Summertime found me taking better advantage of the occassional "Happy Monday" one shot national holidays that were created to theoretically lower stress on Japanese workers (if their bosses actually obeyed the law).
Being foreigners, however, we got to enjoy them quite freely, and this left opportunities for three day mini-vacations.
A friend at the time was hoping to open a hostel in Nikko, a beautiful part of Japan, north of Tokyo by a couple hours on the express train.
I and a few friends were the first guests at the hostel, and we had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend there that included a few random groups of foreign visitors, an exploration of hidden waterfalls in the nearby pine forest, an unplanned but interesting trip to a beach that completely emptied of Japanese people at 5pm sharp leaving a dozen foreigners to wonder where the several thousand people just went (and then having a blast on our own personal public beach, what a game of frisbee that was...), a fair sized earthquake, a copious amount of imported beer, and a massive flood of the river 200 feet from the hostel that made for some spectacular shots, and also swept away all the stuff we left at the riverside the day before...Woops.
Anyway, Nikko is absolutely beautiful, and I would recommend it to anyone traveling in Japan as a great place to get out into nature and relax a bit. Oh, and there are a TON of old temples to see, including the "See No Evil" monkey shrine.
Oh, also, the station you get off at is almost creepily deserted, after the bustle of Tokyo and Saitama. It's unlikely that there will even be someone there to check your ticket. Its nice for the kind of person that enjoys eerily quiet, deserted places... like me. :)
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