We picked up a hire car to drive north to Nikko National Park. It was pretty crazy having to cross Central Tokyo. Even the expressways are a maze with double or triple layers of roads with exits both on the left and the right! Not a gentle intro to driving in Japan and working out if the sat navigation had enough English for us to use.
So we made it out of the city and drove three hours north-west to NiKko. We arrived late afternoon so headed to the Kanmangafuchi Abyss where originally there were over 100 statues, until the river flooded and destroyed many. Each statue had a pile of money people had left as offerings – you could tell we weren’t in the UK!
I had booked a hotel a little way out of Nikko in an onsen town. I thought it was on the way to the waterfalls that I had earmarked to visit. Turned out it was the opposite direction – oops. Ah well, the town of Kinugawa Onsen had its own waterfall across Kinutateiwa Long Suspension bridge (Furukama Falls were pretty underwhelming we didn’t even take a photograph) and a public footbath where we sat and soaked our feet.
At 6pm we heard “Moon River” being played from a loud speaker…. strange. The next morning we were awoken at 8am to the sound of “Edelweiss”. It sounded like it was coming from the school next door but as it was Saturday, that seemed strange. We Googled it and it transpires they play music every day at 6pm and 8am to test the tsunami/earthquake alarm system. So we heard Edelweiss the following morning too.
The next day we drove to Chuzenji Temple on the shores of Lake Chuzenji. The lake town was very chilled and, although you could see it would be a busy summer place, most people there were fishermen stood in the lake.
Nearby was Kegon Falls (97m drop). To get to the bottom of the falls we took a 1930s elevator through the bedrock which was cool.
Next was Ryuzu Falls – a totally different type of waterfall spread over a 210m drop.
And last falls for the day was Yukati Falls which was impressive in a totally different way. These falls are the outlet from Lake Yumoto.
Above the lake we walked to the source of Yumato Hot Springs. A bit like something from Yellowstone National Park only more smelly and with a model Japanese house over each outlet.
As we left Kinugawa we saw a lovely cherry blossom tree over a small graveyard and decided to tie our bracelets from our Bulgarian friend onto that tree. For the Baba Marta celebration you wear the bracelet your friend ties onto your wrist until you either see a stork or cherry blossom. It was all so lovely until an old lady came out of the house next door and started shouting at us. We took a quick pic and scarpered. Farewell Kinugawa and Nikko National Park.
