Woke up to a beautiful view out the window of our room - the window perfectly framed the leaves outside. Will be posting the pics of this in my photoblog eventually. We went down to breakfast and had more yummy food. Tomoko was our server again. We had fish that we grilled on a little hibachi. Standard salad, rice and miso (Japanese eat salad for breakfast). There was also a mochi soup (mochi is rice that is pounded into a dough) which was really good, and a box of stuff. There were 6 dishes in the box - tofu, tororo which is ground mountain potato ( hate this stuff cuz it looks like sperm), root veggies (lotus, mountain potato, bamboo root etc), black seaweed, and two things that I forget! *lol*
After breakfast we headed down to the onsen again. The 24 hour room had a plain bath with windows looking out at the trees, a cold bath, a sauna and another rotemburo (outside bath)! We went outside and relaxed. It feels a bit more riske in broad daylight.
Then we checked out. We were supposed to checkout at 10, but I thought it was 11, so we were a bit late. Ooops! Guess that explains why people were trying to clean the baths. We got the bus outside of the hotel and had a very twisty ride back to Kinugawa Onsen. The views were beautiful again, but I couldn't get any pics cuz it was hard enough just staying in the seat!
We arrived about 15 minute before the train left for Tokyo which was great. Just enough time to go to the washroom and line up to grab a seat. We took the cheap train back to Tokyo. A pair of girls were nice enough to change seats so that the four of us could sit together.
Once we were back in Tokyo we gave Hiroshi our bags and he went home for an English break. We wandered around Asakusa. There were tons of people there! Mom was in shopping mode -she went into every bag store possible. We tried some Japanese treats. Found some an (sweet bean paste) things that mom and Donnie liked. They were freshly made and still hot. After wandering around the temples and stores for a while, we went to Starbucks and had a coffee and a rest.
Then we went to meet some of my students. We were having a reunion from a seminar I taught back in September. We went out to the Farm Grill which is a buffet restaurant (western food) with all-you-can-drink. My students were rather shy and quiet at first, but after they had a drink they started gabbing. They were fascinated with Donnie's farm. As Japanese they are very softspoken and mom was having a hard time hearing them. I told the person beside me that she couldn't hear cuz she was old, only mom heard and she threw a shrimp shell at me!! (No mom, I'm not going to let you live that down)
After dinner we went to karaoke. Two of my students had had t-shirts made welcoming mom and Donnie. That was really nice. They also gave them silk bags as a gift. Mom and Donnie didn't sing, but we all had a lot of fun. And we didn't make it an all-nighter... we were home in bed by midnight :)