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Friday March 9th 2007

Ryokan Breakfast

The breakfast at the Ryokan didn't disappoint, with more yuba and also a bowl of tiny little white fish.

• Ryokan Breakfast:
  

• Little White Fish:
  

High Tech Toilets

Japan has some very high tech toilets. The one you see below features a built in bidet and heated seat, plus a tap on the top where the water to refill the cistern flows. This means you can wash your hands without touching anything else - clever. Others I encountered featured electronic flushing sounds to cover "noises off" and a air freshener which fires after you stand up.

• High Tech Toilet:
  

The four way test

The road down from our ryokan had a big sign with "the four way test" written out on it. Apparently it's the international rotary club's ethics code or some such.

• The Four Way Test:
  

Nikko Temple Complex

• Dragon Fountain:
  

• Nice Gardens:
  

There were a number of representations of elephants, some by people who didn't seem to have seen a real one, and some which were highly stylised. I've put some more on my representations of elephants page.

• White Elephant:
  

• Elephant on Temple:
  

• Elephant Temple:
  

• The Original Three Wise Monkeys
  

Every temple had somewhere you could buy lucky charms, prayer boards and pieces of paper with fortunes on them. One even had a (free) "spin the cake" thing, where you could read your fortune from which cake it stopped on!

• Spin the cake:
  

• Don't throw coins:
  

• Noodle Soup Lunch:
  

To Tokyo

After seeing 10's of temples and shrines, my flying visit to Nikko finished, and I got the train to Tokyo.

• Tokyo Lights:
  

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