This morning we were up early at 6:30am to go on our day trip to Nikko, a small town about two hours out of Tokyo that is famous for its many shrines and temples.

We caught a direct Shinkansen to Nikko and bought some snacks from the station bakery to enjoy on the way. We arrived in Nikko at 9:30am (which is earlier than some of the mornings we have been out and about lately).

We visited the information centre first up and grabbed a map of the area. The lady that helped point out the shrines and temples also very sweetly gave us an origami "thank you for visiting Nikko" gift.

We decided to walk to the shrines and temples rather than take the bus. It was a bit fresh in Nikko but not so bad (except on our faces) once we were moving. It was about a 2km walk until we reached the start of the temples which is marked by the sacred bridge. The sacred bridge is a very old red timber bridge that cannot be used without paying so that they can maintain it for longer.

We headed towards the temples and shrines and stopped to go into a few. They all had admission ticket prices which was a bit unexpected and annoying so we only paid to go into two temples and then just walked around to look at what we could without paying. There was one big temple we went into that was under major restoration works which was cool to see underway. The other one we paid to go into had these golden arrows for sale which when hung in your house brings good luck and keeps evil away so we bought one of those.

At this point we both started to feel really freezing. Like I had serious concerns that my toes had frostbite. We made our way out of the temple area to find some lunch and warm up a bit. We stopped in a small cafe and had a pork cutlet rice bowl each which was alright but probably better because we warmed up.

On our walk back to the station we stopped at an antique shop and bought some cool old things.

Once we made it back to the station it had just started to rain so, as Shannon said, we made it in the Nikko time. We hopped on our first train and headed off. We both had a bit of a nap on the first train so when we got to our changeover stop we weren't thinking too clearly and accidentally hopped on a train that was headed north instead of South to Tokyo. So a few stops in (about 30mins later) once we figured it out, we had to hop off and find another train back. Fortunately Japan had a great rail system and it wasn't a hard process but it did end up taking over three hours to get back home.

As this was our last night in Tokyo we went to the shops one last time to pick up a few things we'd been considering over the last ten days. Shannon also had a go at a claw game and ended up winning a Ted soft toy which is pretty cute.

We had ramen for dinner and then headed back home to pack up our things and prepare for our move to Yudanaka tomorrow. I didn't think we had bought that much in our time in Tokyo but packing up everything brings a different perspective!! I'm looking forward to getting out of the busy city and into the more quiet part of Japan tomorrow.