The hotel was very well placed for the shrines, with Taiyuin-byo, the mausoleum of third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, just a couple of hundred yards up the road.
It's set very attractively in a wooded vale, with many large moss-covered stone lanterns around. The copper maples really caught the sunlight to good effect. The impression it left was of gates and gods, dragons and birds.
The style of the buildings was more Chinese than Japanese, with lots of red, gold and green paintwork. The inner buildings were predominantly gold and black and quite tasteful. Most of the intricate carvings were of birds; none of them were repeated.
After a break we carried on with a visit to nearby Futarasan. This shrine is a simple affair with a bit of a fairground feel to the wooded grounds, having a sort of hoopla game to win good luck (Nick got one on the stick but my throwing skills weren't up to it), and a wheel of cakes and sweets with a fortune linked to the one on which the arrow falls after you spin it round (mine was some sort of warning, apparently). There is also a special spring with three outflows to sip from, each with different health properties.
We took the guide book's recommendation for our lunch, sampling the regional speciality of yuba (tofu skin). Emily got a welcome relief from the sling, laying on the restaurant's tatami dais.
Continuing on our tour of the shrine complex we next tackled Rinnoji. Inside Sanbutsu-do we peered up at the three large gilded statues on their lotus-flower seats: thousand-handed Kannon, Amida Buddha and horse-headed Kannon. In the temple behind we watched a monk go through his devotions, under a beautifully painted ceiling depicting a pair of fearsome dragons.
Above there, and past a magnificent five-storey pagoda, we entered the busy main attraction of Toshogu. This is the elaborate - some would say OTT - shrine to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun, who died in 1616. There are quite a few buildings, including the sacred stables which have a famous carving of the three monkeys (see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil).
As well as dragons and birds, there were also quite a few elephants. The ornate carvings were colourful, the buildings mainly black and gold.
The actual tomb, up 200 steps, is a very simple and tasteful affair that few tourists bother to go and see.
Feeling that we'd done Nikko justice, we took a walk around the residential streets before going back to the hotel for the night. It's always nice to wander around and see how ordinary folk live. Most houses had lovely gardens with lots of flowers. Emily was very hard to settle and cried for half an hour, so Nick had to go down and start dinner without me. I was dismayed to find that my main course was a pair of king prawns. However, I thought it was about time I overcame my dislike of them and forced myself to eat them. Actually, they weren't all that bad and I managed to eat both. If only they didn't have their heads and legs - it makes me shudder. The hotel had a rather nice cedar wood bath and we treated ourselves to a dip before retiring. I'm looking forward to taking an onsen bath in the winter, as it isn't really so nice to soak in a hot bath when it's hot and humid outside.
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