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Published: January 1st 2010
Before I begin, Happy New Year to you all and may I beg your pardon on the length of this blog and the rants contain therein. I blame it on that well known female affliction, 'birding widow syndrome'. My mother suffered from a similar malaise, 'sailing widow syndrome' so it must run in the family.
I have come to the conclusion that 1 night sleeping on a futon is fantastic, 2 nights makes you worry you're not doing it right and 3 nights is pure unadulterated agony! Neither of us are getting any younger and we have both got used to the odd joint twinge on a morning but this is just downright silly!
Apart from a proper bed, the other essential item I have now recognised I cannot do without is a chair. Apologies for revisiting this but my needs are few and for goodness sake, we even managed to have a chair in the jungle, albeit a log, but still! Age and increasing grumpiness does not mix well with spending most of the time crawling around on the floor with dead legs looking for your shoes!
And another thing, why do I find myself totally incapable of walking anywhere in these super shiny house slippers without one, or indeed both, flying off my feet the moment someone else hoves into view?
Okay, now that's off my chest on to breakfast. Today's outing included soft and squishy tofu dumplings - Stacy, I hope you're taking note of my vegetarian tendancies, I'm doing this for your benefit not mine!
Making our first big move today - off to the Japan Alps by rental car. Caught the subway downtown and marvelled at the size of Tokyo Central subway station. It's so big I dread to think what it must be like when it's full on a Monday morning rush hour. It even managed to fox Mr Fiennes for a second or two so that will give you some idea of the scale of the thing!
Picked up the car without too much hassle and got the chap to input our destination into the sat nav so got straight onto the expressway. Threw some notes at the 3 toll booths we passed through in the vain hope that it was enough as only one had a sign displaying the prices.
Miss Japan GPS had a nice way about her causing both of us to listen intently to what she had to say despite not understanding a dicky bird of what she said. Occasionally another lady would come on and shout irately at us accompanied by a loud siren. We always ignore her as we have yet to work out why she is angry at us or indeed, what her problem is.
Some new symbols popped up on the screen looking distinctly like fireworks which was a bit disconcerting as we really needed to concentrate on the road and didn't have time to go and watch a display. However, 5 minutes later there was a guy on the roadside waving a grand prix sized flag in front of a row of little red flares merrily smoking away. There'd been an accident and this was the warning to slow down - now why didn't we guess that straight away?
Once we got clear of Tokyo's confines the weather started to close in with sleet and some fairly major wind blowing across the road. The snow started in earnest when we began to climb and the queues of cars by the side of the road attaching snow chains was a little worrying, particularly as we didn't have any to attach. However the snow seemed no worse than at home and the roads were more clear of it - as the chains are only effective on compacted snow, did they know something we didn't? Not all the cars had them though so we plugged on - I can hear both our parents groaning at this stage!
The car journey progressed relatively stress free and we made it to Karuizawa despite the snow. Finding the hotel itself proved to be somewhat trickier as Miss Japan GPS was aiming us towards somewhere of her own devising. We think the angry lady was jealous and had sabotaged the trip. I, of course, then made the fatal error and touched the touch sensitive screen making things a whole lot worse, something the husband will not let me forget. However, after a bit of help from 3 very nice teenagers in a Dog Bakery (yes you read that correctly), we tracked down Cocomo hotel.
The snow was seriously enforcing it's will by this point and as we had dressed in a balmy Tokyo that morning, we grabbed our bags and hurried inside sharpish. We were welcomed with a sight I'm glad I didn't first see at night. A large display of freakish homemade metal sculptures that moved disjointed limbs when you least expect it. I gave them a wide berth and concentrated on pronouncing my hellos correctly to the owner.
A very obliging chap whose English was basic but still a damn sight better than our Japanese, showed us to our room (a proper bed and joy of joys, a chair) and talked us through the bathing rota. As the hotel was full, we could pick a 30 minute slot to use the bathroom on an evening - more on this later however. Now signed up, we dumped our stuff, donned our cold weather gear and headed off to find the local wildlife sanctuary.
Now we knew roughly where this place was i.e. in the next village along and near the local hot spring baths (called onsen), but the exact location was a mystery. After a nightmarish battle with people who had no right to be driving at all let alone in snow, we found ourselves being directed to a parking bay by a chap in a red flashing LED jacket and glow sticks. I was enjoying myself already and I hadn't even thrown a snowball!
The onsen was heaving with people intent on stripping off and having the last soak of 2009. At that moment, the last thing on my mind was removing anything bigger than my hat and it had nothing to do with modesty - pardon my French but, bloody hell was it cold! The birder in our midst was impervious to the cold as usual and only had eyes for the small research hut hidden in the trees. Not that I had a problem with this as it looked to have heating and possibly hot drinks.
As Mark discussed at length the whereabouts of pheasants and other small feathery creatures, I basked in the central heating and perused the items for sale. Coffee was indeed available from a small heated fridge-like device but my attention was diverted by a large TV screen on the wall. What I at first took to be an nest box full of fluff turned out to be a hibernating small furry creature (but not from Alpha Centuri unfortunately Dad). Going on the items available for sale rather than the indescipherable signs, I think it was either a flying squirrel, a sugar glider or a dormouse. Will be going back to the hut before we leave so I'll investigate some more - possibly the world's cutesy thing.
We'd forgotten that the hotel advertised French cuisine for dinner until we sat down at our table that night. What followed was a 6 course dinner using local produce and although I'm not sure I'd call it French, it was a veritable feast and included some bright scarlet fish eggs - from a local species but sadly we just couldn't catch its name. And for once we didn't have the worst cutlery control in the room. I think it was one kid's first time with a knife and fork and he handled them like he was tackling a ravening beast and I think the beast won!
And now we come to the wonders of the bath! Our allocated slot was due shortly after dinner - not the best time I know but it's a learning curve. Mark chickened out, so not knowing quite what to expect, I traipsed off on my own with the obligatory rolled up towel underarm. Would it be the full onsen experience, just a plain old bath or something inbetween? All I knew was that the door was lockable and it was all mine for 30 minutes.
On entering, I found there was a small room with a sink and a frosted glass door into the bathroom proper. I pushed the door open and was immediately engulfed in a huge fog of steam. On the other side was my very own bathing nirvana! For ease of description think shower area plus large hot tub all to myself. After washing with use of not only the shower but also the accompanying stool and washing up bowl (unavoidable as the shower is fixed at Japanese height i.e. knee level), I poked my toe into the bath.
Now I will freely admit that I like my bath hotter than is probably good for me but even I know my limits. From the information my toe was feeding back to my brain, this water was somewhere between hot jam and the surface of the sun. However, when in Rome as they say, so I gritted my teeth some more and climbed in. On returning to our room 10 minutes later, Mark commenting on the jolly rosy hue of my skin - I was impressed I still had some skin to go rosy! Tomorrow night, Mark will be joining me in this activity whether he likes it or not so we can compare skin tones - let's see if he can last more than my impressive 4 minutes!
The Japanese New Year TV was a mixture of girls in tartan, blokes in tubs of ice cubes and a host of Michael Jackson impressions. Oh, and they had shipped in Susan Boyle to sing that song of hers too. She seemed a little taken back by it all and responded to the question 'what is your first impression of Japan?' with a simple 'wow!'
Tomorrow (2nd Jan) we are going to visit the snow monkeys whether permitting and attempt to get on the webcam. Visit the webpage below and try clicking through the links on the left hand side in case we're on them - we'll obviously be the 2 stupid Europeans pulling faces!
www.jigokudani-yaenkoen.co.j/livecam/monkey/index.htm
Take care guys!
Lisa & Mark xxx
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BossLady
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Snow in the north!
We have snow too ;oP And hot water! And when did you become vegetarian?