‘other‘ shrine central? Well yes! It goes without saying that Kyoto is the place to go for traditional Japan, just don’t pay any mind to the thousands of boring cement buildings that have sprung up. I don’t want to complain too much about Kyoto though as I think it’s a great place.

Anyway, Nikko is the ‘other’ place to go for traditional Japan, and in a way I think it’s better – there’s no office buildings, and it’s more out in the countryside.  Of course, it’s rammed full of tourists, both Japanese and foreign, but that’s just something you have to deal with. It’s reasonably well done – the shrine area has nearby hotels that people stay at, so if you stay in a ryokan (a sort of Japanese Inn) any distance from the tourist area, you’ll be avoiding most of the crowds. Also, you get an onsen. I was in the outdoors one when a collosal storm struck. Nothing like pelting, ice cold rain hitting you when you’re in a hot spring.

Anyway, here’s my whistle stop tour of Nikko! Hold onto your hats! Click any of the photos for a huge version.

The Red Bridge. Descriptive title!

This is the red bridge. Quite self-explanatory I feel, it’s a big red bridge! You can pay to walk across it, but we opted not to, as there was a big queue. To walk across a bridge. So we pushed on, until we arrived at the shrine complex with the other billion people who turned up that day. Can’t complain really – we were tourists just like everyone else, but it’s nice and British to do it anyway!

Probably the most famous thing we saw was this;

See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil

These monkeys are the source of the famous “See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil” saying. In Japanese they have a similar title 「見ざる、聞かざる、言わざる」 (Don’t look monkey, don’t hear monkey, don’t speak monkey) and they are very cool. The only thing is – the plaque they are on is smaller than you might think – you have to look carefully or you’ll walk right past it and miss the chance to take the classic ‘everyone does one of the monkey poses’ picture! (No, I’m not posting the one we took!)

Moving swiftly on, here’s an example of just how awesome Nikko’s buildings are.

Pagoda of Light

This pagoda isn’t even that special, apparently, but I think it’s awesome. It’s inside one of the shrine complexes, reaching way, way up, although I had a look around the net and through some guidebooks and couldn’t find anything about it. Perhaps I will break new ground researching about it!

Once you’re done with all your shrine exploring madness, but before you go back to the Inn for a good onsen soak, you could always use a…

Onsen in the street

…foot onsen! In the street! We decided to pass as the lure of a full onsen in the ryokan was too tempting, but there was another one of these near the station and that one had a really long queue! People love their feet these days!

Anyway, I hope this has inspired at least one person to make it to Nikko one day. It’s not too far from Tokyo and well worth the journey!

For more photos of Nikko, check out my collection here.

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