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Published: January 6th 2010
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"You have to go to Nikko", "You'll LOVE Nikko!", they say. Hearing this over and over again has a huge tendency to over hype a place and then when you get there, expecting it to be the most beautiful place on Earth, you land flat on your face because, obviously, your imagination ran unsupervised behind your eyes. Though I will say that that same imagination is what can make you fall in love with a place and what can disappoint you.
Nikko didn't even touch my imagination. It exceeded it.
Now that I have tick marks next to most if not all of the day trips around Sendai, I have to move further north or south to get more tick marks applied before I go home. Since Nikko is only 2 hours away from Tokyo, that ment that it was almost 2 and 1/2 hours away from me. Prior planning was needed for this trip. Hostel reservations made, train schedule consulted, and I was out of Sendai for the day. Quiet honestly, I hadn't done any travel since after my Companion and I went to Shikoku, I was really excited to get out of Sendai. Even if it was
on the 8am train out on a Sunday morning. As a wise person once said, "A little sleep dep. never hurt anybody".
I'll leave the trip down to your imagination. Though I must say, as I was moving to the Nikko line at Utsunomiya station the cute little old tourist guy with a keen eye for us whites gave me some great information. The best of it being that Nikko holds the world record for the longest tree line in the world. Nice piece of pointless trivia to impress your date...ok maybe impress a select few. I sat next to these cute older ladies on the train and because it was so bumpy we kept coliding into each other and it started converation. The usual "What to ask a foreigner when you see one" questions were asked and then they asked me if I was there just for the day or to stay the weekend. I found them again later at the bus stop since I wasn't sure which bus I was suppose to ride on.
Japan is a very full of mountains which explains why most of the cities are situated in valleys. Natural protection and flat
land and all that. Nikko sits right in the middle of one of the most beautiful valleys I have ever seen. Surrounded by mountains, forests, and sunshine (the weather had been good for me that day), it was just beautiful. You couldn't over hype the place if you tried. It lived up to the even the most overindulged imaginations. One thing my imagination hasn't really thought about was the crowds. I was there on a Sunday, the day trip day for people from Tokyo. Buses were packed and traffic was backed up around the parking areas, which kept the buses from getting anywhere on time.
After joining with the other hundreds of people moving about the temple complex, I went around to all the major sights: the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkies, Ieyasu's tomb, the Dragon gate. I also moved about to the 3 Buddha's and the rest of the temples that are all apart of the complex hidden up on a hill over looking the town. Fall colors were moving around the mountains like the moving wave at a football game. Beautifuly giving accents to the changing season.
I quickly discovered why
Nikko is only classified as a day trip for people staying in Tokyo, the temple will is one of the only things to do there, except hiking. Since I hadn't com equiped to go hiking, couldn't do that. I only had plans to spend the night there, but after I was there for about 6 hours and had gone through everything and eatten some yuba, the areas famous food, I decided to head back to Sendai.
On a side note, NO I DIDN'T SEE ANY MONKEYS! THE SIGNS LIE!
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LebdaWhen
non-member comment
No ???
No Monkeys??? Glad you got to click another destination off.