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Published: October 16th 2013
Well, this will be the last blog for this trip. I am sitting in my hotel in Tokyo waiting for the worst effects of Typhoon Wipha to pass before heading to the airport and (hopefully) catching my flight home to Sydney.
On Tuesday I headed off to the World Heritage site of Nikko. I incorrectly thought that the journey from Nagano to Tokyo was going to be my last trip on the shinkansen, but it turns out that the quickest way to Nikko using the rail pass involved a couple more. It was interesting to see that the shinkansens I was catching were actually 2 connected to each other, which I hadn’t seen before. I guess they split somewhere further up the line.
I arrived at Nikko and headed to the tourist information first, just up the road from the station. I grabbed a map and the lady asked me where I was from. When I said Australia, she gave me a lovely origami crane as a gift. I’m not sure what the criteria for receiving the crane was, because the girl from Thailand in front of me didn’t get one. Anyway, the temples and
shrines of Nikko are about 2km from the station so I proceeded to walk there. Along the way there was a bit of drizzle, but nothing major and I didn’t use my umbrella. Nikko seems like quite a nice town and the mountains cloaked in fog provided a great backdrop.
Just short of the temples is a lovely red bridge which is an iconic image of Nikko. Unfortunately I had walked up the wrong side of the road to get a photo and rather than cross over I decided to just get the photo on the way out. The problem was that when I left it was raining quite a bit, so the photo probably wasn’t quite as nice. Oh well.
The entrance to the temples involved a beautiful walk up some steps before arriving at the bus/car park outside of the Rinnoji temple. I was disappointed to see that there was a big shed instead of the temple, indicating there was restoration happening. The restoration is expected to continue until 2020, so I guess I couldn’t do much about my timing. I purchased a ticket to go and have a look anyway. No
The Big Shed
Rinnoji Temple, Nikkophotos were allowed though. On the plus side, you can see one of the Buddha statues from much closer than you normally would. There were also various bits and pieces from the temple on display. I also found it interesting to look at the restoration work itself. There was no sign prohibiting photos when looking at the restoration work from above, so I took a couple – I hope that’s okay.
From the Rinnoji temple I headed up to the Toshogu shrine. By this stage it was raining enough for me to get out my umbrella. After buying my ticket to the shrine, I discovered that my new umbrella had a broken arm. My attempts to fix the break resulted in an amputation, so not a good result. So on just its second use, my umbrella was now half an umbrella. It worked well enough though, but I was disappointed that my new lightweight travel umbrella fared so poorly compared to my regular umbrella that is still going strong after 7 years.
Inside the Toshugu shrine were some of the famous sights of Nikko, including a 5 story pagoda, the “hear no evil, see
Restoration Work
Rinnoji Temple, Nikko no evil, speak no evil” monkeys and the carving of a sleeping cat. There were quite a lot of people at the shrine, including some large tour groups, and the use of umbrellas became quite annoying at times. But it was raining, so what can you do?
After leaving Toshugu, I decided to skip the Futaarasan shrine and head to the Taiyuin temple. I had bought a combination ticket at the Rinnoji temple which included the Taiyuin temple. I had a look around and got some okay photos, considering the rain. I opted not to go into the temple itself because it was shoes off and no photos. By this point I couldn’t be bothered. I think it was a combination of the rain and possibly I’ve had my fill of Japan for now.
I then walked back to the station with a stop at the red bridge for a few photos. The rain was getting heavier and with my half-umbrella, I was a bit wet by the time I got to the station. I was early for the train I was going to catch, but one was about to leave so I jumped
Garden
Rinnoji Temple, Nikko on. This left me with a decent wait at Utsunomiya station. The temperature was a bit cool by this point, and combined with my wet clothes I was cold for the first time this trip.
Arriving in Tokyo and it was pouring with rain ahead of Typhoon Wipha coming in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed for the shelter of my hotel. I’m pleased to say that the typhoon hasn’t affected me inside the hotel. I did open the window a couple of times and it was really windy outside.
Anyway, that was my trip to Japan. I had a great time – thanks for reading!
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