I was super excited to go see Nikko, a town full of colorful shrines and temples in the middle of the forest! I had seen pictures an...

Nikko

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I was super excited to go see Nikko, a town full of colorful shrines and temples in the middle of the forest! I had seen pictures and the place looked beyond beautiful!

It "only" took three trains and 2 1/2 hours but it was well worth it!



The whole day was rainy which made it a little bit more challenging to walk around with ease since even the umbrella didn't do much to keep my dry!

My first stop was Tosho-gu Shrine



Right at the entrance there were 3 buildings, one of them built of wood and had the "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil." There are no pictures since I lost them all except for the 3-4 that I transfered to my phone on the train back to Tokyo.


After seeing the first couple of temples one think that it is over but no, you go up the stairs and there is a whole set of temples. 

There is a very doorway with a cat on top, a very small cat! This cat is apparently a national treasure and very very famous! I found it to be not very impressive!



After the doorway you go up so so so many stairs. While going up I was so impressed with Japanese people, they go all in a straight line! Some people are slow and still almost nobody goes in front of the slow person, they all just wait. It was funny to see how the tourists would be the ones passing everybody and being impatient.

After checking out the shrine up the stairs I went back down and into the forbidden dragon temple.

I walked in the temple and a guy dressed in white was talking in Japanese to the people sitting on the floor so I decided to join them. He pointed, I looked, he bowed, I bowed.
I was laughing inside because this reminded me of the time when a friend did her first communion and our friend Justine, a French 10 year old, had never been to church and she mimicked every move that the priest made, it was beyond hilarious! I bet I looked like Justine!
The guy talked for about 5 mins, I only understood the word "kimono" but I really thought he was going to show something cool but I think he was promoting buying a little ball keychain for 500yen. At one time he took what looked like a piñata stick (frilly long paper all over the end of it) and I believe he blessed us! I followed everybody and bowed twice, then clapped twice, then bowed again, stood up and left.

Then I went to a second shrine with a big dragon painted on the ceiling. Once again a Japanese man spoke in Japanese but this time he said in English that the dragon is good luck and that we should look up when he hits 2 sticks and would hear the echo coming from the dragons head. If he moved from below the head the sound wouldn't happen. It was funny to hear all the Japanese say "ooooooh" when the echo happened. 
After making the dragon roar the guy started talking a little more and I figured our that they are trying to sell you good luck amulets for 1,000yen! These Japanese really make money out of their tourists! 
A very interesting thing that I have noticed in Japan is that most of their tourists are Japanese people doing internal tourism. My theory is that they only have a couple of days of vacation so they explore their country instead of going somewhere else.






After walking around Tosho-gu temple I started walking to the next temple in a path full of lanterns to one side, it was so beautiful I wanted a picture of myself so I ask a guy walking in front of me to take the picture. The guy turned out to be the same guy who sat next to me in the train but since I was asleep I only saw him when I had to get off the train. 
I heard a spanish accent in his english so I asked him where he was from and turned out to be from Chile. We walked together and visited two more temples when we decided to split because we wanted to see different things.

I ended up going to where he was headed a half an hour later and when I arrived he was walking out and told me to he was going to grab lunch at the only restaurant around.

I walked over to see the Kanmangafuchis Abbys, a lot of statues with red hats and bibs, and then walked out and met with him for an Udon late lunch.

A super silly selfie with a kamangafuchi! haha

After lunch we walked all the way back to the train station for the 4pm train all the way to Tokyo. On the way Sebastian, the Chilean friend, was warned that a Typhoon was going to hit Tokyo! I made it to Kay's house and it was POURING!!!!!!!!! Living in California I have not seen this much rain probably since 2007!!!!! It was crazy, puddles covered my feet and the umbrella gave me zero protection... I was really wet!


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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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About me




Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com