While we’ve mostly been keeping with the fast pace, we’re staying a couple nights in the same place right now, so I have the breathing room for another post before Kyoto.
First, the bad news: no pictures of Mt. Fuji. The weather just wasn’t clear enough – that’s actually pretty common.
But the good news: the ryokan was great. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese hotel, and while I’m not sure if it’s the norm or not, ours also had an onsen – a hot spring bath.
The ryokan gave us all traditional robes to hang out in – when we weren’t naked with strangers in the baths! (Okay, it actually wasn’t very busy, so none of us were ever naked with strangers. But we could’ve been!)
Dinner was also traditional, and, uh, kind of intense – we ate abalone that was cooked live in front of us – like, it was was trying to crawl off the hotplate live.
There was a lot more – miso soup, rice, a variety of vegetables, whole shrimp (head and legs and all!)… but the living shellfish was definitely the most, uh, intimidating part of the meal.
Breakfast was still a lot, but much less alive, and then we were off for Nagoya! Nagoya was more fun than we were expecting – it was kind of just supposed to be a holdover point, but we really enjoyed it. Especially the egg sandwiches at the hostel we stayed at! (I forgot to take pictures of those, sorry.)
We also went to the castle in Nagoya, which was gorgeous. We didn’t get to go inside the main keep (in the picture) because it was under refurbishment, but the parts we did get to see were incredible.
We went from there to Takayama, a mountain town that’s great, if a little swamped with tourists. The views and the hiking are incredible, but the town, while also gorgeous, is kind of… it’s just distracting how many other tourists there are.
The region is known for its beef, though, and we’ve had some great meals!
We’re headed from here to Kyoto tomorrow! It’s gonna be kind of a long train ride – at least three and a half hours, probably longer – so that’ll be a fun day, but I’m looking forward to going back!