Don’t say you are satisfied until you have seen Nikko “日光を見ずして結構と言うなかれ A Japanese saying.

Nikko National Park is in the mountains and is about an hour and forty-five minutes by train from Tokyo. It is probably the place I most remember from my last trip to Japan, sixty years and four months ago. I don’t think it has changed in the interim. It is staggeringly crowded; Strasbourg/Disneyland level crowded, mostly with Japanese tourists and school kids on tour.

In at least two subtle ways, Nikko is designed to bring the viewer present. Japan is a drive on the left and walk on the left country, but at Nikko, tourists and pilgrims walk on the right. The round river rock courts take a conscious presence to walk across.