Adventures Outside the Prefecture: an epic in 4 parts

*The companion pictures to this story can be found here

On April 20^th I took a day trip to Nikko, in Tochigi prefecture. This trip was months in the making. I'd left Tokyo a number of times with visiting houseguests, but I had never left Tokyo 100% of my own accord; plus, my Meidaimae twin is crazy into traveling - he's been to Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto and the usual spots outside of Tokyo, plus he recently returned from a 9 day trip to China - and I felt inspired to take some initiative in traveling. Back in February I gave someone a shift swap for March resulting in a 3 day weekend for me in April. It was then that I planned to 'do something'. Something big. I had already seen most of the greater Tokyo area sights: Yokohama, Kamakura, Hakone; so I decided to knock a different one off my list. The major selling points for Nikko were cherry blossoms and wild monkeys. Thanks to the flu + a 12 day work week I all but missed cherry blossom season in Tokyo. Because Nikko is a few train hours north of Tokyo I figured the sakura might be in bloom up there; and as for the monkeys... well, who wouldn't want to see wild monkeys?

In the weeks leading up to Nikko I got most of my information from my traveling co-worker. One of the most important things he told me was that the day before I left I should go to the train station in Asakusa and buy a combination ticket that included round trip train fare and inclusion to a spate of World Heritage Sites. And the ticket office closed at 3. So, on April 19^th I duly woke up with every intention of going to Asakusa, buying the train ticket combo and making a day of it seeing the sights of Asakusa. A couple of hours later I was intent on going just to get the train tickets. After my roommate invited me to join an at-home sushi lunch with him and his friend I became intent on simply enjoying myself at home. Later that night however, I did think to look up Nikko in my Tokyo Rough Guide. At that point it crossed my mind that although I had been 'planning' this trip for a couple of months, it wasn't until the night before that I made any effort to figure out where I was going or what I might be doing.