Mountain map: onsens, ski-resorts, ropeways, mountain peaks, and misty streams.
I also found dragonflies.
I found an out-of-season ski lodge at the top of the mountain.
Feeling a little too clean, I decided to take a hike up into the mountains and work up a sweat. I sprinted most of the way down. I totally felt like some wild mountain creature, leaping from rock to rock through the mist. Though not a sanctioned bathing area, I took a dip in the ice cold mountain stream running along the foot of the path next to the ryokan, before heading in for dinner ^^
The outdoor pool is Kita Onsen's defining feature. It's pretty unique to have something like this, and a lot of the locals staying here said that this is what they had come for. An onsen generally just has small pools for bathing, no swimming allowed.
Interior of the shinto shrine, with mini-shrines and offerings.
Buddhist house shrine, in a rear hallway across from an interior stream of volcanic water. Right next to this there was a Shinto house shrine, behind which a pair or doors opened directly onto a precipitous stone stairway leading up behind the ryokan to an actual shrine building.
Tengu! Imagine soaking in the bath at 3am, staring at this. I hit my head on his chin once when I was getting out of the bath. The noise was really loud, but the other bathers were nice enough to pretended not to notice.
The ryokan emerges from the mist ..
'Kita Onsen'My travels to Kita onsen began in Osaka. First boarding an overnight bus to Tokyo, I left early the next morning on the Shinkansen to Nasushiobara, transferring to the local train to Kuroiso. I took a bus from there up into the foothills of Mt. Asahidake (not the one in Hokkaido), on the other side of Nikko National Forest from the Toshogu Nikko Shrine. Already out in the middle of nowhere, far from the dirt and heat of Osaka, I still had to make a two kilometer walk along the onsen's private road and then up a valley path to arrive at the Ryokan. While I was there, the area remained perpetually in cloud, the type of raining that forms spontaneously around you and can't be defended against with an umbrella. No matter, with the exception of a hike that I took on the second day, I spent my entire stay hoping from one steaming bath to another. The rain and the cold only heightened the pleasure of steam, volcanic waters, and pristine forest scenery. Ahhhh, Kita onsen was totally a dream .. I didn't want to take too many pictures inside of the building itself, it is a bathhouse, after all, though I did manage to snap a few of the giant Tengu (demon heads) that hang over one of the interior baths, and also of the house shrines. The building is very old, from the Meiji-period, rambling, baths hidden here and there in its rotating arms, silent, wooden, decomposing, and shadowy. You couldn't see the ceiling in the dining room, at any time of day. Ah, it was the perfect place to wander around for three days, in a yukata, soaking, drying, soaking, watching the waterfall, swimming in the outdoor hotspring pool under the trees, and eating delicious ryokan fare. By the end, my skin shined and sparkled it was so clean.
We also took a trip to Mt. Fear and the Gates of Hell, but that's a story for another blog.
Look at that manic gleam in my eye: I love slides.
.. and we rode on a really intense slide.
We ordered gobo tempura and soba bigger than a human head!
This is Beau, dressed up to go play Oboe at a wedding.
