Izu

Matt and I got to enjoy some time away from the daily grind last week. We went to Izu-Atagawa for some well deserved R&R and stayed in a traditional Japanese Ryokan where we enjoyed living in Yukatas (bath robes) for two full days and bathing in a couple of private onsens (hot springs). We were the only gaijin in the building but managed to communicate with the usual art of hand gestures and pointing. The only two staff members who spoke English were the chef and hotel driver. We made a bit of a faux pas on the first day, one of the staff members caught us walking through the hotel lobby and ran up to the driver who was outside at the time. He came to let us know that we had our Yukatas on the wrong way, the front is supposed to cross left over right and we both had ours on right over left. Apparently right over left is a sign of death. I found out my cat Caesar died when I got home….hrm.

We didn’t do any site seeing which was such a refreshing change. We simply lounged around in our robes slept, tested some tasty and not so tasty traditional food...

and relaxed in a soothing onsen full of floating oranges...

Here's Matt at the train station getting a massage before boarding the train...


Our train ride home was quite funny. Our seats weren’t so good so we decided to go to the smoking car where there were plenty of available seats. A couple of stops down the line a few business men got on the train, looked at their tickets, looked at us, looked at their tickets and looked at us again. We told them we were in their seats and that we could move but they smiled, said “ok ok ok” and sat in the empty seats in front of us. Two stops later two more passengers boarded the train, they looked at their tickets, looked at the business men, looked back down at their tickets, and back at the business men again. We felt awful and once again told them we could move but instead they took the available seats in front of the business men. We felt quite bad about messing up the whole row but an elderly woman and her husband seated next to us motioned for us to stay where we were and not to worry. Next thing we knew it the woman was passing us little pots of vanilla ice cream and we graciously accepted. She was such a ray of sunshine. We gave her a little gift in exchange and she was beaming. Why can’t strangers do this kind of thing for each other more often?