Travel Blog: Yufuin Town / Onsen / Mission Impossible 2 (dubbed in Japanese)

Woke up in such a perfect scenic setting: on a futon in a tatami room surrounded by a bamboo garden. We headed over for breakfast at 9am. Again, like the night before, a feast lay before us; a little piece of Aji (mackerel) waiting to be grilled on a little coal grill, chawamushi (egg custard) tsukemono (pickled vegetables), japanese omelets, a salad, and miso soup. There were a few more dishes, but I can't remember all of them.. It was all very delicious and healthy.

We headed out to the town (Yufuin) with no plans other than to just wander around and scope out the scene. The surrounding area is really beautiful here with the mountains, yuzu trees, traditional houses (Japanese citrus fruit) and the Japanese maple trees. We saw a grocery store on the way and had to stop in since we both love the grocery stores here. We bought a little yogurt drink and headed towards the main street. The town is chalk full of cute little shops selling food specialties and crafts from the area. I'd say about 75% of the shops were food shops. Most of them sold "yuzu kosho", a delicious spicy paste made from crushed chills, yuzu zest and juice and Himalayan salt. We came across an amazing little homemade jam store that sold ume and yuzu jam. Seriously good stuff. We picked some up for you mom! We also found cool little vintage toy / candy shop that reminded me of the shops I stopped in pretty much everyday after school in Tokyo as a kid. We called them "Junk Stores" They had a bunch of old toys and 10 yen candy. Natsukashi ne! After checking out many of the little shops we were a little cute shopped out, so we took a path down a stream heading towards the famous Kinrinco lake. It was a lovely walk along a canal full of wild flowers. When we got to the famous lake we were a little disappointed: it looked more like an average pond you'd see in any park. There were a bunch of people taking pictures there. We didn't get it.

After stopping by a little cafe for a quick coffee, we walked back to the ryokan. We had a few hours to spare, so we decided to take advantage of chilling in the onsen. Nothing quite like the feeling when you get out. One of the perks about this place is the free beer and onsen hardboiled eggs you can eat and drink. They cook the eggs with the natural hot spring water and you can take all the beer you like. I never knew a good hardboiled egg could go so well with beer.

We got dressed in our traditional attire and headed over for dinner. This time it was "seafood nabe" (seafood hot pot). A basket with shrimp, crab, sea bream, cabbage, kinako mushrooms, and scallion to be cooked in a shoyu / dash broth along with an assortment of other miniature local dishes I am too lazy now to go into describing each one. Desert was perfect: a piece of mellon (the green one) and an orange. I've never had good mellon in the U.S. but Hilary swears that you can get it in East Hampton. If that's the case I'll be very happy.

We finished pretty early, so we decided to watch one of the DVD's from the front desk. Not much to choose from; we chose Mission Impossible 2. After spending about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to switch the TV to DVD we started the movie. To our surprise, Tom Cruise spoke perfect Japanese. We didn't feel like figuring out how to watch in English, so we just watched it in Japanese. Pretty terrible acting and plot line so it didn't really matter. It was quite entertaining nonetheless.