Ready for skiing. In the background: Nikko Astraea Hotel

With its 106 rooms, it is also one of the largest remaining wooden buildings in Japan, and you can enjoy the architectural mix of Japanese and Western style. Although there isn't much furniture left in the building it is still amazing to see the elegantly decorated sliding doors, the gorgeous carpets, and the delicate paper walls.

Nikko is a great destination for people who are visiting Japan and want to get close to nature and at the same time experience Japanese cultural heritage at its best. The small city is located around 1 hour and 40 minutes away from Tokyo by train, and here you can find some magnificent temples and enjoy the beautiful scenery that surrounds the historical city.
This is also a nice place to try a stay at a traditional Japanese ryokan hotel where you can sleep in a traditional Japanese room with tatami-mat and soak yourself in the Japanese hot spring bath called onsen.

Nikko certainly isn't the first place to choose if you're on the outlook for Japanese night life. If you find yourself somewhere on the main road going through the center of Nikko called the Japan Romantic Road (日本ロマンチック街道) you'll soon realize that there are very few options if you want to stay out at night and meet locals.

When looking for a place to have a few drinks we stumbled upon a small but cozy bar called Bar de Nikko Kujira Shokudou (くじら食堂) where we ended up staying the rest of the evening.

This bar/restaurant opened up as recent as in July 2014, and with its mix of old and modern it is definitely a place to go if you want to try out some local specialities in stylish surroundings. From the outside it didn't really look like anything special, but once we stepped inside the bar we immediately felt the relaxing atmosphere.

This evening the bar only had a few guests besides us, so we ended up striking a conversation with the two bartenders, and they could tell us that the number of foreign visitors had been increasing steadily since the bar opened last year. Japanese travelers usually come during the high season in May and Augusts, so having foreign visitors was crucial to keep the business running throughout the low seasons.

Besides serving usual bar appetizers such as sausages and edamame Bar de Nikko was also great place to try out some local specialities. We ordered a number of small dishes, including takoyaki (たこ焼き) and duck meat. It was also a nice chance to try out one of Nikko's meibutsu (名物) called yuba (ゆば), which is a dish simply made of tofu (been curd) skin. Yuba didn't taste that much to be honest (not too surprising as it's quite close to tofu), but it was nice to have the chance to try it none the less.

There were of course also other things to try beside the food. Those who are interested in tasting local beer (known in Japanese as ji-biiru 地ビール) should definitely use the opportunity to try Nikko's locally produced beer brands Iroha Beer (いろはビール) and the King's Beer (王様のビール). In addition they also served some of the common Japanese brands and some international brands as well.