Finding my name- Day 1 (Nikko)

This past weekend, I had a four day weekend, which in Japanese terms is HUGE! The only other time something like this happens is in May for Golden Week, and that is a National Festival. So anyway, to commemorate this extended weekend, Ron and I decided to make a driving trip to Nikko, the place where apparently the name "Jun Niko" was created. Finally, I could visit it. So Ron and I made the 5 hour drive and the $85 toll road to get to Utsunomiya where we met our friends Shizuka and Kunino who came from Tokyo.
Utsunomiya is famous for their gyoza, something I could not understand because of my cold, which led to no taste for the entire trip. A little bit of hell for me. But with the look on Ron's face, I knew that it must have been tasty. Utsunomiya is only a small drive to Nikko so soon we were at the Welcome gates of Nikko deciding where to sleep. We ended up parking in an empty parking lot across from a brightly lit convenience store. Kunino and Shizuka slept in the car, Ron and I slept in a tent next to the car... in the parking lot.

NIKKO







The next day we started our trip making it to the brightly colored temples of Tosho-gu. There we saw the famous monkeys, sleeping cat, and crying dragon. Each temple was astonishing and completely detailed with paintings popping out of their canvas and mutiple colors lined with gold in the temple walls. Nikko had a Chinese feel to it, but was definately a great representation of Japanese culture. My favorite was the Crying Dragon Temple. On the ceiling is a large painting of a dragon. When two sticks are hit together, there is a chilling echo sound that sounds like the cry of a ?dragon? I guess. Either way, the sound was very cool. Then, our group went to Chusenji-ko, the nearby lake. Along the way, we saw monkeys on the road, super windy roads up the mountain and at the end, a beautiful waterfall. We went to an onsen to clean up and made our way back down to sleep, yet again in the same parking lot. Trips are cheap when it's McCormick-style.

CHUSENJI-KO and KEGON FALLS