Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor. Steve Jobs
Fushimi Inari Taisha Temple – founded 711 A.D. – on our last night in Kyoto.
We took the Shinkansen – a very fast train run by the JR line – from Kyoto to Tokyo, passing a clouded Mt. Fuji on the way. I was sorry we didn’t have more time in Kyoto, but the second we got off the train in Tokyo, it felt like home.
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.