Shuzenji weekend

Today I and my colleagues got back from our weekend in Shuzenji. Helena, my guide in the Nippon jungle, had looked up a hotel and a route for us. We travelled by subway, train, shinkansen, train again and taxi before we got there. We left the bags at the hotel since we were a bit early for checking in and walked around the village looking at some old tombs and temples. We walked by a small shop with old pachinko games and cork shooting and the guys wanted to try the shooting. The both won a couple of more or less hideous porcelain creatures. Shortly after we had lunch at a small soba place, and one of the animals found a new home among the spices at the table. The little lady working in the restaurant stared at the animal without saying a word and we were all quite curious what would happen with the poor thing when we had left.

When we had checked in at the hotel and taken a short nap (we must be getting old...) we started our onsen bathing. It’s really great to get in to the hot pool area and just relax. Although it tends to get a bit too hot in a while. The temperature varies a bit from pool to pool, but I think it was just above 40 degrees. This place had 3 different pool areas for women. One that was actually a cave drilled out of the mountain with the previous owners favourite drill. There was also a “normal” indoor pool and, my favourite, the outdoor pool.

At dinner time we all entered the restaurant, still in our yukatas, and were served an enormous meal. The plates just kept coming. Since I still was feeling quite sick, strange Japanese food wasn’t really what I felt up for, so I was basically just picking in the food. But everything looked really nice and beautiful. They sure know how to make a dish look appetizing. After dinner we ended up in the common room playing some ping-pong and, of course, singing some karaoke. I think the guy standing in the bar had the time of his life. Not quite sure though if he was laughing with us or at us... =)

This morning we all dragged ourselves out of bed at eight to get some breakfast. We choose continental style, and it was actually quite alright. Apparently you can’t really count on getting a nice breakfast around here. After breakfast we jumped into the onsen and got scrubbed up again and shortly thereafter it was time to check out and go home. When leaving the hotel it felt like the entire staff was standing outside waiting for the taxi with us, bowing deeply and waving when the taxi took off.

I've put up a lot of pictures from Shuzenji and also some from Oedo onsen.