Fourteen Days in Japan · Friday, March 21st, 2008
Day 5: Strawberries and Bamboo
For the weekend, Yasuko's father, Masao, had planned a trip to an onsen (hot springs) less than two hours southwest of Nagoya. It was a unique opportunity to get the family together for a relaxing weekend of fun, great food, spa treatments, massages and some sightseeing.
First, we drove to a small restaurant near Lake Hamana, one of Masao's favorite places to enjoy unagi. Unagi is the Japanese word for freshwater eel, and it is served as part of unadon, a dish of broiled eel on a bed of rice. Lake Hamana, in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka prefecture, is considered the home of the highest-quality unagi; as a result, the lake is surrounded by many small restaurants specializing in various unagi dishes.
By the time we finished eating, it had started to rain. After taking a couple of pictures just outside the restaurant, we started driving north towards Yuya Onsen, our destination. On the way, the scenery was so incredibly rich in colors that I stopped a few times to take some more pictures.
In Japan, strawberry picking is quite popular in the spring. After you pay an entrance fee, they give you a small cup with condensed milk in it, and you can roam the greenhouse and pick as many strawberries as you can eat.
It's a fun thing to do, especially for children, but, as I soon discovered, even Japanese adults seem to turn into children again in a place like that. And the strawberries were amazingly sweet, especially when dipped in the condensed milk.
The visit to the strawberry farm was a really good idea. It helped everybody wind down and set the tone for the weekend. After stuffing ourselves with plenty of strawberries, we hopped back in the cars and resumed our drive to the hotel.
As we kept driving north into the mountains, the landscape was gorgeous, especially thanks to the low clouds and the rain: beautiful cedar trees, fantastic bamboo forests, flowering cherry trees, beautiful houses, rows of tea plants. Needless to say, we stopped a few times to enjoy the view and take a few pictures.
Finally we reached our hotel, 湯谷観光ホテル泉山閣 in Yuya Onsen. The room was huge, with a nice balcony where we could sit and enjoy the spectacular view of the woods and the river.
After we settled in, before dinner, we went to the first floor of the hotel, where the private baths are. You can rent one and take a hot spring bath in a big tub on an open balcony overlooking the river and the woods.
After the novel (to me) experience of getting naked outdoors and dipping into a hot bath while listening to the river flowing and the trees swaying in the wind, we got ready and met the rest of the family in a private room at the hotel to enjoy a nice meal together.