This weekend is our only completely free days.  Today, I chose to take a bus trip to the mountain city of Nikko, nearly a 3-hour drive from our hotel.  It was much cooler, and it was even snowing - just flurries - nothing dangerous.  I knew it was going to be a special day when I walked to the elevator on my floor, looked out the window at the cloudless blue sky, which was the first blue sky we've seen here, and what do you think I saw?  Straight ahead, perfectly framed by the window was the most famous mountain in the world and Japan's most important symbol - Mount Fuji.  With its snow-capped cone shape, I saw a real-life postcard!
      At the shrine in Nikko, the priest stamping the prayer books was at his window because it is an important tourist area, and it was crowded.  The Toshogu Shrine is best known for the 5-story pagoda, the elaborate carvings of wood throughout the shrine's structure, and lots of gold leaf - a lot more than what's on the dome of the Capitol Building in Atlanta.
 We visited Kegon waterfall, which means magnificentÖand it isÖhigher than Niagara Falls.  We looked for monkeys running wild in the woods on our slow drive down the moutain, winding through 48 hairpin curves.  Our guide said, "They must have the day off."  On the drive, we got to see Mount Nantai also called "Little Fuji" because it looks like the real Mt. Fuji because of similar shapes; however, nothing beats the real think.  Our guide said that today is thought to be the second luckiest day of the year, made even luckier by falling on a Saturday, and what a lucky, wonderful day it was, indeed!