And now I know for myself that Shank was right.
It had been a while that I had discussed going to the city with Mori, who has been working hard to save the money needed to travel the world once more. Ken, always willing to set out for new places, was quick to join along, and our waltz was complete, our destination, set. We headed north to the mountainous prefecture of Tochigi and arrived two hours later in the much colder, and quieter, city of Nikko.
I have to tell you right off the bat that if you expect to eat anything in Nikko other than yuba (that's ゆば in Japanese) then you're fucked. The tourism overlords of Nikko seem to take great pride in the local speciality dish that is yuba and will stop at nothing to cover the city in restaurants and billboards with yuba upon every corner. "The hell's yuba?" you might ask. Well, according to wikipedia, it's tofu skin. Pretty simple, I think, but local restaurants seem to take delight in preparing it in many different ways. Yuba's okay, I guess. It's not a particularly rich taste. But for such a statement I may get a stone thrown at me by the very people who use it for the preparation of lavish dishes, dessert, and even ice cream in Nikko.
But it's not the nature (nor the food culture) that makes Nikko's beauty, although it certainly does contribute into it. In the religion of Shinto, Nikko is effectively the birthplace of a God. A Shogun, one of the de-facto rulers of Japan, died in this place, and was there after deified and given a grave fitting for that of a God. If Nikko was any holier than it it is, then surely I would've burst into ashes on the spot. And in no place is this more apparent than that very grave: the Nikko Tosho-gu.
It would take a real philistine to not appreciate the sheer enormity of the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, from the mere path leading towards it to the detail in every relief, every idol and statue. A tremendous amount of gold was used here not only in reverence of the shogun-turned-God, but to show the whole world a demonstration of the wealth and power of Japan. 2 million sheets of gold leaf were expended in the creation of this mausoleum - that's 2.4 hectares of god damn gold leaf. On top of that, it took 15000 artists and craftsmen from all over Japan to bring the mausoleum to its completion in the 17th century. I hope they fed them more than just yuba.
It's in Nikko Tosho-gu that one can fully appreciate icons famous in Japan's mythology - take for instance the fresco depicting the Three Wise Monkeys, Mizaru who sees no evil, Kikazaru, who hears no evil, and Iwazaru who speaks no evil. Yeah, this is the origin of that.
Five of Japan's national treasures are located within the territory occupied by the Nikko Tosho-gu.
Without exaggeration, I feel like one could easily spend half of a whole day to appreciate all there is to see within the grounds of the mausoleum, but it took Ken and Mori and I the better part of an hour and a half or so. In all frankness, though, it takes more than mere pictures and words to convey the majesty of Nikko Tosho-gu. It's world class beauty, maybe even more so than anything else I've seen in Japan.
Frankly, there's a lot more to see in Nikko than we managed to get ourselves to do. From what I hear, a number of beautiful gardens and other temples and shrines adorn the city, including that of the shogun's grandson, even, but what are those when compared to the birthplace of a Shinto God? Although we did visit the imperial villa, it turned out to be a little underwhelming, I felt (but it is a big-ass house.) And so, our journey to Nikko ended with the three of us going into one of Nikko's hot springs, after which we took the train back to Tokyo. (And then we sang karaoke!)
Here's a photo-roll, because there was no way I could fit all the pretty sights into this one blog post!
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