roads home through edo and otherwheres

The second day of Nikko, we woke up at 6:00 AM to beat the rush to the onsen and relax before breakfast. I don't really know but the modesty issue is so different from the way it is in America. There's more of a looser feel to the rigors of society here in places (ie. for onsens where people strip naked), but people in public frown on people showing too much skin or being loud on the train. In the States, it feels so different to see people dressed in barely anything and yak-yaking away on public transportation or spaces (I'm guilty of this too, so don't go about pointing fingers), but yet there's still this hush-hush tone when it comes to nakedness. Either way, the onsen was super relaxing for the morning, and we stayed in there for a good hour or so before breakfast.

The breakfast was served buffet style, and the best part was there was both Japanese traditional breakfast AND Western breakfast. We kind of made a beeline toward the Western breakfast since most of us hadn't had a proper Western breakfast since we've been in Japan. There was scrambled eggs, bacon (albeit not the crispy kind), sausauge (admittedly, hot dog style- not breakfast), fresh sunny-side up eggs, toast, croissants, danishes, etc. We kind of went crazy and it was all-you-can-eat... so I went back to the warm croissants and the shu-mai fairly often.



We got back on the bus after cleaning our stuff up and and headed toward Nikko Edo Wonderland, a themepark based on the Edo period of Japan. It was pretty interesting and had a bunch of live shows and stages, where people re-enacted scenes and whatnot. We had our fun with shooting bows and throwing shuriken :D. We had a small lunch but sooner than later, we had to leave. From there, we went to go pick up some souvenirs (omiyage) for friends at home (that is, Yokohama; it's too expensive to ship stuff back every time I go somewhere). I bought some stuff for folks and snagged a soft-serve cone, which tasted of milk rather than vanilla, which is sort of the standard for froyo in Japan. Still tasty!










The ride home was fairly uneventful, and I mostly passed out. We arrived back at YNU where the school festival was starting up. A bunch of the clubs hadn't set up or had called it an early night, but I picked up some yakitori from the Kendo club (it was super tasty and I forgot to take pictures of it)... After that, it was mostly just sitting back down in my room, unpacking, cleaning up some more and then crashing on my (not-so) lovely bed.