Day Trip to Nikko: Part One

I went on a day trip this week to Nikko, a little town about a 2 hour train ride away from Tokyo. It's a popular tourist destination because there are a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Toshogu Shrine, nearby. I'm going to split my pictures from this trip into three blog posts, so look out for the other two in the next few days.

The picture above is Nikkorisou hostel, where I stayed from Wednesday to Thursday with three friends. It was my first time in a hostel and I was pleasantly surprised! The guy who owned it was very artsy and the outside and inside walls were decorated with large and small paintings.

Now I'm going to jump back in time a bit to Wednesday night (I took the picture of the hostel on Thursday morning), when we took the train from Tokyo to Nikko. We booked tickets on the limited express train (a bit more expensive than the normal train, but the only one that worked with our schedules). Here is a view down the aisles.

The rest of this post will be an overview of the coolest parts of the hostel. It was a lot more interesting than I had originally expected it to be, so I took a lot of pictures.

Here is the common room. The table with the blanket in the middle of the room was actually heated underneath, so it was really nice to stick our feet under. The walls were covered with writing from people who had previously stayed in the hostel. There was also free hot tea and coffee. When we went out on Thursday, the owner of the hostel let us leave our stuff in the common room until we needed to take the train home.

Here is a close-up of some of the messages from previous guests.

Here is the view from the entrance of the hostel down a hallway. The art is cool.

Close-up of a painting in the hallway.

Here are the stairs up to the second floor where the beds are. They were very welcoming stairs.

Here is the "dorm room" we stayed in. There was only one other guy staying in the hostel, and he was in another room, so we had this room to ourselves. The beds were meh, but at least the pillows didn't have those little bean things the Japanese seem to love.

You had the option of taking a bath for an extra 200 yen (I think the shower was free) but I didn't do that because I was only staying one night. It looked cool though, so I took a picture.

The hostel had a bunch of little signs explaining things that were seemingly obvious. (There was a little sign next to the light in my bunk-bed that said "This is a light. Please turn off when not using.") However, this sign in the bathroom would probably be helpful to guests who didn't know any Japanese.

The next morning, we were able to look around the outside of the hostel in the daylight. Turns out there was a huge river right behind the hostel.

Finally, here is a view down the street. You can really see how different Nikko is from Tokyo here. The town was practically deserted compared to Tokyo. This could have been because it was the off-season (there aren't many tourists this time of year), but regardless, it was a refreshing change of pace.