Monday, September 16, 2013

One day in Yamanashi Prefecture

During a weekend my host family brought me to the Yamanashi Prefecture which is about an hour away from Kanagawa to see the mountains and hot springs.
The area is known for the famous Japanese daimyo Takeda Shingen (some of you might know him from the Sengoku series games) for it was once the Kai Province during Sengoku era. They have a lot of places that call for their popular Sengoku hero such as museums, drawings and even Yamanashi limited Hello Kitty characters.



It wasn't a very clear day when we went there but it was just the right temperature for going into the hot springs. Yamanashi has many mountains and they are not the once I'm used to in Canada. They seem to have more big, dangerous looking rocks! 
The most famous food in this area is white peaches, "Kyohou" grapes and a kind of flat and long noodles called "Houtou". They are all very good. I had Kyohou ice cream at a store claiming that it has the "2nd best tasting ice cream in the world". It was good... But the price wasn't!



We stopped at a waterfall afterwards. In order to see the fall, you have to go down some stairs and there will be a big main fall and some small ones around it. 





The entrance to the falls are marked by a stone torii. 

Finally, we went to the hot springs (known as Onsen in Japan). It was a very relaxing place with a certain crowd of people there. Cameras and phones were not allowed in the actual springs because everybody is naked taking a shower before getting into the Onsen or already in the Onsen. It might be a strange concept for some but the Japanese women who were in it didn't seem to care. So by the end of 5 minutes, I just relaxed and enjoyed the healing hot spring. 

The entrance of the Onsen.


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