A-mazing Nikko

On Saturday morning we headed over to the Grand Maze Palladium, just down the road from us in Nikko. The maze is made up of wooden panels and fences, sets of crisscrossing stairs and four towers in each of the corners. To complete the maze you need to get stamps from each corner tower and find your way to the exit.

The bigger challenge (should you choose to accept it – we all did) is to complete the maze in 25 minutes or less. There is a timestamp machine at the start and the end, and you get your time recorded on your card. Anyone who beats the maze in time gets a free cold drink (and you'll need it – even in winter).

This is quite a tricky maze – the proper approach for each tower generally involved getting away from it in at least one direction before heading back. Between us, we tried an array of maze-solving approaches – sometimes changing approaches on the fly. The maze keeps things a bit interesting with somewhat pointed signs at dead ends poking fun at you – these were generally lost on us non-Japanese speakers, but A did translate some.

Ultimately, I finished in 24 minutes, with J just behind me at 25 minutes.

F finished in 36 minutes (well below the average of 40 minutes), but A took an hour and 13 minutes. To be fair, after spending over 30 minutes trying to get to her last tower, I think she slowed down to smell the roses (and translate the signs).

It was a great way to spend 24... I mean 73 minutes and certainly warmed us up. Despite it being about 6°C, we soon stripped off puffer jackets, unzipped fleeces and removed beanies!