The second day of my trip to Tokyo while not in Tokyo started off at 8:35 with complimentary breakfast at the top of the hotel tower before breakfast closed at 9. We ate a LOT of preserved vegetable foods - sea weed, umeboshi (pickled plum), taro root pickles, and other stuff I don't know - with rice, curry, miso soup, and juice. There was one woman at breakfast who talked about me and Alex in Japanese. Basically, she just said "Oh, there are foreigners here," and then went on to say that her sister met a foreigner once during a trip to Nepal or India.
We packed, rested a bit, and then got on a train to Yamadera, the mountain temple. (Our transit passes were messed up because we never tagged off last night in the broken down train station, and the gate agent was unreasonably upset with US about it). We passed through lots of cute farms on our way up a valley into the mountains to a little tourist/farm town that straddles a confluence of two small rivers. Funnily enough, Alex began to recall the town, realizing that he'd actually visited before when he was first living in Sendai years ago. From the train station, we looked across the valley to our destination, a temple hanging onto a hillside covered in trees.
Following groups of Japanese tourists, we made our way up the 1,100 steep steps to the top of the temple, stopping to look at numerous shrines and offerings along the way. In one spot, there were dozens of shrines carved into a huge rockface, with hundreds of coins wedged into its porous surface, and hundreds of prayer sticks arranged at the base. At the top, we walked around the main temple and the other shrines, taking in views of the town and valley below. There was supposed to be an eternal flame that had burned for at least hundreds of years, but it wasn't out for the public or we just didn't see it.
Having seen everything, we walked back down the hill in search of lunch, which in Yamadera could only mean soba noodles. We looked at each of the 6-7 soba restaurants and picked the one that wasn't totally overcrowded. We got the Yamagata special plate - soba soup and boiled potato stew - and some ice cream. Alex had zenda (edamame paste) flavor, and I got the black sesame, which was almost overwhelming at first.
Then we realized the train back to Yamagata was leaving shortly, so we paid up and ran through town for the train station, making it there just a minute or so before the train arrived. We rode back to Yamagata, and then killed time before getting on the bus to Zao Onsen by wandering in a department store. There was a manga store that mostly advertised really terrible looking shows (there was one clip of a guy excitedly pouring olive oil all over his food, and another that was just an animated boy-band concert); an "old American clothing store" (with a sweater that just said "BAGEL" on the front); squat toilets; and a stationery/household supply store.
With even more time to kill, we walked downtown Yamagata in search of an open pizza place, but all we could find was a burger chain called Moss Burger (maybe it was just Mos, but I like to think it was the former). I only got onion rings, which did not come with any condiments. I asked for some ketchup, which came in a little bowl.
We hung out, talking for a
while, before deciding it was time to go, and then immediately ran into
our bus at an intersection in front of the burger shop. We ran after it,
grabbed a couple tickets, and boarded. The bus took us through
southern Yamagata and then wound up the mountain roads to Zao Onsen past
beautiful overlooks from quaint farm towns.
The town of Zao Onsen was beautiful. We arrived in the late evening, and walking through the streets we saw steam rising from the grates in the street, smelled lots of sulfur, and watched a hot river running through town that parents would threaten to throw their misbehaving children into. We kept walking uphill and found a kokeshi shop with hundreds of handpainted wooden dolls, and then found our hotel, a building in the style of a French Chateau called Hotel Largent.
Our host was standing in the parking lot when we arrived, and he greeted Alex by name, and then took us in through a stubborn automatic door. Our hostess gave us a key and wondered if I was a fan of natto, which would be included with the breakfast. We checked out our room and Japanese television before heading back downhill in search of dinner.
After asking our hosts which place was ichiban oishii ("number-one delicious"), they told us to go robata, which specialized in a dish called jingeshkan (Genghis Kahn). We went to check it out, but it was full, so they took our hotel's phone number and offered to call us if a table opened up in an hour. We walked to a couple omiyage shops and checked out the local souvenir snacks. There's a rule in Japan that anytime you visit someplace new you're supposed to bring back some small souvenir for your people. Alex and I just bought some cider, cherry cider, and münchner style beer, all brewed in Yamagata. Alex quizzed me on sea-life facts while we tasted the drinks in our room until the restaurant called.
By that point we were really hungry, so we went right away and ordered two sets of jingeshkan, which meant putting fresh chunks of lamb and vegetable onto an iron dome over a gas flame in the middle of the table and cooking them ourselves. The trick was to start with a chunk of fat on the top of the dome so that the drippings would run down channels in the dome and pool at its base. Then, you coat the veggies and meat in the pooled fat before putting them on the dome to cook. It was so good, and the set also came with some great pickled things, rice, miso, etc. After dinner, we went out in front of the restaurant and sat with our feet in a hot water bat that was on the side of the road.
Back at the hotel, we put on complimentary kimono and went down to the onsen. We took off our clothes and used a Japanese style shower (sit or squat in front of a hand held shower head while washing your body and hair). Then we put our kimono back on, walked out with geta (wooden sandals) to the onsen in front of the hotel, disrobed again, and sat forever in the hot-spring fed tub. When we were done, we put our clothes back on, walked back to the showers with geta, rinsed off, put the kimono back on, and then went back up to the room.
It was a lot of ceremony just to sit in a hot tub, but we'd washed three times over and I found it soooooooo relaxing. We stayed up drinking the münchner and chatting, and then went to bed way early for the either of us (10 pm, *gasp!*).
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