I realized I never took pictures of the onigiri place called Onimaru in Osu…. here’s two I ate for breakfast
I like the one on the left the most, it has some chicken shit on top with some egg salad and a shiso leaf in between. My brother hates shiso leaf, but I think it adds a nice accent to the food.
Made it to Nagoya station while struggling with some bags in time… Since I wasn’t rejected at the shinkansen gate this time, I was finally able to get my ekiben for the trip!
For getting a shinkansen seat view of Mt. Fuji, it seems you need to pick the side that has two seats. I took a few pictures of it because it’s supposed to be hype, but I already saw Mt. Fuji very clearly last year, so how many pictures of Mt. Fuji do you really need…? I could be spoiled though…
soooooooooooo lucky
I was freaking out about whether or not we’d have luggage space on the bus from Hakone-Yumoto to the hotel since as we were getting off at Odawara from the Shinkansen, in my mind, every one of these fuckers getting off the train are going to their ryokan too in Hakone… but my fears were unfounded as the bus we took was practically empty! I do think I start to worry a little too much when my plans start to get de-railed, so we should try to relax and just let things happen… even if they don’t always go right it’s not the end of the world.
Made it to the hotel after walking uphill on a relatively steep hill. Maybe there’s an easier way to get up there I missed… lol
The room is really nice! I mainly wanted this place for the private onsen here. It’s just a little square with hot water, technically, but when the water is being refilled you can really smell the sulfur of the water! It’s nice to be able to use an onsen without anyone else around, though we did use the main bath without anyone around either. I know when I checked earlier there was only one room left at the hotel, but maybe it’s more empty than I thought…?
It’s nice to be able to finally sleep in my own bed again. We were sharing the same bed since last week in two different hotels, and our last hotel had a smaller bed than the first one… so it was a little ギリギリ, but we did ok!
Here is dinner! I was a little worried since there were a few bad reviews of this place, but I think it was quite good. I wouldn’t say it blew me away by any means, but it’s definitely a solid meal and each bite is unique. I don’t know if I could keep eating multiple course meals like this, though. Generally I prefer to just have like a one dish specialty from a restaurant and maybe a fun side dish and have at it, as I think the multiple course little bit of food in a dish is somewhat pretentious. It was a good call to not make any fancy restaurant reservations for this trip in hindsight. Probably the most fun thing was the conger eel and burdock fried in the tofu – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it! The main dish was a bowl of rice and beef, mixed in with vegetables – the vegetables complemented the base rice without the overuse of sauce that one would normally see at a gyudon place like Yoshinoya or something.
And lastly here’s the really stupid thing I wanted to do. Bathe next to my daki!
beware of feet
There’s another mjg tourney going on, so I was playing in the bath… hopefully my skin doesn’t fall off from bathing in the acidic water for so long! Today we are going to visit Motohakone to look at the Shrine and balk at the line for the famous peace torii, then eat an Owakudani hard-boiled egg! It’s probably just a hard-boiled egg at the end of the day… but let’s be excited for being touristy!