This day saw us becoming real tourists and taking a tour bus to the town of Nikko. This is a small town  about 150 km north of Tokyo, in the Tochigi Prefecture area. 

We started our day at a rather chaotic bus station, where there were buses and tour guides departing, everywhich way ! We boarded our bus and set off for a rather long bus ride to Nikko. Nikko is famous for a Toshugo Shinto shrine built in 1617. It is also famous for a Botanical garden , which has according to Wikepedia over 2,000 species . There is also a 35 km avenue of 13,000 Cedar trees, ( listed in the Guinness book of records )which was established over 400 years ago when  200,000 trees were planted . The Cedar tree is the national tree of Japan.

  

  

  

  
  

  
 Apart from the impressive shrine, we had lunch at a road side café, which catered just for the bus loads of tourists, which were carefully stage managed by the various tour guides, so that not everyone descended at once. What was quiet amazing was that we 

  were given a choice on boarding the bus, meat or vegetarian and you will see from the lunch time photo, that it was impressive. We could have eaten the freshly grilled fish which looked and smelled just wonderful .
It is a long dive for Tokyo, but given our time restraints, this was the only way.