My nephew, Josh, met us at Aomori and will be with us for the next few days. He has been living and working in Japan for the last 9 years.
Once we reached Hirosaki, Randy and Josh went to get the rental van while the rest of us waited with the luggage. It was still VERY cold. And there was more to come. We stayed at the Yama No Inn which is an onsen in the mountains.
Pictured below is our room as we found it on arrival. You can see the snow covered bank outside our window. The second picture is our room after it was made-up for sleeping. This is a typical Japanese room. Futons are spread on the floor and they become the beds. There are just two major problems with the entire concept - first getting down into the bed and second getting back up! We've done it and lived to tell about it.
We didn't get into the onsen until after 5pm and then, before you knew it, it was time for you guessed it - BANQUET! I didn't get a picture of EVERY dish but I did get most of them.
Below left is the basic starter set with various delicasies. I'm going to try and get somebody to identify everything and if I succeed I will redo this page with the full explanations. The picture to the right has two special courses. The first is fish and seafood in some sort of custard. The second is a Fuji apple, slightly baked with a custard and some melted cheese on top. Both dishes were VERY good!
First the early birds - Granny and Josh. Then Josh, Randy and Yasuko.
Our day in Hirosaki started early. Mine started much earlier than everybody else. We had gone to bed early, about 9pm, so I was awake about 3am. I decided it was a good time to go to the baths. Got dressed in my kimono, traipsed down to the baths, washed (You wash and rinse BEFORE you get into the bath.) and then went to get into the bath. However, the water in the bath was so hot that I couldn't get in. Randy tells me there is a trick to it. I think the trick is to shrivel up like a prune in boiling water. I think I may leave the HOT baths for everybody else.
For those that can read Japanese, I have included the menu.
About 8am it was time for breakfast. What I mean is it was time for the morning BANQUET.
At 7am, Granny met Yasuko and they went to the baths. She also found it too hot but Yasuko showed her how to cool it off before getting in. Here she is ready to go to the baths.
After breakfast, we packed up the van and it was off to Hirosaki Castle. It was still VERY cold, damp and snowy.
I'm going to show this on a separate page because there are so many beautiful pictures to be shown.
