The best things to do in Nikko are Toshogu, the Taiyuin mausoleum and Rinnoji's Sanbutsudo hall, all within one walled precinct, then Kegon Falls and Lake Chuzenji up the Irohazaka road, and the Senjogahara boardwalk above them. Give it two days rather than one. The shrines take a morning, and Okunikko is a bus ride and an afternoon on its own.
Two hours north of Tokyo, Nikko is two destinations stacked on one bus route. At the bottom is a World Heritage complex of 103 buildings, the most heavily carved carpentry in Japan. Above it, up 48 hairpins, sits Okunikko: a crater lake, a 97-metre waterfall and marshland boardwalks inside a national park.
Toshogu is the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the most densely carved building complex in Japan. The Yomeimon gate alone carries hundreds of sculptures, and both the three wise monkeys and the sleeping cat are here. Gates open at 08:00, which is the one hour it is quiet.
Lake Chuzenji drains over a 97-metre cliff here, and a 1930 elevator drops 100 metres through the bedrock to a deck at the plunge pool. The free upper viewpoint gives you the drop. The paid deck gives you the twelve smaller cascades leaking out of the rock beside it.
Mount Nantai erupted about 20,000 years ago, dammed the river and left this lake at 1,269 metres. That altitude is why Tokyo's diplomats summered up here. The flat path west from Chuzenji Onsen passes both embassy villas and is the best hour on the water without a boat.
Iemitsu, Ieyasu's grandson, lies in a mausoleum built deliberately quieter than his grandfather's: black lacquer and gold instead of white and colour, set back among the cedars. Most coach groups never walk this far up the slope, so it is the calmest of the three listed sites.
A Ramsar wetland crossed on raised boardwalk, flat the whole way, with Nantai over your shoulder. The full route from Yudaki Falls down to Ryuzu runs about eight kilometres and takes three to four hours. The loop from Akanuma through Odashirogahara takes half that.
The largest wooden building in eastern Japan holds three gold-lacquered statues, Amida with the thousand-armed and horse-headed Kannon, standing for the three Nikko mountains. A decade of restoration finished in spring 2019, so the hall is the freshly rebuilt one.
A lava gorge on the Daiya river, lined by a row of stone Jizo in red bibs and hats. Counting them is the local joke: the tally is said never to come out the same twice. Free, open at any hour, and a walk from Shinkyo that most day trippers never make.
Futarasan is the oldest of the three, founded in the eighth century, and its precinct is not only this one. Mount Nantai, Lake Chuzenji and the Chugushi shrine on the lake shore are all shrine land. The main grounds are free to enter and the inner garden is ticketed.
The source that feeds Chuzenji, 1,479 metres up on the shore of Lake Yuno. It surfaces at 78C, milky white and smelling of sulphur, and the village is small enough that the day-use baths stay quiet even when the lake below is full.
Two one-way roads climb to Okunikko through 48 hairpins, each bend labelled with a character of the old i-ro-ha syllabary. The ropeway leaves the descending road and takes three minutes to a platform that puts Kegon, the lake and Nantai in a single frame.
The vermilion arch at the entrance to the precinct. Free to photograph, ticketed to walk across.
A long cascade that splits in two at the foot, right beside the road at the top of the lake.
Seventy metres at the outflow of Lake Yuno, and the northern trailhead for the Senjogahara boardwalk.
The large ryokan resort on the Tobu line, short of Nikko and the easiest of the four to reach.
A smaller marsh one loop away, with a single much-photographed birch standing in the middle of it.
A short loop around the small lake above Senjogahara, and the quietest water in Okunikko.
Flat walking west from Chuzenji Onsen, past both embassy villas to the beach at the far end.
Shojin and kaiseki in a garden room below the shrines. The barley rice bowl under fresh yuba is the order.
A tiny izakaya on the main street papered with visitors' notes. Yakitori and yakisoba, no language barrier.
Yuba rolls served as a set, a short walk from Shinkyo. One small room, so lunch fills early.
A yuba specialist that runs the ingredient through the whole meal, from the sashimi to the simmered course.
Antonin Raymond's 1928 villa, panelled in cedar bark inside and out, further along the same shore.
The shrine's own armour, swords and Ieyasu relics, covered by the combined shrine ticket.
Japan's gyoza city, down the JR branch line, with specialist counters clustered around the station.
A walking course along the Kinugawa between Kinugawa Onsen and Kawaji, with its own station on the line.
Hundreds of miniature snow huts lit by candle at Heike no Sato and on the Sawaguchi riverbed, running into early March.
Futarasan's spring rite, 13 to 17 April. Eleven flower floats are hauled up the shrine's stone steps on the final day.
The route up Nantai opens on 25 April and closes on 11 November. Outside those dates the mountain is shut to climbers.
Toshogu's grand spring festival, 17 and 18 May. Horseback archery on the first day, a thousand armoured samurai on the second.
The summit route opens at midnight on 1 August. Climbers set out from Chugushi shrine in the dark to reach the top for sunrise.
The turn starts above 1,400 metres in early October and reaches Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls by the middle of the month.
The autumn grand festival, 16 and 17 October. Yabusame archery first, then the samurai procession to the Otabisho.
The foliage finishes its descent at Shinkyo and the shrine precinct in early November, a month behind the lake.
The direct route from Tokyo. Limited express Spacia X and Kegon services run from Asakusa to Tobu-Nikko in about two hours with no change.
Shinkansen to Utsunomiya, then a local train up the branch to JR Nikko. Slower on paper than Tobu, but covered by the Japan Rail Pass.
One road serves everything above the town. Buses leave both stations, climb the Irohazaka to Chuzenji Onsen and carry on to Yumoto.
Dried gourd shavings, the strip that ties a rolled sushi. Tochigi grows most of Japan's supply.
The skin lifted off simmering soy milk. Nikko folds it twice, so it eats thicker than the Kyoto version.
Cold buckwheat under sheets of yuba, and the cheapest way to try the local ingredient.
A bean-paste bun wrapped in yuba and deep fried, sold hot from stalls near the Shinkyo bridge.
A soft red bean jelly. Nikko eats it in winter rather than summer, from shops centuries old.
The firm version, sold as a pilgrim's souvenir because it keeps for weeks without a fridge.
Tochigi grows more strawberries than any prefecture in Japan. The season runs winter into spring.
Not Nikko's own but the prefecture's, from the city down the line that built its name on them.
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