03/31 - hakone

Today was our ryokan day in Hakone, but before that Keegan and I had a little more exploring to do in Nagoya. We didn't have to catch our train until 11 so we got up earlier and went on a walked.

The first place we went to visit was Osu Kannon temple, a Chinese style temple in Nagoya. It was pretty quiet there and we watched the priest catch up on blessing the various charms he had accumulated the day before. The other thing we wanted to find was some of Nagoya's speciality foods. Kishimen, a flat udon soup was on the top of our list as we couldn't find a place open the night before. We popped in a few places but they were all closed. We gave up and went back to the hotel to pick up Dima and go to the trainstation.

At the station we hunted down a few of the other foods, tempura rice rolls and uiro steamed rice cakes. The tempura were like onigiri but with tempura shrimp in the middle. Uiro is as it sounds and is sweet. Satisifed with our selection we made our way to the train platform. I walked around the platform and found a noodle stand which had kichimen. I grabbed keegan and went back to the store. We had 3 minutes to order, have them prepare, and eat before our train arrived so we gave it a shot. We ordered at the vending machine, found a place to stand an about a minute later it was in front of me. I wolfed it down as fast as possible, burning my mouth along the way and only had the raw egg left when the train arrived. I quickly slurped it down and ran for the train just in time. Keegan took had last bit with him on the train in a cup. It was pretty good, much better then regilar udon and sorts of like how fettucchini compares to linguine.

The train to the ryokan was pretty interesting as it had to go up a mountain. It did this by going up a bit and back tracking up the next line, zig zagging up the mountain. Its like leafing down the mountain when snow boarding. When we got to our stop we got into a private gondola which brought us to our ryokan. Our room was pretty nice with an entry room, food prep room, washroom, main room and sitting and storage room. All the wall dividers were slidding paper doors and the floor was tatami mats. The floor was also heated.

The ryokan has 4 public baths, 2 indoor and 2 outdoor. They rotate between men and women so we went to the big outdoor one first. We had it to our selves but took turns jumping in and covering up with buckets. The water was 40-50 degrees and was very refreshing. After about 30 minutes we went to the large indoor bath and repeated our entry procedure. Afterwards, dima and I taught keegan how to shave. Dima and I explored outside for a bit which keegan soaked in the outdoor bath longer.

We got back at 6 and got ready for dinner which was an impressive feast. We were first brought a personal hotpot with beef, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage, udon, vermincelli, and bamboo. While that was cooking we were given a sashimi platter, salad, appitizers, and egg dish, and plum wine. The sashimi had tuna, shrimp, yellowtail, and 1 other fish and was extremely fresh. The tuna melted like butter. The appitizers consisted of a tofu cube, shrimp, fish roe wrapped in imitation crab deep fried, and clam. The salad was a scallop and veggies in a honey mustard sauce. The egg dish was thin scrambled eggs in a broth with a pink sauce which I don't know what it is. Next came some stewed veggies, including bamboo, gailan, glutton and carots, and a tempura dish. The tempura was eggplant wrapped in tofu skins and deep fried, a veggies bulb, which looked like a Brussels sprout, and shrimp with a multi-colored seaweed thing. Lastly we were brought sticky rice with an underwater plant in a broth, and strawberries and grapes as well as a large container of rice. The meal was very good and the plum wine at the end, which was very sweet like a desert wine, was a great way to end the meal.

After dinner the main room was arranged into a bedroom with futons. Keegan thinks they are the greatest thing on the world and the heated floor really adds to the comfort.

In the evenning keegan and I went to check out the last couple baths, a smaller inner and smaller outer bath. The small outer bath was very interesting and was carved out of rock and overlooked the river. The cold rocks sa night was a good contrast to the hot water. We then went to check out the large outer bath but it was gated. We hopped the gate and relaxed in the bath for a while before returning to our warm futons.