Shizuoka

I'm back from my third weekend getaway in a row! I went to Shizuoka prefecture to my old roommate's vacation condo. It was so relaxing! I didn't really know what to expect and was ready for more hard-core sight-seeing, but it ended up being a very relaxing weekend. The condo was in true Japanese style- small and furnitureless except for a table and a few chairs. We slept on foutons and mostly sat at the table or out on the small verandah. We spent a lot of time in the condo's onsen (bath/hot tub/hot springs) just relaxing. There was a massage room with all kinds of massage chairs- we also spent a lot of time there! We walked around town a bit on Saturday afternoon- Let me back up...On Friday night, we had to take about a 3 hour local train to get to Izu-Inatori. My roommate had checked the train schedule, but we ended up missing the last train, so we were stuck. It was not a fun situation to be in, and I never want to miss the last train again! We needed to take a taxi, which was going to be super super expensive (thankfully we could get about 20 minutes from the condo). Another traveler was stuck too, so we shared a taxi with him (and his little dog- who was exiled to the trunk of the taxi, much to my disbelief!) and he was super nice and paid for most of the taxi. My roommate was certain that he was some kind of secretly rich man... maybe just really nice! So, everything worked out and we finally made it to the condo at about 12:30pm. Back to Saturday- we walked to a winery that makes mikan (small oranges) wine and saw some beautiful sakura (cherry blossoms) in bloom. It was pretty cloudy so we couldn't see the ocean too well, but it was still a beautiful view. The rest of the time we just vegged, pulled out an old nintendo, made curry (I almost sliced off the tip of my finger! It was gross!), and watched "Lord of the Rings" dubbed in Japanese. My friend from school, Nancy (she is studying Japanese in Tokyo) and I had a fun time explaining the whole "Lord of the Rings" series to my roommate, who had never seen any of the movies before. (Nancy and I are both big fans!) On Sunday the power went out about 30 minutes before we left, which was another adventure in itself. We took the "Resort" train back, but since it was raining pretty hard, we couldn't see much of the ocean. It took me over 6 hours (4 train changes) to get back to Tateyama. Thankfully, I was with Nancy and Junko (my old roommate) for half, and then I met a really friendly Canadian, his wife, and his adorable half-Japanese baby on the train, so I had lots of good conversation while I slowly made my way home!