Bathing in the great outdoors

(For 20 April)

Well, staff you, too!

We all met at the Language School this morning for our day trip to Natadera (temple), Yamanaka Onsen and Yunokuni no Mori.

At Natadera

The temple was fabulous, and set in a glorious location.  A Shinto Shrine and a Buddhist Temple are both located there.  As always in these places, I took so many photos.  We all enjoyed exploring and admiring the wonderful scenery.

In the grounds of Natadera

The next stop was Yamanaka Onsen for lunch and a soak in the onsen.  Lunch was truly amazing!  Every item was an exquisite work of art, and all cooked in front of us as we watched.  The entrée even had gold leaf on top!  We were also given a glass of French wine with the meal.  After lunch, we were all given a sheet of paper with advice about how to use the onsen.  One item said ‘don’t drink alcohol before using the onsen’.  Well I guess that some advice is best ignored.  The guys went off to their bath and we six ladies went to ours.  We had the huge bath to ourselves – and a bonus of a rotenburo (outdoor bath) just outside the door.  [Japanese lesson break:  The ‘roten’ part of ‘rotenburo’ means ‘exposed to the sky’ and the ‘buro’ bit is the bath.  It’s not even vaguely related to the English ‘rotten’ – it’s quite the oppposite]

Lunch in progress

 

 

Lunch

Dessert

We took advantage of both.  The rotenburo was great.  Everytime we got too hot, we just sat up and let the cool breeze blow over us, and then sank back into the water.  Sadly, it was soon time to leave our lovely bath and move on to our next stop.  Before we left a couple of the ladies tried on some nice yukatas (light kimonos) and had photos taken.  As I’m going to the Children’s Day Festival when I get home, where I can do the same thing, I gave it a miss.

Our final stop was Yunokuni no Mori, which is a ‘theme park’ of Japanese Handicrafts.  As our time was limited, we went straight to the washi (Japanese paper) making building to create some works of art to take home.  We all made six postcard-sized pieces of paper, impregnated with leaves and flowers.  It was fun and resulted in a nice souvenir to take home.  We had a little time left to do some browsing and shopping and, despite it being about 12 degrees, some of us had an ice cream.

My hand-made creations

 

 

We travelled back to Kanazawa on the lovely comfortable (and warm) bus and then went our separate ways.  Ulla and I had a look around the shops near the station and I invested the grand total of $3.15 for an umbrella as it had started to rain and I had not taken an umbrella from home this morning.  We were really fortunate that no rain fell during our day’s outing.

We then went to Starbucks for our chai latte which seems to be becoming a habit and I phoned John using Skype on my iPhone.  A good cheap way to make a convenient overseas call.  He’s having a visit from his parents tomorrow as the cruise that they are currently taking is stopping in to Adelaide for the day.

We had another lovely dinner and decided to go to a sushi place next Tuesday night as Mr Hyakuman has a previous engagement for Friday night, when we are having our farewell gathering..  Sounds like a good alternative to me – and I get to do both!