Nikkō Tōshōgū and Kinugawa Onsen, Tochigi Prefecture 🇯🇵

Nikkō Tōshō-gū is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa era built in 1617 and later expanded by Ieyasu’s grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu. Detailed carvings of mythical creatures across the buildings. It is now UNESCO World Heritage Site part of the “Shrines and Temples of Nikkō.” Kinugawa Onsen was heavily developed into a mass tourism hot spring town. Railways made it accessible from Tokyo, and it gradually became a popular getaway resort. But in early 1990s when Japan bubble economy collapsed! Many hotels couldn’t survive, bankruptcies began, most of the businesses shutdown and left abandoned until today.