Pasteurized

26 October 2019

Not up until 7:50 am. Went down for a bath and then off to breakfast. This time they had a cheese omelet station. The eggs were perfect and for sure not overcooked. The eggs in Japan are more yellow and all eggs are pasteurized which means they are well washed and then heated to 136 F, which does not cook them at all. It makes raw egg eating safer.

We headed a few blocks away to the Morioka castle ruins park. There was also an agricultural festival going on. We toured around beautiful castle grounds and on nearing the end of the walk taiko drumming started in the distance. It was amazing so we headed to the festival area to watch. There were 3 drummers, one of which had been doing it for 30 years. Once the show was done we headed over to Sakurayama shrine to get Jennifer her first temple book signing this trip. There was a five year old boy getting pictures all dressed up as it was a special birthday day at the temple for 3,5,7 year olds (shichigosan ceremony).

Since we did not have far to go (128km) we started on local roads, which the gps said would take over 4 hours. The first thing we found was a hot springs resort in a place called Hanamaki. There was first a gigantic resort hotel so we drove by to find a one lane road with numerous abandoned resorts and many older buildings. We found one place that there were people carrying small straw baskets with their onsen supplies. We stopped and went in and it was all honor system. You put money in a machine for your onsen pass. There were just cubby holes for your belongings. We could not find a towel and some nice people called out for someone hidden in a far away room to help us and we both got towels. This was a small onsen with one smaller tub which would fit about 4 people comfortably. It was HOT. It was between 42-43 C so now we were pasteurized. The view out the window was fall up a steep hill, which was breath taking.

On the road again we saw a Temple area with a shiny gate. We stopped and found an eight building Buddhist temple grounds. It was very quiet and peaceful and we did not see one person. It was one of the nicer temples we have seen as the garden was amazing.

Back on the road we stopped quickly at a large dollar store for some supplies. we stopped at a convenience store for a snack and met someone that had stayed in Maple ridge and knew where the Yukon was. She was surprised that we had friends in Maple ridge and shook Jennifer’s hand because she was so excited. It was getting dark so we jumped onto the expressway and decreased the remaining travel by about 1 hour. It did not hurt that there were a few tunnels and it seems like there is no speed limit in the tunnels as people seem to speed up drastically while in them. It is almost like they are the autobahn.  We saw for motorhomes over the day which is odd as we usually never see motorhomes here. The motorhomes are quite small here but still big for the roads here. 

Once we were settled at our hotsprings hotel in Tome we revisited the restaurant that we went to on the way North. It did not disappoint as the food was fantastic. As you can see by the pictures the presentation was amazing. Jennifer had a lemon sour and I had pop and our bill was $48. Back to the hotel for a soak and off to sleep.