A day told in pictures and captions :)

I took a picture of the onsen rules this morning

For your reading enjoyment

I love these onsen pictures!

The view out our hotel window

Castle Boat!!

View of the castle boat from our window (and Nakajima ~ the islands in the center of the lake)

Our Japanese-style hotel room - our cleaning lady came while we were still in the room. She cleaned around us and chatted as much as we all could. I asked her (since Tara and Abbey were deadset on hiking) about the size of the spiders. I used my hands to show the size and she freaked out when I moved to show the big ones. "Taratura!? Nooo!" I think my relief was QUITE evident. I also asked her to take the beer from our fridge so we could use it for food. And she just went ahead and pulled them out and set them to the side. (We had down that with some of them but I'll admit I was afraid we'd get busted for it!)

The other side of the room

View of the window and Tara

Our entryway and the closet where our futons are stored

the closet in the room

hahaha I'm immature. - We took a walk down in front of the lake to see what they had lakeside to do and see

panorama view of Touyako (Lake Touya) - the camera bowed the view.. but ya :)

Saxophone player statue that made me think of my siblings (who also played) - they had many statues. Most were naked women, lol

Selfie with the Sax player

I thought the spiral staircase was really cool - we wanted to take a tram ride up to the top of an active volcano and we also wanted to find out which hotel had the rooftop onsen (we wanted to watch the fireworks from the onsen)

We are "discussing" - lol three girls on their periods together makes for some cranky conversations - after crankiness, I said, "Let's just go in and ask at this hotel - the one in the background. I went up to the front desk and asked about the tram ride. He gave us a coupon (YAY!) and directions about which bus to take. Then Abbey went back and asked about the onsen. It was only open til 6 pm to non guests of the hotel.

Mount Shouwa-Shinzan (active volcano) - it popped up in 1944-1945 - we took these pictures right when we got off the bus. You can see that the volcano is actually smoking/steaming

carvings of Ainu people - this was one of the shops we visited ~ I have more pictures from this same shop later

Mt Usu (Usuzan) from the tram - we finally found the tram place and bought our tickets and got in line. :) I'm glad we had the coupon as it was expensive

Shouwa-Shinzan from the tram (to the right)

Touyako from the tram

Touyako

Shouwa-Shinzan

Me in the tram (selfie!)

View from Usuzan of Touyako - the view from the top was incredible ~ I feel so much like so many of the pictures I got don't do justice to the beautiful scenery. The human eye is a marvelous thing. I hope that you get some idea of the breathtaking views we had.

View of the cities

View of Shouwa-Shinzan from Usuzan

panorama picture that squished Tara's face, lol - also my hand isn't steady!

Sign - the last kanji on the top row is "mountain" and the first two on the second row are "fire" and "mouth"

Me and the lake

Us and the lake

me squishing Mt Shouwa-Shin

The information about the volcano

Tara and another sign

The Misty Mountains

another path up a neighboring peak

View of the ocean from that neighboring peak :D - I was DYING in the heat. This funny Japanese woman was walking around saying, "Atsui! Atsui!" Over and over. I agreed with her, "So, so, so!" She turned to the guy with her and said something that seemed to me to say, "See! She agrees!" Tara and Abbey went to take the steps down to the rim but I was too worn out and overheated. I spent my time running away in circle from insects. I finally gave up on them and went back to the little peak house (where the tram stopped)

the outer rim (of the volcano - yes that's escaping steam)

me and the smoke!

me and the ocean (hard to see, sorry - so me and some Japanese tourists!) While we were climbing the steps we chatted a little with this Japanese grandma and grandpa. He was huffing and puffing because of the steps and their granddaughter was running up them. :) They were very nice.

That guy in the tan suit is the grandfather - his granddaughter is next to him :) - those are the steps we climbed

closer view of the outer rim

zoomed out view of the outer rim

view of Shouwa-Shinzan and the way down from the tram - While I was waiting up top for the girls to come back, one of those GIANT wasps flew indoors. The staff were freaking out (if you get stung you are often hospitalized). I changed rooms then. I went back to the video room. (They had an info video with the audio in Japanese and subtitles in English. We had watched it when we first went up.)

This is the carver who does this INCREDIBLE work - there is one picture above and I got some more below

Here is a better picture of him - they have these little novelty dolls that repeat in a higher register the things you say (like a parrot). There was one penguin one on the table behind this guy and it kept repeating the sound of this tool but high pitched. It was cracking us up, and then it would replay our laughter in a higher key... man those dolls were fun. They had mice, penguins, and pandas.

More carvings of Ainu (this shop was HUGE)

Dragons and bears and owls

more dragons and owls

a small corner of the store - it was PACKED

This is a necklace in that shop. It made me think of Mononoke Himei. I REALLY wanted it but at the price of $32 :/ I passed.

Here is a view of some of the shops and that yellow sign was for the Usuzan Ropeway (the tram)

there were two large fields of sunflowers we saw on the bus up and back

another picture of them

In the evening, we went to another hotel's onsen (for 700 yen) since it had a view to the outdoors. We were hoping we could watch the fireworks from there, but there were trees in the way. In any case, I bonded with this Japanese lady and her adorable daughter. I found out she was also from Iwate. :) I asked where but I didn't know the place so I don't remember the name. :/ I taught her daughter to do a thumbs up though, lol. It was funny because she was very shy and didn't want to get into the bubbling tub until Tara and I got out of it. :) After the onsen, we came back to our hotel and Tara put on How to Train Your Dragon and that's the first time I've seen it. I missed some parts (as I couldn't hear it that well and I was working on posting these pictures - which with my snail internet took 6 hours!) but it was fairly good. I hope you all enjoyed my picture post! :D XOXO, A

Missing from the top:

Insect count: way too many! But luckily all outdoors and none in our hotel.

Top 5 blessings: 1) We got to see an active volcano. 2) We got to try an "outdoor" onsen. 3) I bonded with a Japanese woman IN Japanese. 4) We saw some incredible views today. 5) I got myself a souvenir that actually has a lot of meaning for me (it was pricey-ish, but I knew I would regret it if I walked away without it). :)