Nikkō

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click for map!

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no, not my brother-in-lafacto's name in japanese, but nikkō: japanese for sunlight, and site of the UNESCO world heritage 'shrines and temples of...*yawn*

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who cares about temples i hear you cry in disgust? not us! suffice to say that only minutes after buying the bare-bones-minimum pass for 3 temple sites and passing under the first tori, we were already crawling around on our hands and knees smitten with boredom. we decided to only look at the forest behind the second site (the trees in japan are something else altogether - check out some of these pics), and skipped the third one altogether for fear of inducing boredom-seizures.

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our guest house was pretty awesome - it was our first of many tatami mat and futon related good nights' sleep, and the owner was lovely, but seemed to be addicted to servitude (at which she was admittedly a master), and sort of went on a bit about how poor she was, before taking some happy snaps of us with a $3000 camera and running back to her pad to have them printed and laminated on her very own equipment. maybe japan poor is like australian not poor.

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but the highlight of nikkō was: the 7-11. who would have thought that in the middle of the night you could cruise out to your local convenience store for a steaming hot three course meal double-wrapped in plastic casing/plastic bag/plastic staff and plastic greeting? it was enough to make us have two dinners.
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if only this pagoda could have housed a 7-11 to have made it more interesting...

there were two shock events in nikkō, both involving the camera. the first was where i somehow got my neck and foot trapped in the camera cord at the same time, resulting in "japan camera accident number one". both the camera and your correspondent survived - scratched but essentially functional - so it was ok.

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the second was where gerard took a photo of me from behind communing with the forest wearing my favourite shorts ever. when i later blew up the picture and saw the back of my arse in the aforementioned favourite shorts, my whole world came crashing down, and i was almost ready to call the whole thing quits. perhaps change my identity and start afresh. the offending article of clothing is now on the garment equivalent of death row with no chance of absolution, and has only the funky reality of easy clothes shopping in japan to thank for not being murdered on the spot in self-defence.

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oh god my eyes!

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i leave you with what g and i consider to be the best photo we took in japan. peace.
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