Nikko - Sunshine City

Saturday two weeks ago my godmother, a friend of hers and I went to Nikko, a city about 140 km north of Tokyo.

Like Kamakura it is a place which most Japanese and foreign tourists visit.

During our ride I recognized a significant difference concerning the signs indicating the name of each station:

Compared to the signs in Tokyo and other cities where the Kanji (Chinese characters) are more important and hence receive most of the space, signs in the countryside seem to rely more on the Kana (the phonetic transcription of Kanji).

We arrived in our accommodation, a Japanese pension, called “ryokan”, at around four. We went for a walk and inspected the neighbourhood.

After that we went to the in-house onsen, a hot spring. There is a special procedure of the way of washing: you are not supposed to wear a swimsuit and - sitting on wooden or plastic stools - you wash your body and hair until you are almost shiny before entering the basin. The water is very hot and like after sauna you refresh yourself under a cold shower.

After two hours we put on our “yukata” (an simplified version of the Japanese kimono) and went back to our room. It was a room in Japanese style, called “washitsu” (link). We relaxed and waited for the female employee to knock on our door to say that dinner, which was served in the room next door, was ready. We were sitting on the floor while eating a typical Japanese meal – which was delicious.

We went to bed early and during the night I found out that I happen to be the person whom mosquitoes love the most, lucky me…

After a Japanese breakfast the next morning we went to the onsen again. We should have done that before breakfast to have some time to recover. The water is so hot and for people with a low blood pressure like our visitor and me it was quite exhausting. After we had got better we started our culture shopping and visited several temples and shrines.

Nikko is famous for its three wise monkeys (you certainly know the proverb "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil").

Another famous object of interest is the sleeping cat (every time I see a cat, I think of you two, Imoutotachi… Happy Birthday, Vera!)

The temples and Shrines were so beautiful, even more impressive because they are in the middle of a forest or surrounded by nature, nature and nature (yes, I am crazy about nature, having lived in a city like Tokyo for eight month you would probably feel in the same way…)

I have to admit I did fancy this very handsome, ahem, I do not exactly know what or who he is, but coming from sausage-Germany, I (even as a vegetarian) do feel the connection between us…

This bridge is very famous and virtually all pictures show it from its best side so I thought you should get to see one from a different position.

Here are two more nice (typical Japanese) signs…

We took a train in the late afternoon, it was the first time I have seen rice fields in more than eight months:



If you want to read more about Nikko: click here