It's apparently very deep, and flowing from one end is the lovely water fall (I'm sorry, I've forgotten all the names for these places):
Among the many inhabitants of Nikko are these monkeys (who all seemed to be wearing what we decided must be tracking devices):
Don't be fooled by their adorable appearance: this was a very bad monkey. Upon discovering that a bunch of tourists were interested in her, she jumped the fence and headed towards us. Laurie, our very brave leader from the States, was undaunted and commented on how friendly they were as the monkey carelessly approached. Then it snatched the plastic bad Laurie was carrying and made a break for it! As the monkey was climbing the fence back to safety, the bag broke and Laurie tried to recover the contents of it (a music box), but the monkey noticed and became downright violent. It rushed back down the fence and hissed at Lori before snatching the music box and heading off! Presumably, the monkey associated plastic bags with food, and was highly disappointed when the contents of this one were not edible, but then again, she looked like she could be nursing, so may be she was looking for a good lulaby for her kids. :-)
Apparently the monkeys are rather notorious theives in this area (which is especially odd because humans don't really exhibit this behavior in Japan). One storekeeper, according to the students, kept a gun (presumably a bb gun since any other kind would be illegal) in her candy shop, loaded and on the counter, in case a monkey came along. Anyway, the whole episode was pretty funny when it was all over.
Next stop in Nikko was a shrine created in honor of Tokugawa, the first shogun of Japan. This name has actually become very familiar to me because he is a super important guy in Japanese history. Here's the summed up version (don't try to pass a history test with it): In the time when samaurai ruled their own little mini-kingdoms within Japan, Tokugawa successfully beat all the other samaurai into submission and became the ruler of all of Japan. When he did, he moved the capital to Edo (now Tokyo). Apparently, though, he was very particular about how he should be buried after death. For one year, he wanted to be buried in his home prefecture (I can't remember where that is), and then he wanted to be moved to Nikko because from there he felt he could protect Tokyo from any dangers that might threaten it from the North. So now he's buried in this shrine in Nikko.
The shrine also has several other features worth noticing. One is this stone, which a weather predicting stone. The two colors of the stone are more distinct when it's about to rain and less distinct when it's sunny. Incidentally, it had just started to rain about the time I took this picture. You can decide for yourself if the stone is accurate.
This shrine is also home to several carvings by someone famous. One is a carving that has become famous all over the world. I'm sure you'll recognize it, even if you've never seen the original form:
It's actually one in a series of carvings that are meant as advice to parents about how to raise good children. This one advises parents not to allow their kids to see, hear or speak evil, obviously. The other carving of interest was this one, which shows the artist's idea of what an elephant might look like having never seen one himself. He had read about them and was facinated, so he created this image as guesswork. I've seen similar things in other countries (where artists imagine what something might look like) and I always find them interesting. This one's really quite good.
There was also a room with a dragon painted on the ceiling and when certain sounds echo in it, it's supposed to sound like the dragon roaring. The Americans were not impressed, but we were there with a group of Japanese school kids who thought the effect was really cool. We figure we just didn't know what a dragon's roar was supposed to sound like. To us, it sounded more like a very angry cricket.
And finally, there was Tokugawa's tomb:
This was placed at the top of a TON of stairs. So many stairs that you look up them and wonder, "Is this guy really so important that I want to climb all these stairs to see where they buried him?" So many stairs that it is necessary to take breaks on the way up unless you are at the peak of fitness (or Japanese). So many stairs that you give up the idea of every climbing Mount Fuji because it's just too hard! Here are the stairs:
Or at least some of them. There's a turn above and below this with about the same number of stairs again. It was quite a haul.
By this time we were all pretty toured out. Luckily, the tour was over! The group left the next day for the US and after a day of tooling around the city, Alisa, Amanda and I took the bullet train back to Sasebo. I promised them a whole week without any shrines or temples or castles, and everyone was happy.
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