Sunday, 18 July

Our last stop before Tokyo was the Nikko Toshugu Shrine. The link is: http://www.toshugo.jp/
This is a Shinto shrine located in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture. It is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. It was built in 1617, during the Edo period. It was incredibly hot here and there was a lot of people here. We climbed up many stairs to see the shrine and tomb of Ieyasu. The steps were steep, too. We ate lunch at a local resturant, had a whole rainbow trout cooked by a California woman who had been in Japan for 28 years. We had more of the traditional Yuba dishes as well.
After walking around the shrines we departed for the train station to take Emily, Lauren, Mr. Hirata and me to Tokyo. Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe left us at the train station. We had shipped our suitcases on to the hotel in Tokyo, which was a good thing as was would never have gotten them all on the train.
After an hour or so, we landed in Tokyo and took another train to the hotel. By late afternoon we were in Tokyo, and Mr. Hirata said good bye to us. We then rested up some, checked out the internet in the room, and went out for a good, old fashionen meal of PIZZA at a resturant named Carmen's. It was very good, and the waiter asked us if we could understand Japanese. Fortunately, Lauren and Emily could get us by, and we had made our decision before we came in. It was nice not to eat Japanese after all of the traditional food we had had during the weekend.