The entrance to Toshogu Shrine
Now I believe the most famous, most visited tourist point in Nikko is the Toshogu shrine. It is known as the most heavily decorated shrine in Japan, and was created as the mausoleum for Tokugawa Ieyasu (the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, so he's important haha).
At the Toshogu shrine you are going to find a complex of over a dozen buildings, and many amazing cravings decorating the exterior of the buidlings. Here is where that famous "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkey carving.
A pagoda is part of Toshogu
Closed! TT
But! The Toshogu shrine closes at 4:30pm, so must be there before that time. I am sad to say we were not, so we didn't get in. Really we were like 5 minutes late TT
Luckily the Futarasan was still open, and it is located just a short distance from Toshogu. Futarasan is a very old shrine which was founded in 782 and dedicated to the kami in Nikko's Mount Nantai, Mount Nyoho and Mount Taro. It is open until 5:00pm so we had enough time to explore this shrine a bit^^
Entrance to Futarasan shrine
The trees look so impressive with the shrine
Miko in the shrine
A scared tree
It was getting late in the day after that point so we drove to Utsunomiya after that to our hotel for the night, so the next part of the Nikko Roadtrip will be about Utsunomiya.
I hope everyone enjoys the historical photos of Japan, of course I have more modern ones coming up soon for everyone who loves the pop culture and city life of Tokyo^^