Nippy Nikko

A day trip to the Nikko National Park and our first venture in taking public transport on our own. So, a lengthy underground walk to the Metro, a quick tube journey to the railway station to catch the bullet train, before changing to get the more scenic train that gets us to Nikko. And we are glad we wore winter gear as it was pretty cold here in the mountains. Beautiful scenery, but freezing. The majority of our day is in the UNESCO World Heritage listed Toshogu shrine complex that sits within a wonderful forest. The setting is really quite lovely, with fresh mountain air and a peacefulness that takes us away from the world of today. There are more than a dozen buildings here, so we can't visit them all, but the ones we do see are quite wonderful. Our guide, Ms Kadoyama, is really informative which is no surprise as, apart from a break to bring up her son, she had been doing this job for 30 years! So, when we had lunch, she took us to a restuarant that served local noodles and she showed us how to eat them - slurping is mandatory by the way! Finally, we visit Kanaya Hotel History House - which was the first Western style hotel in Japan, dating back to 1870's. This hotel was made famous through the writings of Isabella L Bird, an English lady who stayed here and wrote 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan' in 1878.

So back to the scenic train journey to get us back to our hotel. However, after 15 minutes, the train stops mid station and the driver explains that there has been an 'incident' involving a human on the track. What transpires is that the train hit a person who we believe had committed suicide. We watch as many police and ambulance personnel arrive trackside to investigate. Then the main investigation team turn up, with clip boards, cameras, body bags, measuring tapes and tents, whereupon they walk up and down the line and look under the train itself. We do witness a body bag going into one of the vehicles. All very shocking in fact. Only an hours delay as the investigation looked very efficient and off we go - a journey that was eventful for all the wrong reasons.

We get back to the city centre and we think a good drink is needed after the events of the day; we end up in a nice bar / bistro type of place just off the main centre road in the heart of Tokyo city and have a great meal with a few glasses of wine and the local beer. All very good.

Then at our hotel we send most of our luggage forward to Hiroshima, as we pack for our trip to Takayama and Kanazawa.