Tokyo Day 2 - Nikko National Park

On Sunday we took a tour out of the city to Nikko National park. We had about a 2 hour bus ride so we got to see the area surrounding Tokyo and the surrounding country side. Part of the problem in Japan is with their limited land area and massive population, they still live in houses or buildings that are only a few stories high. This creates massive urban sprawl that looks like this:

In Korea the high rise apartments may not be scenic, but I would say they are more scenic that the above photo. They also keep the countryside more pristine. The Japanese country side was pretty run down and kind of dirty...
Sasha was out cold on the bus but Teddy was wide awake and hanging out with me in the back of the bus. We stopped at a rest stop and I got Ted some strawberry popcorn and some little bear cakes for snack. He was psyched!

This is Japanese money. Some of the coins have holes which is pretty cool. 1,000 Yen is about $11 so we kind of thought of those bills as $10 bills, (except they buy you waaaay less than $10 would in the states...) And the 10,000 Yen note is like $100.

This is a special red bridge leading up to a Shinto Shrine. Only the Emperor and the Shogun (or Samurai?) were allowed to go over the bridge to the shrine. Seems like kind of a waste of labor and resources to build a bridge for 2 people...

That gate behind us is how you know it's a Shinto Shrine.

Cool Pagoda:

This complex had a ton of different buildings:

The original "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" carving...

An amazing gate that leads to the main shrine area:

Yup, more buildings:

Dragon carvings everywhere! Where to look first....

A portable shrine that you can take to the grocery store, on vacation, wherever!

After the Shrine we went to a lake very high up in the mountains. It was really cold and there was still snow on the ground!

Check out the amazing waterfall in the background:

Beware the Japanese style toilet!! Squatters only. You have to wait in a long line for the one western-style toilet at many of these tourist spots....

Finally got a cup of coffee! $5 and it was only half full. Gotta love Japan.

We are now masters of the Tokyo Subway.

So that was pretty much day 2. I have to say if you've seen one shinto shrine, you've seen them all. At this point I was feeling very cultured and was ready to rock the Tower of Terror yo. We were excited for Disney the next morning.
We got back pretty late from our tour and all the restaurants at our hotel had 40 minute waits so we decided to order room service for dinner. I have never done this before. It is AWESOME. I am such a fan of room service!! Jeff and I got sushi and the kids got a kids meal and they fell off their chairs and behaved badly and no one cared because we were in our hotel room. I could get used to this...

Tomorrow: Tokyo Disney Sea!