Back in Japan! With the rice fields now ripe and being harvested, and the Tokyo sky tower having grown tremendously, but my faithful Keikyu line always the same.
And how better to celebrate my return than to go to Nikko, a medium town in central Japan that boasts both a world heritage site and a superb national park!
We visited the world heritage site the first day, before we had gotten the hang of the Nikko weather problem. Nikko being a good 3 hours north of Tokyo, it was early afternoon by the time we set out to view our first shrines. It turns out this is about the time the afternoon thunderstorm arrives. So we had a nice visit of Rinnoji temple, which contains 3 very large golden buddhas and much golden decoration. Then found the storm had started so spent about an hour in the small temple opposite looking at the impressive thunder and lightning display, before going on the the rest of the shrines.
All the shrines and temples in this group are extremely elaborate, with many-layered roofs and much lacquer and red paint.
It is therefore a bit disappointing to find that the world-famous "3 wise monkeys" are in fact a quite small bas-relief on a smallish, rather plain temple. I guess they didn't find it that interesting when they built the shrines.
The whole shrine and temple complex is linked to the rest of the town by the Shinkyo sacred bridge, and it is a very pleasant walk up and down the old stone paths and stairs that connect all the shrines, in the shade of huge cypress trees.
