Today was another day of sitting. Sitting on the shinkansen, sitting on a bus, and finally getting to Kurosawa Onsen.

I made it to Kurosawa Onsen and the place I’m staying didn’t send a van to pick up my baggage. Everyone else was wandering around until the “set Japanese onsen opening time” of 3PM and I was the only clown wheeling around his suitcase. That didn’t stop me from eating some nice Japanese treats.

I also had a cream puff because the place was so highly rated on tripadvisor.

Turns out the place I’m staying isn’t even in Kurosawa Onsen, but somewhere nearby in Oguni. They have two men’s baths (one exposed to the outside), one women’s bath, and three separate “family baths” where you lock the door and you don’t have to expose yourself to the masses. It’s quite different than any other onsen I’ve been to in the past, and the dinner, while quite tasty, wasn’t the festival of gluttony I usually experience. The portions were small and that’s probably for the best.

In any case, my jet lag is getting to me again. I wasn’t able to sleep much past 4AM (started reading a book at 4:30AM) and now I’m trying to keep my eyes open. And now I see I forgot to take a picture of the raw horse meat, the specialty of the area!

I have a couple of crazy travel days (not counting the ones where I travel between countries) and this is one of them. Look at how I started the day off. I had to cross this THREE TIMES, once to get to the shinkansen way too early and twice to go and return from the Starbucks.

I’m visiting my cousin to see the new grandkid (my third cousin twice removed?) and to see my aunt.

My aunt has lost her sight but fortunately she hears just fine. My mom can see OK but she can’t hear much. Weird how that works.

My cousin’s place is not that far from a shinkansen stop but it’s one of the little-used stops. Since the rail pass I got limits the kind of shinkansen I can ride, the scheduled stops are less than ideal. I had an OK trip from Shinagawa to Shin-Osaka, but from there I was on a train that stops at every station. Not only that but I only had six minutes to change trains.

I got to the second train (without much spare time) but I was counting on getting a passable bento from someone selling them on the train. As soon as we left Shin-Osaka, they announced no “wagon” service (nobody selling food from a cart going up and down the aisles.) Looking carefully at the train diagram, I also found out that there were no vending machines on the train! I asked the conductor if there was a good stop to buy a bento. Nishi-Akashi had a six-minute stop but no bento stand. The only chance I had was a three minute stop in Himeji. I made it!

I got to my cousin’s without much more trouble but I found that I’m using 300MB of data per day on my phone. That’s going to cost me.