Okay so where we left off I was woken up at like 1 in the morning to find out I was going on a trip that day. So I quickly took a shower, and packed. At around 2 we left the apartment. I thought we would take a train as we usually do, but to my surprise they had rented a car! So yay for a mini road trip! I was pretty exhausted from the night before, but I didn't really sleep in the 2/3 hours that it took us to get to our destination: Kinugawa. It was so nice to watch the scenery of Tokyo and other cities pass us by. It was another one of those moments where I realize how much I love Tokyo. It was a pretty foggy day though, so I wasn't able to see a lot of the countryside we drove by.
We arrived at Kinugawa at around 5/5:30 (it was already dark outside and raining so I couldn't see too much). We stayed at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) so our room was a tatami room (thought it was pretty big) and we slept on futons. We ended up going to this random restaurant to eat (someone from that restaurant drove to our inn to pick us up which I guess was normal since they did that for other customers too) and the food was really good there. I ate so much (I think I had chicken stomach/insides for the first time, it was delicious!). After eating we were driven back to the hotel and went to the bath/onsen area. This was my first tine officially going to an onsen, so I was super excited! There was a normal big bath inside (which was nice) but the onsen was outside. But since the inside bath warmed you up, it wasn't cold when you stepped outside for the onsen. And ohmygod the onsen was so amazing. The water was nice and warm and it felt so cool being in an outside hot spring. I could have stayed there forever. Afterwards we just sat in our room and watched hilarious Japanese television shows.
The beautiful view from our inn room |
Part of our room |
Tokugawa's remains |
When we got home we dropped off our bags and headed to Shinjuku were we ate at a yakiniku place. My stomach still wasn't feeling very well, and I was exhausted, so I wasn't able to enjoy the tabehoudai (all you can eat) to the fullest. After eating we went to rent some DVDs and then headed home (my host family also bought me some medicine on the way, they take such good care of me!). When we got home we stared to watch one of the various Doraemon movies that exists (which I half napped through) then watched the yearly concert show called Kohaku where famous musicians perform. Sadly I was still feeling sick, so the night wasn't that exciting. We didn't really do a countdown or anything either, but we did eat toshikoshi soba, the traditional soba dish on new years. There is so much I want to write about New Year's in Japan, but I don't even know a lot of the traditions that well myself, so just wikipedia it. Haha. Still have a couple days to write about, but for now I'm tired so I'll stop here. Hopefully I can get caught up tomorrow!
I'm sorry you haven't been feeling great lately! I love the pictures. Happy belated New Year!
返信削除Happy belated New Year to you too!!!~
削除And thanks for being an awesome friend and always reading my posts :)