August 14 Being a tourist part 2

Phrase of the day: Ganbatte
GPS location: N 36°45.105' E 139°35.500'

Brendan again.
Today we went to more sights. Namely the memorial to the self immolation victims (apparantly these are people who commit suicide by burning themselves. We couldn't tell when or why as the writing once again was in Japanese).

This was one of the cool budhas.

Then we crossed the road to the Imperial Villa memorial Park. We thought this might be a park dedicated to the site of the old imperial villa but the villa is still there and man is it sprawling. This was the royal families summer residence up until the 1990's (or 1980's. Japanese text again) when it was given to the city of Nikko. The Emperor Hirohito (dude in charge during WW2) was evacuated here while the allies (i.e. America) set about making Tokyo a lovely collection of rocks. It was originally a small place but has been added to by the various emperors over the years until it fell into disrepair and was evetually given to Nikko City. The royal garage is now the carpark.






Some of the detailing in this place was amazing.