A rainy day in beautiful Nikko

Travel Reports by Robbu

Note: The opinions and views expressed in this user report are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of japan-guide.com.

November 11, 2013 - A rainy day in beautiful Nikko

The first trip outside Tokyo was on my plan on monday: The beautiful village and shrines of Nikko!

The train ride to Nikko takes about 90 minutes,.

From Tokyo, you can take the Shinkansen bullet train to Utsunomiya, where you have to change for a local train. The shinkansen experience is somewhat unique, and it feels more like an airplane than a normal train. You even have train attendants, which sell you drinks, and even menus like Sushi! But you can read more about long train rides in Japan in my next post.

The train ride brings you to a completely different Japan then you experienced it in Tokyo: It's rural, it's quiet and almost everything is just written in Japanese, and nearly nothing in English.
But even then it's no problem at all to find all the touristy spots, which are some minutes walking away from the train station. This gives you the chance to discover the town of Nikko, where you can get a glimps of the normal, every-day life of a Japanese.

At the end of the town, you'll find Shinkyo Bridge, a "holy bridge" for the Japanese. Unfortunately, it was closed that day, but you can take some nice pictures from the sides, as it flows over a stormy river. On the other side of the street, you enter the Nikko national park, where all the shrines and temple are located.

Probably the most famous of all is the Toshogu shrine. It's famous around the world thanks to the "three monkeys" of Nikko. I'm pretty sure you've seen them somewhere, but nearly nobody knows that these figures are originally from Nikko, Japan. After a guided tour through the Toshogu shrine, I also visited the "Futarasan shrine" as well as the "Rinno-Temple", which are all located within walking distance.

Unfortunately, even if Nikko means "Sunshine City" in English, it rained almost the whole day. The climate in general is completely different in Nikko than in Tokyo, due to its location on a hill, sourrunded by nothing but plain nature.

The train brought me back to Tokyo, where I continued to Machida, a sub urban city of Tokyo within the prefecture's borders. I enjoyed a great barbecue dinner there, which concluded a relaxing, yet very interesting day.