It is said that, in the 6th century, a travelling Buddhist monk was
provided with a crossing over this river, at the spot of the bridge shown
above, ... by a pair of serpents (!)


Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil - I daresay they probably have over
the past thousand years or so.


If only they had had such useful signs in the past! (Back to day 16th Oct o5)


Just a quick note of history... the Nikko temples were embellished as much
as possible so that everyone would think that the Tokagawa shogunate
had stacks of money and couldn't possibly be toppled. This was at the start
of over two and a half centuries of Japanese (self-enforced) isolation from
the rest of the world (C17th-C19th), which had much to do with
subsequent events in the C20th.


And the schoolkids love it.





Have we mentioned the umbrellas yet? We have never visited a country
so helpful if you find yourself in caught short under a spot of rain.
These umbrellas were neatly provided, for general use, outside the public
lavatories (a double convenience!).


A nice waterfall - just under 100m (for those interested, nearly double the
height of the Niagra Falls, but just one tenth the height of the Angel Falls).


We finally found some real autumn colours at Lake Chuzenji-ko.


The colours were soon dimmed by cloud, but Lake Chuzenji-ko was pretty
all the same.







Our quiet lakeside walk was interupted by rustling sounds - we
managed to catch a photo of this baboon just before it took flight, red arse
marking its route through the trees.


María took many different coloured leaves for her scrapbook.