Toshogu, Wimping Out and Not Regretting It

Today was a planned day off of cycling for us. When we visited Nikko last year, it rained so hard, we couldn't really go out and see anything on the day we had set aside. Nikko is a UNESCO World Heritage site, known for many shrines, but none more than Toshogu, the burial site for Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first Tokugawa Shogun. Built in the early 1600's by his son HIdetada and grandson, Iemitsu, it's a large, sprawling series of buildings whose artwork has to be seen to be believed.

We headed to the bus station, grabbing some breakfast on the way, and got some bus day passes from the Tobu-Nikko station

Looks more alpine than Japanese.

A quick bus ride up the mountain to Toshogu, and we were struck by how huge the trees, were planted no doubt when the shrine was built.

Hard to see here, but they well over 100 feet tall, surrounding the shrine buildings.

We spent several hours there, walking around and taking pictures and only captured a small fraction of what was there. Every building had many painted wood carvings, each one of them unique. There were, quite literally, thousands of them. I'm just going to share a few highlights:

One panel of the Yomeimon gate. Notice three separate carvings top, middle and below.
There were about 30 of these panels, each one unique

The famous 3 Wise Monkeys: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil.
Bet you didn't know it came from Japan!

One of the more curious carvings that we saw were the elephants. Let's be clear: there are no elephants native to Japan. They were known about, from what is modern day Thailand, but it was a rare Japanese person to have ever seen one. So, when the artist, Kano Tanyu, was told to make elephant carvings....well, he'd never seen one before. They are known as the "Imaginary Elephants", because that's exactly what they were: Kano's best guess at what an elephant looked like, based on what he had heard and other illustrations.

Um, kinda creepy.

All things considered, he did a good job, though they look a little like demonic elephants.

There was also one of the cuter (and more famous) carvings above one of the main doors in the shrine, showing a certain importance. It was that of the Sleepy Cat(nemui neko).

sleeping among the flowers

In an odd mispronunciation, all the school children who were swarming the area, were all excited to see the Sleeping Cat (nemuri neko)

We could have stayed and looked at the carvings for hours, but it was getting very crowded with tour groups and field trips, so we decided to buy some Sleepy Cat souvenirs and head out. Unfortunately, we had made it to the entrance before we realized there was only one vendor of Sleepy Cat trinkets. That vendor was only reachable after climbing 232 steps. Don't ask me how I know that.

We headed back to the lodge to use the Internet to try and get the hotspot working. We ended up contacting the company and they are sending us a new one, but it won't reach us for a few days, so we'll be without for now. We also got to spend some time talking to Yuji-san, who turned out to be an interesting fellow. When he found out where we were heading next, he looked at our trailers and said "really?". You see, it turns out the road to Yuumoto, our next stop, is entirely uphill. A change in elevation of almost one mile in less than 20 miles. He recommended we ship our trailers to our Thursday destination (Oigami). Sumi took almost no convincing and, after yesterday, I didn't either.

So, we packed up everything we didn't absolutely need, headed out to a coin laundry to get everything clean, stopped at the absolutely wonderful Kamiyama Cycle Shop to pick up a spare tube for the trailer.

grabbed some food at a restaurant across from the station

I wasn't going to get it, but the guy next to us was eating his, and it smelled sooooo good!

then, grabbed the laundry, separated our stuff into our backpacks and trailers, shipped the trailers, then headed back to the lodge feeling only a little bit guilty. I got more work done as we chatted with Yuji-san, who, as it turns out, did the full 88 temple henro pilgrimage in Shikoku. Longtime readers of our blogs will remember that we visited, and stayed at, some of the temples along the pilgrimage. He brought out his book, where all 88 temple priests stamped and wrote some calligraphy in it. It was very cool to see. It also made me quite sure if it was a guy who walked over 1,000km in 42 days said we should ship our trailers, then we made the right decision.

Tomorrow, we climb a mountain without our trailers for the first time!

A main attraction in downtown NIkko. We did not partake.