Heat seeking

After we returned from Tokyo we had a nice, quiet week. Classes hadn't started yet, so school was easy, and we stayed at home, sleeping, eating, and watching movies. Generally, just enjoying the last bit of our winter vacation.

On the weekend we had the fantastic duo of Mike and Colleen over. We spruced up the apartment [ahem, that is, we cleaned it], made a tasty dinner of corn chowder and crab puffs, topped off with dessert from Chateraise [an amazing sweets shop in Wadayama. They have French-style desserts and traditional Japanese sweets- and all on the cheap side!]. We watched back-to-back Scottish horror flicks [Dog Soldiers and The Descent- I can not recommend these movies enough! Everyone should watch them!], and had a nice long sleep.

The day C&M arrived had a crazy amount of snowfall- maybe a foot or two in half a day. So we wanted to head up to Kinosaki to warm up. Kinosaki is a little town, very cute and touristy without being kitschy. And it's crazy blessed with hot springs, so there's something like 7 public onsens and dozens of ryokan onsens [traditional style hotels]. After sampling some of Kinosaki's famous crabs [crabs and onsens, what wonderful things to be famous for!], we went to an onsen that had a cave-like setting. Now, part of the joy of onsen towns is to go onsen-hopping. That means tons of people at each and every onsen. So when Colleen and I walked into the changing room, it took us 5 minutes to find and navigate our way to a free locker. That is a lot of naked people. The pools were nice, but kinda cramped. The inside pool had the hottest water I've yet experienced- I was light-headed after only a few minutes.

Then we wandered the town a bit, had some gelato [gelato is very popular in Japan], and soaked our feet in the foot bath by the train. Then it was back to Wadayama, where we had sushi for dinner and for afters Colleen cut my hair. Yep! I finally got a trim, and didn't have to pay a lot for it or be terrified of receiving the Japanese-layer style. Colleen did a fantastic job, I am incredibly happy to have healthy-looking hair again.