Onsen Outing

Last Thursday, March 4, we went to an onsen, which is a hot spring/spa that the Japanese absolutely love. It was in Hakone, which is roughly about 2 hours by train from where we live. Even if until now we don't have our allowance yet, we just went on that trip because it had been planned beforehand. It was organized by the Ferris Foreign Students Society so when we told them about our problem, they told us that we could pay the 4,000 yen for the hotel and food (which is pretty good actually) later, when we got our allowance.

We stayed overnight at a nice hotel, and got to use the onsen. Here are pictures of us using the ashi-onsen, which is for the feet only. Of course, everybody's naked in the main onsen so I couldn't take a picture of that! LOL. (Males and females have separate areas, of course!)

The onsen was pretty cool, with bubbles and stuff, but you know me, I'd rather have a pool or a beach over an onsen or a bath any day!

The next day we went to this place with wood thingies. I forgot how they call that in Japanese, but since it's like the "specialty" of Hakone, we went there. They have all these stuff which are solely made of wood with different colors. They also had this museum which had artifacts that dated back to the Edo period. Tables, paintings, dressers--all were amazing! And since I really like wood stuff, I totally enjoyed it there! Then we made coasters out of different bits of wood. They had designs ready, and we just had to glue the pieces of wood together. It was fun!