An Escapade in Japan -- Part 9

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Nikko

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This must be the shortest entry in my notes for 26 Feb. It, apart from the printout of train timetables, consists of a single word :

Nikko

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This was the last day of our 7-day JR pass and I wanted to use it to the maximum extent, so even though going to Nikko by Tobu railways would have been much more direct and simpler, we decided to follow the Tokyo-Utsunomiya-Nikko route. We already had the reservations.

Nikko is up in the hills so it is colder than Tokyo. We dressed accordingly.

Somewhere in my reading I had come across this tidbit: There is a proverb in Japanese “Do not say ‘kekko’ (a spontaneous ‘Beautiful!’) till you have seen Nikko”.

So, naturally, our expectations about Nikko were quite high.

I am happy to report that Nikko surpassed our expectations. Everything about it is beautiful, especially the setting. The Nikko shrines nestle in a grove of ancient, tall, dignified conifers on a background of nearby purple hills, surrounded by the mist. The red, gold and dark green colors of the shrines please the eye. The usual color-scheme employed for shrines - bright vermilion and white - would have been quite inappropriate here.

The weather was so cold that the snow, which had fallen on the ground, was not melting. I can vouch for its crunchiness because I jumped on it a lot. It may be childish but still it is as enjoyable as bursting the tiny bubbles of a bubble-wrap between your fingers and listening to the ‘tuk’ sound.

Nikko ‘s Toshogu shrine and Taiyuinbyo shrines are so ornate that the word ‘Rococo style’ automatically comes to mind. The words ‘Gothic style’ and ‘Rococo style’ may not exactly be applicable to the Japanese shrine-architecture, but the same sort of difference exists.

The wood-carvings of these shrines are unbelievable. They are not a ‘sculpture in the round’ but are in a rather deep relief, almost three-dimensional.

I always find it baffling that the many of the world’s beautiful buildings, whether Taj Mahal or Toshogu Shrine, are NOT Houses of Worships but mere mausoleums erected to commemorate dead human beings. What tremendous ego and insolence we human beings have!

However, the fact of its being a mausoleum, still did not subtract our enjoyment and appreciation of its fine architecture.

You have to go up a lot of steps to reach Taiyuinbyo shrine, but it is worth the climb. The water of the spring, near the foot of the shrine is very sweet and refreshing.

We saw the four shrines of Nikko and we were totally fagged out. I wanted to see the ‘Shinkyo’ bridge over the river ‘Daiya’ but had no energy to go searching for it.

The weather too was very cold and sometimes there was a light snowfall. Actually, for the first time I saw very small snowballs (1 cubic millimeter) bouncing off my coat, an experience that I did not have even in Detroit winters.

So we decided to return rather than go to Lake Chuzenji via a very zigzag road called ‘Irohazaka winding road’, a very scenic route originally with 48 needle-point turns. I appreciated Japanese imagination when I came to know that the road was called ‘Iroha’ because the Japanese alphabets (formerly known as ‘Iroha’) also numbered 48 and each turn was given the name of one Japanese letter.

{Not to be outdone, I renamed the ascending road of Iroha as “Aaroh” and the descending road as “Avaroh” after our own music traditions. The Japanese should not think that we Indians lack imagination. However, I do not know how to tell the Japanese to change the names.}

Even a prosaic body like the Japan Railways has shown nice imagination while naming the types of bullet trains - Nozomi (This word means ‘Hope or mind’ in Japanese) which are fastest trains; Hikari (‘Light’ in Japanese) which are also fast but slower than Nozomi because they take more stops; and Kodama (‘Echo or sound’ in Japanese) which stop at every station; presumably because their speeds denote the speed of mind, light and sound respectively.

As our return bus took a turn, the lovely, boisterous Daiya River appeared with the red Shinkyo Bridge thrown over it. It was a beautiful sight.

The Daiya River was just like the Japanese girls, I thought, as charming and sassy as any teenager.
We came back to Nikko and from there to Utsunomiya station much earlier than expected and got our reservation changed to an earlier train.

From Tokyo station we walked in the general direction of our hotel. We had walked to the station in the morning and thought we could easily find it.

That was not to be. The Nihombashi area is quite confusing. We got lost, till with great luck we espied the blue, neon ‘Toyoko Inn.com’ sign on a building.

Our JR pass was over and so was our ‘royalty’ status with JR railways. Henceforth we were reduced to laity.

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