A note about Nikko

Today, I learnt a new word, a strange word, a weird word. A word that looked so out of place in the article it was in, that I had to look it up. I knew it was meant to be a positive word, but for all the world, it felt like a negative adjective. It doesn’t look pretty or sound beautiful. It’s quite frankly the ugliest word that means beautiful that I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t have the ring of idyllic, the sensory perception of serene or the adorably rough edges of rustic. What’s the word? Well, more of that later. 

I am a weird being at times. Sometimes I worry too much about money and count my pennies too much. Let me give you an example, on Saturday I got up at 6.30 to go to Nikko, a town and country park to the north of Tokyo. An early start, a two-hour train ride, the beautiful Kegon waterfall in front of me and I am wondering if to pay the 570 yen to go down to the bottom to a viewing platform to see the whole 100 metre falls in its full glory. I took myself aside and had a word with myself. And thank god I did, the view from the bottom was just amazing. Not only was there the main falls but the water oozing and gushing from other cracks and crevices not to mention the wonderful rock formations you couldn’t see from above. 

Then, I discovered my ‘ride all day’ bus ticket didn’t cover me to go to the Dragon’s Head falls, so another 700 yen required for the round trip. Should I?

I reminded myself of how the 570 I spent on the elevator earlier was money well spent and bit the bullet and got on the bus. Initially, I was disappointed. The falls were nice, but nothing special, 700 yen down the drain, but then I noticed the steps going up the side of the river. I started walking and with every step my breath was taken, and not only because I am dramatically unfit. Rushing, gushing, swirling, gurgling, swishing, splishing, (I know that’s not a word) against a backdrop of a mottled patchwork of autumnal shades, too many for me to mention. Value for money, no doubt about it. 

Then there was the lake with its calmness, the quirkiness of the buddhas in Kanmangafuchi Abyss, the lovely weather, Nikko really was worth every penny or yen, I’d spent.

The only problem for me was that yesterday I didn’t have a word to describe the beauty of Nikko. Breathtaking seems too mundane, stunning too prosaic, gorgeous too banal. I needed a new word, a word I’d not used before, I needed a word that would stand out, a word that looked and sounded so ugly, it could only mean something unbelievably beautiful. So, my word to describe Nikko is the word I saw in the article today, bucolic. 

To see if bucolic is the right word, check out the photos here.