold the baby while she took a photo of her. They want to know everything about our culture and love to practice their English on us, Japanese school girls love to stare at me until I wave at them then they all wave back and get excitable, it's just like my old high school days, no really it is, seriously there were girls that followed me, OK there was A girl that followed me, well actually she may have been looking for the Maths building but I'm sure she was checking me out, anyway they love me here and that's all that matters.

So in Nikko there was a Japanese family with a baby girl, maybe about 18 months old or something, anyway she'd obviously never seen a whiteie before and her gran brought her to meet me and she was facinated, all the rest of the family were pishing themselves as I tried to talk to this girl in Japanese, well when I say Japanese I mean I used slow loud English while missing out words that I didn't think (this 18 month old girl) would understand, I'm a man of the people you see.

The main temple area of Nikko is called the Nikko Toshogu Shrine that houses, amongst other things, the Sleeping Cat of Nemuri-niko, the 3 sacred repositories of San Jinko, the roaring dragon of Yakushi-do and my favourite, Shinkyu-sha, the stable of the Three Monkeys; Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil.... I know, I though it was a film with Gene Wilder & Richard Pryor too...... Anyway it's my new philosophy, kind of similar to my old philosophy of I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, the big boys done it and they ran away.

Nikko, it had loads of beautiful temples and wide open spaces, big mountains and friendly people, a wonderful place and so very different from the capital, the other side of Japan, we love it here too and are really amazed with this country. The trains man, they run to the second, if the timetable says 10:21 it'll leave at 10:21, it doesn't matter how far it's come or what the weathers like, it'll be there, guaranteed. If you're running a couple of minutes late and you think you might make it, dinnae bother running, it's gone pal, nae luck.

We're off to the historic old city of Kyoto tomorrow that has some 2000+ shrines and temples and was Japan's captial for more than 1000 years until Tokyo became the capital in 1868.

Sayonara Daniel san.

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