My birthday onsen weekend Part 2 - Dinner and breakfast

Before dinner we "relaxed" in the onsens they had for guests.  I say "relaxed" because it wasn't all that relaxing.  For me at least.  See, in this area, the hot spring water is special in that it has special healing qualities that I cannot remember.  It also has a super thick reddish brown color.  It is also very, very, veeerrryyy hot.  After getting naked, washing myself at the little shower thingy next to the hot spring baths, I attempted to get into the special onsen.  YEOW! Okay, one foot in.  Two feet in.  Couldn't go further.  I am glad the Japanese guy sitting comfortably in it didn't pay any attention to the stupid foreigner next to him making strange pain induced sounds.  I gave up.  Luckily, they had a "normal" onsen next to it that seemed to be more popular.  I guess I wasn't the only one who couldn't hack the hell water. 

Dinner proved to be much more relaxing.  I love traditional Japanese teishoku style meals.  It is so much more enjoyable than a large pile of food that you find in America.  Sure, I don't know what half of it is but that makes it more fun right?

Here is what came for dinner.

My birthday onsen weekend

It's my birthday! Well, it was.  You can gauge where I am on my blog posts now right?  Ugh.

Anyway.  Yukino wanted to surprise me with here gift so to start she made me get on a bus at Osaka station.  Unfortunately for her, I could see the bus was headed to Arima Onsen.  I didn't know where Arima Onsen was but I knew we were headed to a hot spring. I wasn't really excited by this news.  I enjoy a good onsen but I am not Japanese.  I enjoy it for about ten minutes.  Oh well. 

Only about a hour and half later we were there.  Cute little town with tons of people.  We walked around a bit and came upon a giant, pretty good looking hotel.  Our hotel! She booked the weekend there.  So sweet!  We were to stay at the Kosenkaku. 

Beef and nerds

There is a local yakiniku restaurant near our apartment that seems to be pretty popular as it is packed and has people waiting outside some nights.  We luckily didn't have to wait but we soon found out why people do.

The beef is badass-

Another form of abandonment in Japan

So you know about haikyos now.  The abandoned buildings that can be found all over Japan.  Next is cars.  While I have seen my share of abandoned cars (saw two today), I finally found a blog about them.  So wasteful but so cool.  Go here - so sad.

"Nice" Nissan-

Tokyo friends in Osaka

Yukino's good friends Aya and Chiharu from Tokyo came down for a weekend a little bit ago.  I had to go to school on that Saturday so I missed on fun from Friday but Saturday night was an action packed night.

We started at the Mexican festival at Umeda's Sky Building.  Tons of food, people, and music made for quite a festive atmosphere.

For you dad. Frank Zappa in Japan.

Rather than including this in the next post I will make a standalone one for it.  I had to take a picture of this lady for you dad-

Our last bike trip. To the mountains and J's Racing.

Unfortunately, this would be our last bike trip together.  No, Yukino didn't die.  She had her super amazing Honda Cub stolen after this.  Why anyone would steal it is beyond me.  The paint was fading, the rear rack was missing, it rattled and tape held parts on it. 

But, it held up for this trip quite easily.  I am not sure how we decided on this place to go but we were going to a river area a tad north of main Osaka city.  Probably half way to Kyoto.  Looking at a map now I can see it's near Mt. PonPon. Cute.

It was about a two hour ride and we got some lunch on the way.  Well, right before we started actually since this is at a great Udon place across the street. On the left is inarizushi.  Rice wrapped in sweat tofu.  I love these little guys.  On the right is cold udon noodles and tempura.  You pour the udon tsuyu sauce on it from the small container on the top left.

After getting a little lost we found the place, hiked a bit and jumped right in-

A beach better than Shonan. Suma beach.

Most people would agree that the quality of the beach and water in Shonan, where I used to live, is not that great.  It was really nice only living ten minutes away though.  Now, the nearest beach is about forty-five minutes away.  I can now understand what it feels like to be one of those people from Tokyo coming all the way down to Shonan.

However, the nearest beach here, Suma beach, is a lot better for swimming and not feeling dirty all the time.  Its on the other side of Kobe as you can see here -

View Larger Map

It has a different feel than Shonan and I am sure its hopping in the summer.

What I am watching right now

It's 12:30am right now and this is on TV-


And for an even weirder one- http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/24628069

Nara bike trip map

Check out this nifty map I made! Give it a minute to load.

View Nara bike trip in a larger map

Nara bike trip Part 2

The owner of the youth hostel has a hobby of being a cartographer and has explored all over the local area.  After looking at some pictures he had taken, we decided to check out some waterfalls farther down the road.  A little bit of riding and some hiking we found the area we were looking for. 

Nara bike trip

Near the end of our first week we decided to spend the weekend in the mountains to the southeast.  I thought it was Wakayama prefecture and happy to tick that one of my list but instead it turned out to be Nara prefecture.  Oh well.  We had a rough idea of how to get to the mountain youth hostel we set off after a late start.  Osaka is killer for driving!  It takes forrreeevvver to get out of the urban/suburban area.  Two of the three hours was spent on roads going from traffic light to traffic light.  Highways are the way to go but we can't take those on our bikes.

Anywho, we stopped at a parking area in the mountains to give our butts a break and get a drink.  Super nice place with a river for people to go swimming in and relax.  After, rather than taking the main road, I convinced Yukino to take a detour on a smaller road.  Luckily it provided a great view-

Still in the first week

We continued to have quite a busy first week.  Lots of unpacking, rearranging and getting used to our new neighborhood was needed.

There is always time for yakiniku though.  There is a place down the road from us that has pretty good meat and draft beer at only $2!