12 July 2010

Vicki saves the day!

It's been said you haven't seen beautiful until you've seen Nikko, and signs beckoning tourists with the slogan "Nikko is Nippon" are plastered throughout Tokyo's train stations. A visit was another check off my list of final destinations to hit during my last few weeks in Japan, so we set off on a Friday afternoon. Perhaps too late in the afternoon...Never have I been so happy to be holding a train ticket, as I was to have this one in hand: a seat on the last train to Nikko of the day. After rushing to make multiple transfers, we were told by a station attendant at some random station on the north edge of Tokyo that the last train to Nikko was sold out. After a moment of utter panic and visions of sleeping on benches in the station, our swell travel companion Vicki went upstairs and sweet-talked a younger, less disgruntled attendant into taking us all the way around to the ticket booth and through the ticket-acquiring process step by step to get us seats. The train was not even close to being sold out. Psh!After spending the night in a roomy hostel on a river, we walked past the sacred Shin-kyo bridge and up into Nikko National Park, a forest of UNESCO world heritage temples and shrines. The elephants were carved into the peak of this Toshogu Shrine structure by an artist who'd never seen an elephant before, but had heard of them in stories:And next we came to another famed carving in Nikko: the three monkeys that formed the "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" saying; this carving was displayed as a message to children, and monkeys on other panels were positioned to convey messages to the elderly, the married, and more.The whole crew: Vicki, Davin, Lauran, and Jaime:
Breaking the shrine frenzy for lunch, we slurped noodles then took a bus to Kegon Falls, a nearly 100-meter waterfall west of town.
Then we all walked through a few souvenir shops along Lake Chuzenji-ko, where I saw this pup with a "Please don't touch dog" sign on its back:Then we took a little rest on the docks by the hazy lake, looking out at, of course, paddleboats (have I mentioned paddleboats?)!
It was only afternoon, but we began the trek home in order to be absolutely sure to make it back to Shizuoka without incident. Which we did, even with a stop in Tokyo for big-city dinner after a day wandering the woods.

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