Domo Arigato

Rested after about 12 hours of sleep, we woke up early and decided to get a quick workout in. One of the great things about this lifestyle is that there are no excuses not to work out and be active. Besides self imposed travel timelines, we really have nowhere to be and all day to get there. It takes a little creativity, but I’m sure by the end of this you’ll see us on a late night QVC infomercial promoting our Urban Workout Plan. (Patent Pending)

After that we spent half the morning planning some of the day as well as where we were going to go when we left Tokyo, how we would get there, and where we would stay. The answer was Kyoto. More on that later…but for the rest of the day we checked out a few local markets and took a two hour train ride north of the city to a little mountain town called Nikko.

It is much cooler in Nikko and everything smells like pine. The town itself is ok, with a few cool little shops here and there; but it was some of the World Heritage Sights that we really liked. Particularly the Tosho-gu Shrine.

This shrine and a lot of the surrounding buildings are from the early 1600s. The beautifully ornate main structure, which is what I was most excited to see, is being renovated from 2012-2019. Bad timing I guess. But the rest was still incredibly cool. If you’re interested in some of the history behind it, google it. Even if you're not, maybe check out a pic of what it would have looked like if it wasn't surrounded by tarps and scaffolding. Here are a few pics.

One of the structures has a covering of the “Three Wise Monkeys”. They represent the proverbial “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Turns out they think the proverb came to Japan from an 8th century Chinese Buddhist legend. Who knew.

We did manage to, perhaps by mistake, join some large group and sit in on a brief ceremony inside the shrine. We may have been the only people in there that didn’t speak the language, but we clapped and bowed when appropriate; and I don’t think anyone noticed until it was all over.

A little later I may have also managed to greatly offended someone by taking my shoes off while standing on a “please take your shoes off/no shoes in this area” sign. But it all ended up ok. We saw a few more sights including some pagodas, this fountain, this little girl in a rickshaw, and this bridge.

Also important to note that Nikko is home to the IceBucks of Asia League Ice Hockey.

On the train ride home, we saw a pretty crazy sunset and then stopped off at the new Tokyo Skytree. I think it’s a broadcasting tower of somesort that has a TV station headquartered in it. There are a ton of higher end shops, restaurants, hotels etc in the immediate mall area….including a Coldstone, which is hard to resist in any country. But we stayed strong.

Another gourmet meal from the 7/11 on the corner and it was off to bed.

From Nikko, with love.

Will + Sara.