Adventures Outside the Prefecture 4: The treasure hunt

*The companion pictures to this story can be found here

After crossing the street I finally reached the treasures. I was welcomed by an engraved rock announcing the presence of World Heritage listed shrines and temples. Now, the day before I had passed up the chance to buy a combination ticket in advance. Had I made the trip to Asakusa on Thursday I could have bought the train ticket and admittance to all the shrines and temples for a really good deal. But I hadn’t felt like going. So, I had to buy a ticket. As I didn’t have a lot of time, I dutifully tried to follow the old man’s advice and skip the unimportant stuff. On my way to the ticket area I passed a really awesome fountain. I’ve seen a good number of fountains, and this one was by far the coolest. The first ticket place seemed to only sell those combination tickets that I didn’t want so I proceeded through a hut-like structure and up a small hill (and past a few more cool looking things) at the top of which I was welcomed to Nikko in 11 languages. I didn’t see any more ticket booths, but I did see the first set of Torii (the gates before you enter a Shinto shrine). It was pretty woodsy at this point, so I was hoping to see some monkeys – or at least hear them, but I didn’t even see a sign warning me about them.

There are a number of famous images enshrined at Nikko, including the 3 monkeys of ‘see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil’. I was interested in seeing that and a few other sights, but it really seemed like I could only buy a combination ticket, which I wasn’t interested in because I would have time to take full advantage of it. I decided that this was a place I would probably like to come back to so instead of seeing only a couple of things I decided not to see anything, so that when I came back nothing would be a repeat. I was enjoying the fresh air and the scenery anyway, so I just walked around taking pictures of shrines and temples (and a bright red pagoda) through the trees. After maybe an hour of walking around I thought to myself – you came all the way out here! You should really try to see at least one thing; otherwise why did you come? So I made one last effort to buy a ticket, maybe even a combination ticket. I went up to the ticket booth to try to buy a ticket, any kind of ticket – and she said they were closed! So I was like well, I guess I’m just really not going to see a temple or shrine today!

And then I realized how hungry I was. Since I took the wrong route up I never did get a snack, so I turned my attention to finding some food. On my way down from all the sights I passed an inviting gift shop. There were some cool trinkets and souvenirs in there, but I wasn’t moved to buy anything since I more or less planned on coming back. I still did a full tour of the store though, examining anything and everything that looked interesting to me. In the end all I bought was some candy to tide me over, and the saleslady gave me a really dirty look. Further on the way down I happened upon a Japanese-style garden near the entrance that I hadn’t seen before. It was beautiful! It was also at this point that I discovered the ‘landscape’ function on my friend’s camera, which let me take much greener pictures. I still wasn’t seeing any monkeys, but I did see cherry blossoms!! I love cherry blossoms; even further down I saw something else that I love – waterfalls. This one was tiny, just an afterthought next to the downhill path.

At the very bottom I ran into some Gaijin that I had noticed in the gift shop, and we started chatting. As it turns out the guy I was talking to was Nova teacher in Tokyo, from Florida! We parted ways when I decided that continuing my search for food was more important than continuing the conversation, especially because I was walking and they were waiting for the bus. Luckily the first restaurant I saw, Hippari Dako, came highly recommended by my guidebook. It was a cozy little place with an exuberant proprietress who spoke English pretty well. The menu was really cute – it helped travelers learn survival Japanese! I couldn’t decide if I wanted to order yakitori (meat on a stick) or meatballs on a stick, so the woman let me mix and match and have both. The food was really good; if I came back to Nikko I would go there again in a heartbeat.