A beautiful Sunday (Sep 10) morning greeted us for our day trip to Nikko. This was our 2nd day of experiencing Japan’s train system. It’s a short ½ hour walk from the hotel to the Shinagawa JR station. We took a short hop on the local train to Tokyo Station, where we connected to the Shinkansen bullet train to Utsonomiya, and then connected to the local Nikko line. Overall, about a 2.5 hour journey to travel 100+ miles. Very little waiting time for connections.
Nikko is a small city in the mountains north of Tokyo. It’s the site of the Toshogu, the famed Shinto shrine established in 1617 as a lavish memorial for Tokugawa Ieyasu, founding ruler of the Tokugawa shogunate; the Edo period. The shrine comprises the Yomeion Gate, the main sanctuary set in a hillside cedar grove, and the tomb itself. This is all located in the Nikko National Park.
The shrine is hillside, about a mile from the train station. Of course, we walked.
The sacred Shinkyo Bridge crosses a small river at the entrance to the shrine and temple site. We were fortunate to see a wedding party arrive at the bridge at the same time. This bridge was constructed in 1636, and crossing the bridge is said to bring good fortune to all who walk across it. We did not, but the wedding party did.
We crossed the ordinary road bridge, and climbed the steps towards the temple and shrine main site.
THe first temple we viewed has a famous wood carving of monkeys that illustrate “don’t listen to, speak of, or see any evil) the temple building is decorated with several wod carvings of the monkeys frolicking.
The rest of the temples and shrines are simply breathtaking. We’ll let the pcitures do the rest of the talking.
After a full day of sightseeing, we headed back to Tokyo retracing our train journey. The surrounding land showed us many, many acres of rice and other greenery crops.
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