Haikara Hotel Yutsuku Shirasse Aizuwakamatsu

... spent a good 15 minutes sitting outside a Pachinko parlor (where a high pitched girl's voice entreating customers almost drove me insane)--both maps from the office show the same city but are printed in two different orientations (portrait vs. landscape) and I had so much time trying to get them squared up. But I got a good start at a more 'traditional' restaurant, which appropriately doubles as an omiyage (souvenir) shop. The specialty here is dengaku, which are skewered ...

... A ryokan is a traditional guest house. In the ryokan you have to wear special socks that are provided. They take away your shoes just as you walk through the door and only give them back when you leave. When we had got to our room we got given a traditional kimono that we had to wear whenever we were there except for sleeping. We had spas when we were there. We had an outside spa before dinner and an inside spa after dinner ...

We did a longer road trip on Sunday, 10/7. We went north up the pacific coast to the end of the Joban expressway and then west, about ½ way across into the mountainous interior on the Ban-Etsu expressway. This is fairly far north, and very few non-Japanese tourists make it up here. Actually, it's still quite a ways north to the tip of Honshu (the main island of Japan), but much ...

... the parents lounging around the onsen (hot spring) just taking it all in and the kids running havoc it is v funny. On the way out I saw two young monkies fighting, I had to take a video of a monkey fight...... but as I got a little bit closer one of the monkies jumped on me and turned the camera off ........ I couldn't stop laughing. And then the snow started ....... we headed for Tokyo

Today we arose around 9 to go to the historic Word Heritage site of Nikko, about 2 hours north of Tokyo. We bought the World Heritage Pass, which I would recommend. For about $35 per person, you get round trip train tickets from Asakusa station in Tokyo, entrance to three Temples in Nikko, and limited use of the Nikko bus system. We didn't get up until about 8:30 so by the time we got up to Asakusa we wouldn't get to Nikko until 2:30. The ...

... Bowling Alley/Arcade!!!! I knew what we would be doing after the show!! We taxied to the theater, and I regaled our Stage Manager with one of my funny phrases in my book... It goes something like this: he-ru-met-to wa hi-tsu-yo des ka?? It asks, "Do I need a Helmet??" Used in the right context... VERY funny. Well, ask and you shall receive. Within 5 minutes of having said that, I was handed an awesome red plastic HERUMETO (Helmet). Well, you ...

So we get to one of our first relaxing places from the outside bandai-atami doesnt look that nice, probably due to its heyday being 15 years ago! The hotel we stayed at was called Kirakuya Inn not much from the outside but once inside it was really nice, it has 2 public onsens for men and women with many different baths and a sauna, and two private baths on the top floor observing the mountains surounding bandai. It was really nice, Michelle`s bag broke (also her hair drier blew up, we ...

... dessert we had yogurt with fruit, plus the No.1 variety of persimmon - MISHIRAZUKIKU (not crunchy or slimy like the other varieties, but incredibly crisp - someday I'm coming back to Japan just to try it again). We then got on the topic of culture. Mutsuo-san taught us that fool (BAKA) in Aizu-ben (Aizu dialect) is ONZAGES. Surprisingly, Yamaguchi-san doesn't speak Aizu-ben, despite his family being in Aizu for many generations. We then got an etiquette lesson on how we should refill ...

... I was the only one that got what he ordered); or the fact that the cook was a young Frenchman who decided to try his hand at ramen and open up a shop of his own in the middle of a somewhat sleepy town - I thought the ramen was pretty ordinary. Too much browsing DVD/game stores and not enough paying attention to when the trains for Aizu were leaving forced us to spend another 2 hours in Kitakata (trains are rather infrequent). We checked out a sake brewery which was a waste of ...

... sake (or the ones you can buy at a vending machine or convenience store) are either watered down or have synthetic alcohols added. To prove his point, Yamaguchi-san gave us some of the "normal" sake (perhaps a notch above the ONE CUP SAKE that Mike had frequently consumed on long train journeys) and it tasted **** after the Jun Mai Shu. Then he gave us a huge bottle of NIGORI ZAKE, the same sake as the Jun Mai Shu except it was brewed the traditional way and hadn't been ...