Nikko!

Well! I just got back from an amazing trip to Nikko with the students! We got to Tama Center at 8am and met up with the students and Mark and his family and took off to Nikko. I road with Spencer, Snake, Ken, TH (Tomohito)and Yuri... Spencer taught Ken about "prank" which turned into the rest of the car ride learning what "prank" meant and then doing some. Ken did a prank where, in the middle of the road while in traffic ran to the car behind us that Chris was driving and flipped up the windshield whipper. :) It was fun





We also played games where we had to predict what everyone in the car's future was going to be. According to Ken I'm going to be a famous photographer, get Married to Mario and have 3-4 kids and take many pictures of them lol. We stopped at a convenience store to get lunch to eat at Nikko, i got some shrimp casserole dish that they warmed up for me. Also... the place where we got this food was.. 7-11!



We got to Nikko and walked past the Five Storied Pagoda and ate lunch at the entrance of Toshogu Shrine and hung out with everyone.









We played the bamboo game where Spencer Kylie Monique and I had to eat Natto (fermented soybeans) if we lost, it wasn't pleasant. :D I didn't end up loosing but still tried some anyway.



Afterwords we climbed the first set of the many stairs to the entrance called Ishidorii is one of the best three stone-made torii gates in Japan.





The first things that I saw was the Sanjinko the Three Sacred Warehouses.







Continuing walking we stopped to see the Shinkyu (Sacred Stable)the place where the three monkeys (hear no evil, speak no evil see no evil) called Sansaru. We took pictures posing as them!





Continuing on we got to the The Karadou-torii made of bronze that leads up to the Yomeimon gate



Walking through the 100's of people visiting I felt really awestruck of the magnificence of it all. Words can't explain it..



It was AMAZING! the detail and colors of the building were incredible! It's so hard to describe the feeling I had when I was walked up to the stairs and through the entrance. I think it was right then when it hit me... I'm in Japan... wow... I'm really in Japan.









One of the last temple's we went to was the Karamon Gate we had the opportunity to go inside the prayer hall after taking off our shoes and listen to one of the priest talk.











After we did that we walk up a bunch more stairs where we explored at the The tomb of Ieyasu ^^












Here are a couple pictures of me and some students while I was there ^^






Some more pictures of places and things there ^^











Some other pictures...