Missed a chance to blog about my New Year last weekend mainly due to a stomach bug.

Last weekend, the host family took us on an overnight trip to Nikkō, a city about 80 miles north of Tokyo. The city is situated in the mountains and brings in a lot of tourism for its many scenic waterfalls and trails.

Day 1 involved visiting the shrines and temples of Nikkō, which there are a lot of. Not only that, but they're some of the prettiest looking buildings you can visit in Japan. A lot of them are outfitted in gold and have intricate carvings of mythical creatures and gods built into the roofs and gateways. Most of these buildings also seemed to have been prime real estate of the Tokugawa Bakafu at one time, all bearing the same crest.

It started snowing on and off which made things even prettier. I am now a firm believer that snowy weather makes for the best shrine viewing conditions. Everything got dead quiet even with the tons of people visiting the area.

Before heading to our lodging for the night, Yoshimasa-san asked if Anh or I had ever had amazake (甘酒). We stopped in a souvenir shop/restaurant to have some. It's a sweet, low alcoholic drink that's made from rice and served heated. And it's perfect in cold weather.

The temperature in the valley near the train station was just around freezing, but a 40 minute bus ride up into the mountains took it down well below 0ºC. At this altitude there was snow on the ground everywhere. Our hotel was near lake Chūzenji which gave us a great view from our hotel window.

And then the day culminated in my first experience at a public bath, or group nakedness, or who-can-pass-out-first-chicken. I underestimated my American, non-sports playing tendency to be weirded out when being naked with strangers, so it took a moment to throw Americanness to the wind and suck it up before I dropped my clothes in the company of naked Japanese people I didn't know. The bath in Japan starts by washing your body clean andthen entering the bath which at a public bath or at an onsen is like entering a hot tub except much, much hotter. So there was about a 3 minute period of "Wow, this water feels great. I'm glad I'm not freezing anymore," before it became a matter of predicting when I would cook to death.

I had to be careful stepping out because I was very dizzy. The bath wasn't just warm, but extremely therapeutic, helping to relieve the day's tension. That is to say, anywhere I usually hold tension in my body felt like it had just been pulverized.

On a related note, this past weekend I had another public bath encounter, only there had been a good deal of sake involved beforehand which made the nakedness much easier, although it meant I had to be extra careful not to stay in the hot water for too long.
The next day on New Years Eve, we got to see a couple of worthwhile waterfalls before the train home. That night I was allowed to ring the huge bell at the local Buddhist temple to help ring in the New Year which was pretty cool. The next morning I woke up with a stomach bug and a fever that kept me in bed over the next couple of days. And now I'm in the last few weeks of my first semester here, with tests and essays still looming over my head.