Today left Tokyo and started our way to Kyoto. We took a bus to a hot spring hotel, spent the night, and are taking a bullet train to Kyoto tomorrow. Because of this I didn’t have my laptop. In the morning I packed an overnight bag for the hot springs and decided not to take my laptop with me because I didn’t feel like lugging it around for 2 days. Because of that I’m writing this a day later and will probably forget some stuff and this will probably be short.
After breakfast we got on the bus and headed towards the hot spring but we made a few stops a long the way. First stop was to see the life size model of Unicorn Gundam. As if he knew where I was, Scott messaged me about robot toys at that point. Unfortunately the merch shop didn’t open until 10:30am and we were there at 9:30. After the Gundam we went to see the Statue of Liberty and Rainbow Bridge. I have now been to two Statues of Liberty.
Next we went to see the Bronze Buddha in Kamakura. For a small fee you can enter the Buddha and receive his divine blessing.
Dinner was a traditional style Japanese meal. Tempura, hot pot, rice, miso soup, fish, raw blowfish. I don’t eat fish, so luckily the hot pot was pork but the tempura was shrimp. After dinner we had the option to do karaoke but I skipped that in favor of the bath.
Years ago my friend did a tattoo apprenticeship and offered to do a tattoo for me for cheap as practice but I never got a tattoo. In Japan you can’t use the public baths if you have a tattoo because you’re seen negatively due to tattoos having yakuza implications. So since I never got the tattoo I was able to use the public bath. It wasn’t an actual hot spring that we stayed at, the bath was on the 6th floor and it was more like a pool that had hot water pumped into it. When you use a public bath you need to be 100% naked which is why I opted to use it while everyone else was doing karaoke so at most it was me and 2 older Japanese men in the bath.
After the bath, back in my room I was so tired I passed out in preparation for another day of travel.
Today’s candy is Galbo Choco. They are chocolate coated chocolate biscuits with a chocolate filling. They’re not bad but a bit to chocolate redundant for me. They have other flavors and I kinda wish I’d tried something other then chocolate.
