Cindy and Mike Do the World!: Yunomine Onsen, Japan (and pics)

We spent 2 nights in this area and took a train and then a bus to get there (about 5 hours). What a beautiful little town (and full of UNESCO sites in the surrounding areas – just what you like Bonnie!). The transportation in Japan has been great – nice clean trains that run exactly on time (with bathrooms and snackcarts) and the cutest little buses. It was just us and the bus driver for the last half hour on the way there and their buses allow you to change bills if you don’t have exact change.

We did a 16km hike and tried the onsens in our accommodations. We haven’t gotten up the nerve to visit the public ones and haven’t needed to since we had them where we were staying. You cannot wear your bathing suit although the onsens are usually separated by gender (very few mixed ones in Japan). You wash yourself on a little stool before getting in and my Lonely Planet book recommends watching others to see how it’s done (although I think I would feel a bit like a Peeping Tammy) so we’ve stuck with the private ones, where we just hung a little sign on the door so that no one else came in.

The minshoku and the ryokan that we stayed in included dinners and breakfasts so we got to try some very interesting things – some of which we still have no idea what they were! We took lots of pictures so that we can look them up. There was an American woman staying in the minshoku with us the first night (she taught English in Japan many years ago so she was very helpful in identifying the foods or asking the host what it was in Japanese). Venison sashimi was on the menu that night and actually quite good! Don’t know when we’ll eat that again.

We have met some well-travelled people already including an Australian couple who have been to many places and gave us some good tips about the best spot to see the Great Wall. This American woman I spoke about before has lived in many countries, including a two year stint in Bhutan and some time in Georgia.

We finally figured out the slipper situation in these places…take your shoes off in the lobby, put on slippers, walk up to your room, take them off at the door of your room (you don’t use them on the tatami mats). When you enter the bathroom, there are bathroom slippers there for you to use and they stay there. If you want to go outside in your robe, there are other outside slippers to use. Socks and wearing sandals are also acceptable and they actually have special socks just for this purpose.