Nikko

This last weekend we had the opportunity to go to the Historical town of Nikko. Nikko is situated in the mountains about 2 hours north of Tokyo and 2 hours south of us. Nikko is considered a world heritage site and so we had to see it before we left Japan.
I am so glad we did make the drive to go see Nikko, it was absolutely beautiful. I have been to lots of famous sights in Japan and I think that this was my favorite sight by far. Nikko is surrounded by the most beautiful forests and rivers. And all the temples and shrines are surrounded by huge red wood trees with moss all over them. The stone walls around the temples and shrines are aged and blend in with the surrounding forests. Its just absolutely gorgeous. We stayed at a little b&b called the Hatori Turtle Inn. It was along the river at the end of a street. It was in a very secluded spot and they had a private onsen (naked hot tub). This was the girls favorite part. I would highly recommend staying there to anyone traveling to Nikko.
Besides the great B&B we enjoyed the hiking around the rivers and around the temples and shrines. We were told before we left on Friday that it was going to rain, but we lucked out and we had sunshine on saturday and mist on Sunday, but no rain or at least the need use an umbrella.
On Sunday we drove up the mountain to a lake town called Chuzenji. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died that morning and so I didn't get any pictures of our day at the lake. It is home to the beautiful waterfall called Kegon (one of the top three water falls to see in Japan). And since I didn't have my camera we paid to have our picture taken in front of the waterfall. The lake and waterfall were formed from a volcano that erupted a long time ago. This town was just as beautiful as Nikko. It was really cloudy that day, but it created a mist that lingered over the lake and made the atmosphere very peaceful. Overall it was a great two days.

The first thing we saw when we arrived in Nikko was this beautiful Japanese garden. I love the style of Japanese gardens so much. I want to create one in my backyard some day.

The girls are praying at a shinto shrine or at least pretending to pray.

This is the most colorful pagoda that I have seen in Japan. I imagine that most of them use to look this way.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. You've got to love this famous Buddhist teaching. These monkey's were carved into one of the buildings at the world heritage site.

Trying to recreate the monkeys. We were missing Sophia monkey.

Its the amazingly ornate buildings like this one (which was built in about 1630) that they made Nikko into a world heritage site. Some powerful man back then had these buildings made in honor of his death before he actually died. I think that is the correct story.

We had lots of walking to do that day so Lane did a lot of this. We do have a stroller but with millions of stairs its more of a pain to bring it. And the girls love to ride on Lane's shoulders.

Lane is a good sport to carry the girls. I believe that their combined weight is about 70lbs.

As we climbed a ton of stairs to get to the last temple, Sophia kept turning around and saying ok mom take another picture. So I took advantage of that.

This is one of the many demons that guard the gates of the shrines and temples. This one didn't look so scary to me. To me he reminded me of a mad dance teacher trying to teach a cool dance move that the students where just not getting.