Originally I had planned to meet up with a friend and take her biking on Saturday, but she contacted me and said her neck wasn’t feeling well. So I scrolled around looking for a hotel instead and found out that most places were fully booked or eye-wateringly expensive. I guess the autumn-leaf season is really getting started, so everybody is heading out! So instead I booked Shibahara Onsen Yanagiya Ryokan for Friday night, thinking to just explore around on Saturday and then head back to Tokyo. I grabbed a change of clothes and snuck out of work a bit early as it was just perfect weather for biking, and I had worked a LOT recently.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately luck was not with me – heavy and slow traffic everywhere. I did finally reach the start of the 299, and stopped for a coffee and an ice-cream at a little van just as the sun started to dip below the mountains. This is where I also discovered that I had left my phone at home.. that’s going to be a bit of a bugger! Luckily I had grabbed my work phone as I was planning to catch up on work a bit later this evening, so I’m not completely offline, but basically my hotel booking and general access to information is going to be a challenge.<\/p>\n
Refreshed, I headed off, but again was foiled by extremely slow traffic. The 299 is a gorgeous road, but with the heavy and slow traffic and solid yellow line, it is not really enjoyable on a bike. I did take a bit of a side-road, which was lovely, but damp and mossy, so the going was pretty slow. Back on the 299 just before Chichibu, and again, heavy traffic.<\/p>\n
Finally out in the gloaming dusk, and I got to the spot which I had marked on my GPS as being where my hotel was.. except it wasn’t..\u00a0 what followed was nearly an hour trying to find my hotel. At one point I stopped at a minshuku which I had stayed at previously, Guest House Nishiki, and the owner was very helpful. He even gave me a bag of snacks as I was getting back on the bike. Another couple of wrong stops, and I finally made it – nearly 2 hours later than originally planned!<\/p>\n
The lady was very helpful, and even gave me a half hour to freshen up before dinner, which was supposed to have been at 6pm.. so I had a quick shower and bath, and then went to find the dining room. I had understood that it was just the room next to mine, but it looked like just another guest room, so I didn’t want to barge in on anybody. While I was wandering about trying to find the room, the lady saw me and guided me back to the room – so I had understood correctly after all!<\/p>\n
Dinner was amazing.. a dozen or so different dishes, including several types of fish (first time trying koi sashimi!), rice with sweet-potatoe, boar hotpot, chawanmushi, soba, tempura, and to finish it all off, icecream with red-bean paste and mochi. \u3054\u3061\u305d\u3046\u3055\u307e\u3067\u3057\u305f\uff01<\/p>\n
Now to relax a bit, enjoy the outdoor onsen, and a good night’s sleep.,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Originally I had planned to meet up with a friend and take her biking on Saturday, but she contacted me and said her neck wasn’t feeling well. So I scrolled around looking for a hotel instead and found out that most places were fully booked or eye-wateringly expensive. I guess the autumn-leaf season is really getting started, so everybody is heading out! So instead I booked Shibahara Onsen Yanagiya Ryokan for Friday night, thinking to just explore around on Saturday and then head back to Tokyo. I grabbed a change of clothes and snuck out of work a bit early as it was just perfect weather for biking, and I had worked a LOT recently. Unfortunately luck was not with me – heavy and slow traffic everywhere. I did finally reach the start of the 299, and stopped for a coffee and an ice-cream at a little van just as the sun started to dip below the mountains. This is where I also discovered that I had left my phone at home.. that’s going to be a bit of a bugger! Luckily I had grabbed my work phone as I was planning to catch up on work a bit later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":961,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}