Woke up just before 2 am and could not fall back asleep until after 4:30 even though I felt tired.   Must have been the lengthy ‘nap’ I had on the airplane!  Managed to get a few more hours of sleep before the alarm so not too bad all together.

Nice and sunny here in Tokyo in the morning.  Having some coffee before we catch the train to Utsunomiya, where my sister’s work friend will pick us up. 

Checked out of the hotel and headed to the Shinkansen.  Bought an iced coffee and ekiben for breakfast on the train to Utsunomiya.  I went for a tuna and roe rice bowl. 

Train ride was just over an hour and Marilyn’s friend picked us up at the station to drive us to Nikko.  Had some coffee at his vacation house before heading out for a day of exploring.   It was a nice little house surrounded by trees in a quiet area.

We were going to go for soba for lunch but it looked pretty busy so we decided to grab a picnic lunch from the supermarket and head up to Lake Chuzenji for a picnic.   The lake is up a mountain and the road had a number of switchbacks, each with a different letter of the Japanese alphabet.   I was able to demonstrate my Japanese skills but getting them all,  apart from a couple of old characters that I had never seen.   Those actual had translations for even Japanese people so I didn’t feel too bad 😆.

The lake area was also famous for having a number of embassies around it for the foreign diplomats to come to in the summer when Tokyo summers were too hot.   We had our lunch near the English and Italian embassies,  which are now museums.

After lunch we toured the museums,  which had some nice views of the lake.

Walking back we noticed a tree with the bark removed at the bottom and it appeared to be being stripped by some extremely large bees/wasps.  There was a bunch of warning tape around it so we didn’t linger too long!

We then drove around the lake and up to an area with some natural sulphur hot springs where we saw a bunch of monkeys and some deer. 

We then stopped at a couple of different waterfalls on the way to our hotel.

On the way back down the mountain we drove over the ‘Monkey magic road’, which is a section that has bumps in the road that make a melodic tune as you drive over!  Kind of sounded like the monkeys screaming 😆

Checked into the hotel and had a brief break to update my blog before dinner.  

Went for dinner at a local tonkatsu restaurant, Tonkatsu Azuma. 

After dinner we stopped at a supermarket to pick up some food for breakfast.   As it was late in the day,  there were big discounts so the pastry I got was around 50 cents!  Was neat to look at all the produce and meat and fish products.   The prices were so reasonable and the quality looked amazing!

Back to the hotel for a relaxing evening.   Tomorrow we will do some more exploring before heading to our onsen ryokan further north.