After a chilled start we made our way through the town, to the iconic red bridge that pretty much appears in every picture for Nikko.
From there it was up hill into the woods where Buddhist temples are nestled amongst the trees. The most famous is the ‘Nikko Toshogu’ that has the carvings of three wise monkeys. One with its hands over its ears, the next over its mouth and the third over its eyes – the origin of “hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil”.
Unfortunately we didn’t go to this temple as the queue for it went all the way down the hill!
We had an explore of the neighbouring ‘Rinnoji Daigoma-do’ temple. Three huge golden effigies of gods, stood along the main wall. You can walk around them, visiting little shrines and statues of monks and important figures in the temple’s history.
Next was the treasure room, that had more statues and portraits of shoguns. Outside this is a garden and koi pond.
After returning to town for lunch we tried for the bus to see the Chuzenji waterfalls, however the bus never arrived.
We took a walk along the river to visit a site of a temple that had been washed away by a great flood a 100 years ago.
Little statues and Cairns lined the footpath, with knitted red hats and scarfs. The purpose of these are to guide children that have passed away to the afterlife.
We continued on along the river and woods, passing warning signs that bears live in the area – we didn’t see any.
We reached a footbridge over the river, returning us to town. All the walking had given us a thirst. We stopped for a few drinks at a microbrewery before calling into a supermarket to get food and return to our digs.
Stu's Camino 