Let's schedule a meeting with a Shogun...

It was time to see the shogun Ieyasu Togugawa and his huge shrine again,
so I just went to Nikkō.
But this time I used the Shinkansen, because I luckily had my Japan Rail Pass.

It really makes sense buying one when your planning on visiting some sights outside of Tokyo, other examples beside Nikkō are Hakone Yumoto, Yokohama, Mt. Takao or when you want to leave the Kanto area I can recommend going to Kyoto or Osaka via Shinkansen.

So here it is, the Shinkansen I used to get to Nikkō (starting at Tokyo)

After a short stop in Utsunomiya I went on using the JR Nikkō line

Samurai armor replica at the Nikkō information center

Nikkō is a small town, which is famous for tourism especially the hundrets of shrines and temples.

With a round ticket you can use a special bus to get to the Tōshō-gū shrine.

That's enough explaining, now enjoy the pictures of this awesome shrine:

You might know the 3 apes that don't see, here or say anything bad, but they are only one shown picture. The wooden encarvements of the apes tell a story of life:

It's about a baby monkey that grows up, and childs shouldn't here, say or see anything evil.
When the ape grows older he becomes sadand decides to sail away another place in search for happiness. There the ape finds a spouse and then a pregnant monkey is seen and the "circle of life" (Asien style, not lion king...) starts over again.

Very often only the 3 "Don't!-monkeys" are known, I've already seen an adeption in the TV show "Friends" or the video game OKAMI.

Now some more pictures of the artefacts of the shrine

Chinese zodiac

On the following pictures you can see a Baku, a japanese creature, which eats nightsmares.

The right one in the middle is an elephant, I'm not sure if the left one is supposed to be a white / pale elephant or a baku, but at least the creatures on the left and right edge are bakus.

There's also a Pokémon that is based on a baku.

When I left the shrine and went back to take the bus back to the station I missed the last bus...
this freaked me out for a second, because I thought the station was many km away, BUT I ony missed the last special shrine bus, so I only had to walk a bit to catch another bus, which goes almost the same way, so everything was fine.

Once again that's it folks, just come again to enjoy the next entries!