Monkeys

After yesterdays party we agreed to take it easy and so Marinasan suggested we go to this special onsen in the mountains. The other guests had already left and so it was just Marinasan and me. The onsen was not too far from the hostel and as we arrived we were the only ones there. This onsen, like most onsens in Japan is gender separated and agreed to stay inside for about an hour and then meet again at the entrance. I got into the dressing room and there was no one there. Usually it's not allowed to take pictures for obvious reasons but since there was nobody there i figured also nobody would mind. ;-) Eventually one other person got into the onsen after me but he only stayed for 15 minutes so i had the whole place to myself for 45 minutes. And if that wasn't enough it was an outside onsen with a great view of the surrounding mountains which were fully covered in trees. Only thing was that the water was rich in iron and sulfur and so the air smelled a bit like farts. But that was a small price to pay for the awesome experience. After the time was up we got back in the car to Suzaka but Marinasan made one stop underway to a really cool and noisy waterfall. I guess that's why it's called thunder waterfall. We got back in the car and after some time were greeted by some of the snow monkeys i had seen in the onsen last time i was here in the winter. I took some pictures from within the car because even though the monkeys are small they are still wild animials and can be pretty strong. Marinasan dropped me off at Suzaka station since i wanted to explore a little bit of Nagano. First i went to a Ghibli exhibition with all kinds of sketches and drawings from all the Ghibli movies. It even had a scale model of the onsen from the movie "Spirited Away" or as the Japanese call it "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" (Yes i have practiced a lot on it haha) I walked to Zenjo-Ji temple to get the seal in my goshuincho which i didn't get the first time and got back to the hostel where i actually took it easy on the beer since we had to wake up early for the bamboo picking tomorrow.Read more