On April 21st we headed to Nikko for an overnight visit. Just a short two-hour drive north of Tokyo, we had missed out on this gem for an entire year. Nikko is beautiful! Their tourist slogan is "Nikko is Nippon". Nippon is the Japanese word for Japan. To say that one area embodies the whole country is quite the claim, but we believe it. We took an unheard of amount of pictures (over 200!) in two days. Plus, lots of video. I posted my absolute favorite pictures from the trip. If you'd like to see them all, please visit this site April 21 and this site April 22.
[Side note/rant: There isn't a slide show option for those two links. You'll have to manually click through the pictures. Yahoo Photos, the site I loved and used before, has decided to call it quits in favor of their other photo site, Flickr. Flickr doesn't allow as many pictures to be uploaded unless you pay them each year. Not doing that. I've also tried a couple other sites, but none of them had all the features that I loved with Yahoo Photos. So, I'm using my DropShots account, which I previously only used for video. They are supposed to be adding more album settings. Cross your fingers for a slide show option!]
The first day in Nikko we saw the God-given beauty of the land. There are three main waterfalls in Nikko and each is unique. The first we saw was Yudaki Falls. Yudaki is the a veil type. Our favorite was Ryuzu Falls, a tiered type, which we saw next. Ryuzu translates to a dragon's head. The falls are so winding that you definitely think of a dragon or serpent. It takes approximately 15 minutes to walk from the top of this falls to the bottom. The last fall we visited was Kegon Falls, a plunge waterfall, that sends its water 330 feet downward. Our final sight-seeing stop for the day was the Shinkyo, or Sacred Bridge. The supports for the bridge are built in the same shape as a shrine torii, making it all that much more sacred to the Japanese. The current bridge dates from 1636, but a major renovation was completed within the last few years.
[Side note/rant: There isn't a slide show option for those two links. You'll have to manually click through the pictures. Yahoo Photos, the site I loved and used before, has decided to call it quits in favor of their other photo site, Flickr. Flickr doesn't allow as many pictures to be uploaded unless you pay them each year. Not doing that. I've also tried a couple other sites, but none of them had all the features that I loved with Yahoo Photos. So, I'm using my DropShots account, which I previously only used for video. They are supposed to be adding more album settings. Cross your fingers for a slide show option!]
The first day in Nikko we saw the God-given beauty of the land. There are three main waterfalls in Nikko and each is unique. The first we saw was Yudaki Falls. Yudaki is the a veil type. Our favorite was Ryuzu Falls, a tiered type, which we saw next. Ryuzu translates to a dragon's head. The falls are so winding that you definitely think of a dragon or serpent. It takes approximately 15 minutes to walk from the top of this falls to the bottom. The last fall we visited was Kegon Falls, a plunge waterfall, that sends its water 330 feet downward. Our final sight-seeing stop for the day was the Shinkyo, or Sacred Bridge. The supports for the bridge are built in the same shape as a shrine torii, making it all that much more sacred to the Japanese. The current bridge dates from 1636, but a major renovation was completed within the last few years.
Day 2 we headed out fairly early to see the man-made beauty of Nikko. There is a series of shrines and temples grouped close together. The main attraction is the Tosho-gu Shrine. Tosho-gu Shrine is the burial place of Ieyasu Tokugawa. (I've learned a lot about Tokugawa in the last year, here comes a short history lesson!) Tokugawa was a shogun, one of the most influential in all of Japanese history. The emperor named Tokugawa shogun in 1603. The emperor continued to hold the throne, but true power belonged to Tokugawa and the shoguns that followed him. Prior to his military rule, Japan was split into many tribes and groups. Tokugawa united all the people under military rule. He established Edo (later renamed Tokyo) as his post and the city began to thrive and expand. It is estimated that Edo was the already largest city in the wold by 1700. Amazing. He established a class system and built castle towns. (There are less than 30 feudal castles left in Japan, more on that in another post). Tokugawa started a reign of military power that would last more than 250 years. That period of time is referred to as the Edo Period. After Tokugawa's death, he was initially enshrined in Ueno. Tokugawa's grandson, Iemitsu, commissioned the mausoleum-shrine in Nikko. The shrine in Nikko took 15,000 artisans over two years to complete. The shrine filled me with so much awe, it made me wish I had more eyes. The Taiyuin-byo Shrine, also pictured below, is the shrine of Iemitsu Tokugawa, the grandson who built Tosho-gu Shrine.
Our trip to Nikko may have wrapped up, but we weren't headed back to Tokyo yet. No, it was time to bid farewell to the Skiles family. Their 18-month stay had come to a close and there was a dinner in their honor. The Skiles lived in Utsunomiya, just about 45 minutes south of Nikko. After a short drive, we arrived at their house to visit before dinner. We thought it would be good to let Addison and Ethan expand a little energy prior to dinner. Randy retrieved Ethan's red wagon and Nicole pulled. Addison sat amazingly still since it was her first ride. Ethan was a prince and shared his wagon very nicely. We walked to a local park where the kids got to run and scream and have fun. Dinner was held at a yaki-niku restaurant. These restaurants are the do-it-yourself kind, where you grill the meats and vegetables. Delicious! We love this style. It was bitter-sweet of course, but we look forward to seeing the Skiles when we are back in Ohio. So, instead of saying sayonara, we'll say "Matta ne"!
[Boy... if there are limits on post length, I'm sure I just broke every one of them1]
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