the next day, we packed and got ready for nikko!
we bought this nikko-kinugawa pass for about 4400yen, which includes all the bus trips in nikko and is valid for 4 days. the traveling time was about 2hours plus from asakusa.
\

we almost got to the wrong place had a nice obaasan not told us to change to the first 2 cabins (which actually will detach from the train and go in a different direction). phew! i love japanese.

on the bus

this is where we stopped for our ryokan

our ryokan was quite hard to find, but it was well worth the search. we kept seeing this turtle inn but didn't know that fu-sha was just near it, only that it has a very small signboard so it was easy to miss.


when we reached there it seems that we have the entire house to ourselves! for about 5000+ yen per person, it was certainly a good deal. the house was fully equipped with a nice entrance

washing machine,
nice futons

a big bathing room and toilet



small kitchen
and my sister was impressed with the toilet buttons

yukatas
kotatsu (that's the owner of the house, yoshiko by the way)

shower stuff
etc etc. lovely!

since we spent more than half a day reaching nikko and settling down, we decided to go for a nice onsen. yoshiko was nice enough to drive us over! my first onsen by the way. my sister and denzyl had already experienced the trauma of public bath when they stayed at kita urawa for the first 2 days.

ok, no pictures of the bath of course. although shocking, the after-effect was still great :D me and sis relaxed in the 'dining room' while waiting for denzyl.

and it seems that we shouldn't have waited there cos he waited right outside the shower room instead. we missed the bus and decided to walk out, and passed by a little bridge.


but it seemed that we walked the wrong direction, so we walked back all the way and headed in the other direction. it was a really rock-ety and narrow road, and i think we walked for very long before we saw this landmark, the dainichibashi (or 大日橋）and took some jumping photos there.




i'd love to include the jumping video i made for my sister but i can't convert it to a gif image. and i think she'll kill me.

then we headed past the bridge and realised the convenience store we wanted to go to was located on top of the hill above us, and we saw no route leading to it. tried to ask around, and this ojisan offered to drive us there! i love japanese! (did i just say that?)

so we bought stuff and finally headed back to our lovely ryokan to cook dinner. (and change into our yukatas!!) and we snacked along the way cos we were too hungry. it drizzled for a bit while we were walking home too. yikes.



and homeeee



trying to self-shoot our cozy dinner

as you can see, we aren't fantastic cooks but the results were still not bad. at least we had out fill. then it was time to work to set our kyoto-osaka plan into action before going to sleep.

so good night~