On Tuesday morning we hired a car and headed out of the city for a couple of days.  Tokyo is amazing but I wanted to see something different than the concrete jungle.   We drove towards Nikko and the Chuzenji Lake area.  Nikko is about 150 km outside Tokyo and has some beautiful mountains and forests.  When I went to Nikko before it was by train and, although the public transport system is fantastic, it’s not the best way to see a mountain.

Once we got off the Tohoku expressway we drove up through the mountains to the lake.  I loved the drive.  The scary road full of hairpin bends was one-way allowing us to enjoy the drive without being overly worried about other cars. The mountains are spectacular but I found it hard to take any good pictures.

I really like the mountains in Northern Ireland but they are very different than Japanese mountains.  The highest mountain in Northern Ireland, Slieve Donard, is only 850 metres.   Lake Chuzenji is at the foot of Mount Nantai and the lake is about 1,250 metres above sea level!

The other thing I really wanted to see was a waterfall.  I had read about Kegon Waterfall but we didn’t manage to find that on Tuesday.  We did, however, manage to find Yudaki Waterfall.