New Year's Eve

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

The next day we decided to get up early to head over to Nikko to see the Toshogu shrine since it was pretty close. The shrine was beautiful. It was pretty cold outside (there was even some snow on the ground!) The architecture of the shrine buildings was incredibly intricate and beautiful. I wonder how long it took to make everything there...The shrine was built in 1617 (so it's pretty old) and is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (his tomb is actually there which I got to see!) I really want to go back to that shrine someday. It was a bit hectic since everyone was preparing for the new year's eve ceremony that would take place there later that night. But there are so many awesome buildings there and decorations on said buildings (such as the see no evil, etc. monkeys).

Tokugawa's remains

After spending a good amount at the shrine we headed to another part of Nikko called Lake Chuzenji. To get there we had to drive up this crazy, windy mountain road (which was kinda fun but also a bit dangerous at certain points since there was ice). The lake was also beautiful. The color of the water was amazing and the mountains surrounding the lake were also beautiful. But man was it cold. Like seriously  so freezing. The moment we stepped out of the car to take pictures we were hit by ice-like winds. Which is why we didn't stay very long. After the lake we planned on going to another onsen, but the one we wanted to go to was closed, so we just headed home. Sadly my stomach started to hurt the way back (thankfully I was able to sleep some though).





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!