Three days in Nikko: the gaudiest shrine in Japan, in a forest of ancient cedars
Two nights in the valley: the red bridge and the jizo river on arrival, the whole shogunal shrine complex on the full day, and the falls above the hairpins before you go.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Nikko
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Japanese religious buildings are usually restrained: bare timber, grey tile, moss. Nikko is the opposite, and deliberately so. When the first Tokugawa shogun died in 1616 he asked to be enshrined here as a guardian deity, and his grandson spent an unrepeatable amount of the country's money making the point, covering every surface with gold leaf, lacquer and several thousand carvings.
The setting does half the work. The shrines sit on a wooded slope at about 600 metres, in an avenue of cedars planted when they were built, and the mountains behind climb to 2,000. It rains and snows here when Tokyo is dry, and the buildings look better for it.
Almost everyone comes as a day trip and sees the main shrine in a crowd, then leaves. Staying two nights gets you the town, the river gorge, the mausoleum most visitors skip, and a morning up at the lake above the hairpin road, which is a different landscape altogether.
Three days is one afternoon in the valley, one full day among the shrines, and one morning at the waterfall. None of them is a long day, and that suits a place where it rains.
Highlights
- The carved gate at Toshogu, the sleeping cat and the three monkeys
- Taiyuin, the quieter mausoleum uphill, which is the better building
- A hundred jizo statues along a river gorge that nobody can count twice the same
- Kegon Falls dropping 97 metres out of a lake, reached by lift
Where to stay
Nikko, two nights
One base in the valley for all three days. Even the trip into the mountains on the last morning is a bus ride out and back rather than a move.
Everything sits along a single road climbing west from the stations: town, bridge, shrines, gorge, then the hairpins into the mountains.
Day by day
Day 1 in Nikko
The red bridge, Rinno-ji and the jizo along the gorge
Walk or ride up from the station to the point where the road crosses the Daiya river. The lacquered bridge here is where the shrine precinct begins, and the first temple is up the steps immediately behind it.
Then follow the river west, away from everything, on a half hour walk through a residential lane to a gorge lined with stone figures. Go late in the afternoon: the light is better and there will be nobody there.
- 14:30
Shinkyō Bridge
ArchitectureA vermilion arched bridge over green water, and the entrance to the sacred area. For most of its history only the shogun and imperial messengers could cross it, and it is still closed as a thoroughfare, though a few hundred yen buys you the right to walk halfway out and look down into the gorge. The free view from the pavement is nearly as good, with a four lane road roaring past behind you.
- 15:15
Rinnō-ji Temple
ReligiousThe temple that started Nikko, founded in the eighth century by the monk who brought Buddhism up here. The hall to see is the Sanbutsudo, which holds three gilded Buddha figures several metres high, standing in the gloom. Behind it, the Shoyo-en garden is a small pond circuit that takes fifteen quiet minutes and is included on some tickets and not others.
- 17:00
Kanmangafuchi Abyss
NatureA row of about seventy moss-covered jizo statues along the top of a gorge, many in knitted red hats and bibs left by visitors, with rapids below them. The local story is that you can never count them twice and get the same number, which is true enough in practice. Getting here is the awkward part: from the bridge, take the road west along the near bank and keep going for half an hour.
With more time: The Toshogu Museum, back up by the shrine gates, keeps the armour Ieyasu is said to have worn at Sekigahara, a half Japanese, half European suit that says everything about the man. The rest of it is scrolls and swords, and the cafe is a good place to sit out a shower.
Day 2 in Nikko
Toshogu, Futarasan and Taiyuin among the cedars
The three shrines sit within ten minutes of one another on the wooded slope, and one day covers all of them properly. Take them uphill and westwards, which puts the biggest crowd first and the best building last.
Buy a combined ticket at the first gate if you plan to see everything, and go in at opening. By half past nine there are coaches in the car park and a queue on the stairs under the carved gate.
- 08:30
Tōshōgū
HistoricThe mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, rebuilt on this scale in the 1630s by his grandson using fifteen thousand workers over two years, and there is nothing else like it in Japan: black lacquer, gold leaf and several thousand carved and painted figures. The famous ones are the three wise monkeys on the sacred stable and the sleeping cat over a gateway, both far smaller than the photographs suggest. Two hundred steps up through the cedars behind is the tomb itself, plain and grey, and recent research suggests his body was never actually moved here from Shizuoka.
- 12:00
Yuba lunch near the gates
EatThe restaurants along the road below the shrines do set lunches built around tofu skin. Better ones are further down towards the town.
- 13:15
Futarasan Shrine
ReligiousBetween the two mausoleums, and much older than either: founded in 782 by the same monk who built the first temple here, dedicated to the spirits of the three mountains behind the town. The present hall dates from 1617 and is the oldest building in Nikko. It is quiet, plain by local standards, and has a wooded path leading off it that is worth ten minutes on its own.
- 14:30
Taiyuin-byō
ReligiousThe mausoleum of Iemitsu, the grandson who built Toshogu, set higher up the hill among taller trees. It uses the same gold and lacquer but a fraction of the crowd, and most people who see both prefer this one: darker, steeper, better proportioned, with a black and gold gate near the top. The tomb itself is closed to visitors, which does not matter.
With more time: An old stone path runs uphill from behind the Toshogu offices to Takino-o Shrine, fifteen or twenty minutes through the forest past a waterfall and a scattering of small halls. It is the one part of the shrine complex where you are likely to be alone.
Day 3 in Nikko
Up the hairpins to Kegon Falls, then the imperial villa
The road to Lake Chuzenji climbs six hundred metres in a series of tight one-way hairpins, forty eight of them, each signed with a syllable of the old Japanese alphabet. The bus takes about fifty minutes from the town and the view back down from halfway is the reason to sit on the right.
Do the falls, look at the lake, and take an early bus back down. That leaves time for the imperial villa on the way to the station and an afternoon train.
- 09:00
Kegon Falls
NatureThe outflow of Lake Chuzenji dropping 97 metres off a cliff, and one of the three great waterfalls of Japan. There is a free platform at the top and a lift that drops a hundred metres through the rock to a viewing gallery at the bottom, which is the one worth paying for. In late October the gorge around it turns and in midwinter the whole thing freezes into a column of ice.
- 12:00
Tamozawa Imperial Villa Memorial Park
HistoricBack down in the valley, a rambling wooden villa built in 1899 for the future Emperor Taisho and used by his son as a refuge during the war. More than a hundred rooms of tatami, sliding screens and polished corridors, hardly furnished, with a garden that catches the morning light. There is rarely anybody else in it.
With more time: With more time at the top, the lakeside path west of the falls leads in about an hour to Ryuzu Falls, a long cascade running down a staircase of rock through the trees, and the buses carry on past it to the hot spring village of Yumoto at the head of the valley.
Before you go
Where to stay
The town strings out along one road between the two stations and the shrines, and most of it is walkable. Staying in the upper half, near the Shinkyo bridge, puts you ten minutes from the shrine gates and saves the bus every morning.
There are ryokan with hot spring baths in the town and more of them up at Chuzenji and Yumoto in the mountains. A night in one is the main argument for sleeping in Nikko rather than commuting from Tokyo.
Nikko goes to bed early and the restaurant choice is thin after eight, so book a place that serves dinner or find out what is open before you need it.
Getting in and around
The Tobu limited express from Asakusa in Tokyo takes about two hours and runs every half hour to hour. Slower Tobu commuter trains cost half as much and take an hour longer with changes. With a JR pass, go via Utsunomiya on the shinkansen and change to the local line.
Nikko has two stations, JR and Tobu, a few minutes apart, and both sit about two kilometres downhill from the shrines. Buses run up every few minutes, or it is a half hour walk along the main road.
The Tobu passes are worth doing the arithmetic on. One covers the buses around the World Heritage area, another adds the mountain buses up to the lake, and either pays for itself if you go beyond the shrines at all.
Weather and season
Nikko is colder and much wetter than Tokyo, at every time of year. Take a waterproof in summer and proper layers from October, and expect snow from December to March.
Autumn colour, in the second half of October, is spectacular and turns the hairpin road up to the lake into a traffic jam that can add two hours each way. Go on a weekday or start before seven.
Winter has its own case: the falls freeze, the cedars carry snow and the shrines are almost empty. Some mountain bus services thin out, so check before you plan a day at the lake.
Eating and drinking
Yuba, the skin that forms on the surface of soy milk, is the local speciality, a legacy of the temple kitchens feeding vegetarian monks. It comes rolled, simmered, fried and in soup, and a yuba set lunch is on every menu in town.
Soba is the other staple, and the small handmade soba houses along the main road are better value than anything near the shrine gates.
Nikko's water is the selling point for both. It also makes decent local beer and, at the lake, trout that was swimming an hour earlier.
Nikko is one shogun's argument that restraint was for other people, built into a mountainside and left there for four hundred years while the cedars grew around it.
Stay the second night, walk the gorge, and be at the shrine gate when it opens.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Can Nikko be done as a day trip from Tokyo?
- Yes, and most people do. You get the shrines and four hours of travelling. Staying two nights adds the gorge, the quieter mausoleum, an onsen and the lake, and it means seeing Toshogu at nine in the morning rather than at noon.
- Which is better, Toshogu or Taiyuin?
- Toshogu is the one everybody comes for and it is genuinely astonishing. Taiyuin, ten minutes uphill, is quieter, more coherent as a building, and the one most visitors say afterwards they preferred.
- Do I need a bus pass?
- For the shrines alone, no; the walk up is half an hour and the single fare is small. If you are going up to the lake, the wider pass is worth it.
- When should I go?
- Late October for the maples if you can face the traffic, May and June for green and rain, February for snow and empty courtyards. Nikko is wet all year, so bring the coat regardless.
- Can I change the plan?
- Copy the trip and rearrange it. The one thing worth keeping is the early start at Toshogu, since the difference between opening time and mid morning here is severe.