wanderlust: Day 13: Nikko

We woke up to a great breakfast in the morning. It was prepared freshly for us when we came down to the breakfast area.

Bacon omelette

Finished our breakfast, packed our thing and left our luggage at the reception. We were going back to Tokyo later in the evening.

What a great clear sunny day...

Ryuzu Waterfalls

One last thing to complete the Japan experience is to relax in hotsprings. We asked the hotel and they recommended this spa for us.

Yashio-no-yu spa

It wasn't easy to go to this place without our own car. We were supposed to take a bus from one of the appointed bus stops but the bus left when we reached there. The next bus was only an hour later so we walked about 1km in a deserted road.

Halfway through there, a man stopped by his car and asked us whether we wanted to go to that spa. We said yes, and he told us the spa was closed for the day. :(

Anyway, we were almost there so we continued walking. And it's true, the spa was closed. Oh no I didn't want to walk another 1 km back. So we did what we never do before, hitchhiking. :P

We hitchhiked with an old couple who also came for the spa. The Japanese couple didn't speak much English but we managed to ask whether we could get a ride and whether they could dropped us somewhere central.

Ah.... what a nice feeling to ride in a car hehehe... Finally they dropped us near Shinkyo bridge, and we said "Arigato gozaimashita" with heads bowed deeply to show our appreciation. :P

Shinkyo Bridge
The most famous bridge in Nikko.

River under the bridge

We had lunch at a restaurant nearby the bridge.

A cute cup

My curry rice was yummy.

Hubby had ramen

After meal, we explored some Nikko temples. They were all located in one area, not very far from the Shinkyo bridge.

Fallen maple leaves

Many sky high trees at the temples

Toshogu Shrine

Toshogu Shrine was a bit different from the rest of temples we saw so far. The temple was decorated in many bright colors.

Toshogu Shrine

Rinnoji Temple

After those temples, we basically finished our sightseeings in Nikko. It was still pretty early, so we tried one more time to find a hotspring to visit.

We went back to Nikko station and asked the officer at the tourist info. She gave us a list of spa, and many of them were pretty far from here. Only the small ones were quite close but we didn't want to go to a small spa. So in the end we chose a medium size spa that didn't look very far but the transportation wasn't easy. She told us to take a public bus in front of the station but the bus service wasn't very frequent and its service ended at around 5pm so we might need to get our own transportation from the spa.

Not very ideal, but anyway we went to the bus stop and waited. Then I checked out another bus stop a few metres away and asked an old lady who was waiting there. She told me that the spa we wanted to go have an hourly shuttle bus and she was waiting for that too. What a lousy tourist officer!

So we went with the shuttle bus and the ride took about 20 minutes. Actually the spa is also a hotel and its location is very secluded. All we saw were just trees and not even a single car passed by us. It was definitely safer to go with the shuttle bus. :P

Ooedo Onsen Nikko Kirifuri
The spa entry fee was ¥700 (SGD 11). The male and female baths were separated so we went our separate ways and agreed to meet up after one hour.

I wasn't sure what to do when I went into the changing room. Saw mostly middle aged ladies and they all stripped down everything. Oh well, just follow hahahaha...

Then I have to shower, the spa provided each shower booth with a pail and a small bench for us to sit. It was quite weird having shower while sitting down.

After shower, I slowly dipped into the hot bath. This was really hot, had to do it very slowly until I could dip in totally.

After about ten minutes, I went to the outdoor area bath. I was surprised when I saw a young boy about 5 years old in that pool! Anyway, he was just there for a while and left soon after. The outdoor bath was more popular, it just felt so nice to dip into a hot bath in a cool weather and to make it sound more romantic, we bathed under the moonlight. :D

After a few minutes, I came out from the bath and enjoyed the scenery surrounding us. My body didn't feel cold at all, so I just walked around in the outdoor. (Just hope that nobody had a powerful telescope :P) I repeated this a few times and then it's time to go back. We were both very excited when we met again hehehe... Hubby was enjoying himself too, but he said this is more like a girl thing and he bet all the guys there must have followed their wives. :D