Today is an exciting day, Jon and myself are going up to Tazawako! Tazawako is up in Akita Ken … which is a prefecture north of Tokyo. To get there, we are on a … get this … bullet train! It’s really cool! As I’m writing this, I am sitting in a chair that resembles an airline seat, but a bit more roomy. They also have a cart that goes down the isle where you can buy some snacks and things. We got a small thing of Pringles, chocolate covered almonds, bottled water (me), and a small cup of hot coffee (Jon). Well, we also got something else, but they’re for Mom, Dad and Bekah (my little sis) … as well as for us, but I can’t say what it is since it’s a surprise :p
The scenery is really interesting, it started out all busy with skyscrapers, homes, more buildings, etc. as we were in Tokyo, the further we got, less and less big buildings, with more and more small rice field plots here and there. Right at this instant, we are going through a tunnel which looked like the opening was through a mountain. We are in the more mountainous region now but I think we still have *checks watch* about an hour and a half left. It takes 3 hours to get to Tazawako from Tokyo station on the bullet train.
In case anyone is interested, we’re taking the Akita Line up to Tazawako station on the Komachi #17 train
I still find it amazing that I can read menus and understand some of what is being said to me, it’s really cool ^_^ The train itself is extremely smooth, like on a boat almost cause it rocks back and forth slightly. Oh, looks like we’re stopping at another station, we only stopped in 2 previously (Oedo station in Tokyo and another one about 10 minutes out). Didn’t catch the name because the English announcement is a lot softer than the Japanese announcements. My ears are popping, yeah, you can tell we’re in a higher elevation than Tokyo. Looking out the window, the buildings look older than the buildings past Oedo. There are still high rise apartments here though, they seem to be everywhere. I keep wanting to see inside of them :p Yup we’re pulling into another station, there’s another bullet train at the platform just next to us. I’m a bit nervous going up to Tazawako because it is a smaller station and usually smaller stations don’t have any English.
Oh and it’s kind of loud and less smooth while in the bathroom on the train x.x
With that, I’ll write more later.
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So, Tazawako was Awesome! Granted, we didn’t leave our room for anything but food and hot springs, it was still pretty neat.
Once our train got to the station, we went to try and get a taxi to take us up to the Ryokan hotel, since, that’s what the instructions from the website said to do. Well, it was rather cold when we got up there and all the taxi cab drivers were taking a nap in their warm cars! Lol, so we went back inside the station and asked how to get there. The lady at the desk knew our hotel (we showed her the Kanji address) and said that there was a pickup service available! That was sweet because that allowed us to save money ^_^
Once the driver finally got to the station, we both got inside and held on tight. The Japanese drive on the left side of the road and their cars are, for the most part, tiny. More then that, our driver was a daredevil! We were taking winding roads at around 40mph going up a mountain, when it was raining.
We arrived in one piece!
Check in was interesting, turns out that there is only one guy in the hotel that speaks English and he was pretty good at it … we got the point of what he was saying anyways. He brought us to the room himself after check-in and pointed out how to do everything, including where our yukatas are and how to use the safe.
Our room was freaking huge, sadly, it was bigger than our apartment!
-insert video of room-
That night we ate a traditional Japanese meal and it was … well … interesting. First, we roamed the hotel the whole weekend in our Yukatas and slippers they provide, so we were always comfy 
Then, we went down to the 1st floor (we were on the 4th) and they led us through what looked like a little street in a town, to a room. There we took off our shoes on the stepping stone and went inside the paper door. Inside were a few tables for other guests at the hotel, including for us. It was traditional, sit on the ground, layout. I don’t eat beef so they gave me some sort of vegetable and egg thing (all cooked in a little pot in front of me that was over a small fire, the fire was lit as we sat down … much like a little tealight but without the wax). They tried explaining how to prepare the food but my Japanese wasn’t THAT good, so they brought the English speaking guy to tell me that I needed to pour the raw egg over the veggie thing and let it cook.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera to take any pictures, but I suppose not a huge loss because we didn’t really eat much (we felt bad) because a lot of it was raw seafood (crab, tuna, shrimp) and some we couldn’t identify. But they had this BEAUTIFUL Kimono that was white with cranes, and some greenery and splashes of orange as well as orange material on the inside. It was so beautiful, I really wish I had taken a picture of it.
After dinner, we didn’t really do much because Jon wasn’t feeling well, he kind of started to get sick so we went to bed kind of early.
