Bicycle: 33 km
Average speed: 11,5 km/h
Total ascent: 537 m
Riding time: 2:50 h
Weather: Sun, some clouds, still too hot and humid, 26C (per Wahoo)
For the last day of this rather short Silver Week (only the Monday was a public holiday... but I took the Tuesday as well), I had originally planned to cycle from Kinugawa onsen up to lake Chuzenji, the lake above Nikko and then down through the mountains to Kanuma and take a train from there back to Tokyo. However my stomach wasn't happy with me and it was still sooooo hot and humid... that I changed my plan and did sightseeing in Nikko instead.
The main shrine, Toshogu was incredibly busy with school classes. I arrived there around 10:00 and there was one class after an other. Probably all from the same school. Maybe it was just bad timing. But I do remember a visit a few years ago to Nikko where this same shrine was also totally overwhelmed by Japanese tourist groups. I know this is an important Shrine for its history, but with so many groups it is hard to enjoy it.
Strangely it got much quieter up to the burial of the Tokugawa shogun and on the way down I took this very quaint picture of the roofs of all the shrine buildings shining in their golden splendor through the forest.
It even had a deity for patisserie chefs (the god is holding the branch of a specific citrus tree).
I had lunch closeby in an other soba place (a lot of soba and udon these past few days) and then returned to my bicycle.
It was still relatively early in the day, but I was clearly not in form to continue cycling so instead I had found an onsen on google maps. It was quite close (by bicycle) from the shrines, but in a very quiet area. So quiet, that the onsen doesn't have a reception desk. But rather a vending machine for the tickets and a small box in which to drop the ticket before entering the bath. It has a tub inside and a rotenburo with views of a garden. I had the entire onsen to myself for most of the time. Very relaxing indeed.
The ride today was quite short, only about 28 km, but it seemed more exhausting that I would have expected for such a short ride, even with the heat... however looking at Strava shows over 500 m of elevation, which were accumulated in less than 20 km of cycling (the initial part was downhill). So that's pretty steep (for me at least), however it wasn't anywhere so steep that it actually felt steep or that I needed to push the bike.
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