Day 8 Tatsuki Onsen

well.. even if we had no mood to attend any more events, we still had to bear with the last one. it was supposed to be a relaxing trip, finally! before we left the hotel, spotted the korean photogs.. whoooo. seems they came for the after party. hahah.

we started with a soba making session at sagami (the restaurant with the awesome shabu food). the japanese are really very dedicated... they even welcomed us in their ninja suit. they really make us feel like we're some important guests.

and here we go~ with taiwan on the same table

yvonne kneading the flour like a pro

and i got to cut the little noodles! looks pretty ok?

well, well, we ate what we made... and i realised the importance of soba being thin... thick soba is really not easy to eat... T_T

and we finished off with a cert in soba making! seems like i can open a soba shop now after i'm odne with my current job! (haha)

we departed for our onsen and stopped at 2 places along the way. love how they have a free drinks corner at the rest stop!!

and we arrived after a 2hrs+ ride.

check out our rooooom

sea view!

we were originally room mates with team philipines but they were ok to change room so we could stay with team taiwan and natalia. so nice of them!! yayyyy. would have been uncomfortable to sleep with strangers on the last day... so thank goodness. after rolling around a little, time for a super long awaited dinner. we changed into our yukatas and went down for the grand feast.

look at the scale.....

such a grand feast. almost feels like harry potter japanese style.

started the night with a loooong photo taking session. yup that's so many of us...

with lovely momo, our best omotenashi ever~

grand toast before we begin?

feast on our own table! and all of us have a bottle of beer to share.

 the food is AWESOMEEEE. they were really saving the best for last. there's a lobster too on the top left! and sashimi, tempura, etc. whoaaaaa. da beautiful feast

itadakimasu!!

some add-ons as we ate along. those clams!

dessert. not sure what is this. yam like thingy.

and of cos the night wouldn't end without some karaoke...

even the omotenashis put up a performance for us - here comes momo!

and more photossss

apple 'dustbin' for our flags

and more presents... from wcs and from momo. the lovely starbucks cup and pouch!

we went for onsen afterwards and it turns out almost all the caucasian cosplayers were there. it was pretty funny because from where we were there was a balcony where we could see the guys bath just below us. and of cos, so could they if we stood naked at the balcony... lol. the spa was awesome cos the soap and stuff used inside were pretty good brands and we felt the wash was comfortable & refreshing afterwards. wheeeee.

after that we stayed up to talk a little and it seems there were some cross dressing activities going on at the omotenashi's room...

got to sleep around 1+, and we had to wake up in the next 4 hours. ughh...

and it was byebye tatsuki...

then byebye nagoya...

our luggage, by the way with all the extra 5 boxes  & the bag of poles were just a total of 30kg each for me and yvonne. just nice!

transit in taoyuan before heading to singapore. and guess who we saw?

final reunion and it was singapore again... and end of wcs!

the next day, we packed and got ready for nikko!
we bought this nikko-kinugawa pass for about 4400yen, which includes all the bus trips in nikko and is valid for 4 days. the traveling time was about 2hours plus from asakusa.
\

we almost got to the wrong place had a nice obaasan not told us to change to the first 2 cabins (which actually will detach from the train and go in a different direction). phew! i love japanese.

on the bus

this is where we stopped for our ryokan

our ryokan was quite hard to find, but it was well worth the search. we kept seeing this turtle inn but didn't know that fu-sha was just near it, only that it has a very small signboard so it was easy to miss.


when we reached there it seems that we have the entire house to ourselves! for about 5000+ yen per person, it was certainly a good deal. the house was fully equipped with a nice entrance

washing machine,
nice futons

a big bathing room and toilet



small kitchen
and my sister was impressed with the toilet buttons

yukatas
kotatsu (that's the owner of the house, yoshiko by the way)

shower stuff
etc etc. lovely!

since we spent more than half a day reaching nikko and settling down, we decided to go for a nice onsen. yoshiko was nice enough to drive us over! my first onsen by the way. my sister and denzyl had already experienced the trauma of public bath when they stayed at kita urawa for the first 2 days.

ok, no pictures of the bath of course. although shocking, the after-effect was still great :D me and sis relaxed in the 'dining room' while waiting for denzyl.

and it seems that we shouldn't have waited there cos he waited right outside the shower room instead. we missed the bus and decided to walk out, and passed by a little bridge.


but it seemed that we walked the wrong direction, so we walked back all the way and headed in the other direction. it was a really rock-ety and narrow road, and i think we walked for very long before we saw this landmark, the dainichibashi (or 大日橋）and took some jumping photos there.




i'd love to include the jumping video i made for my sister but i can't convert it to a gif image. and i think she'll kill me.

then we headed past the bridge and realised the convenience store we wanted to go to was located on top of the hill above us, and we saw no route leading to it. tried to ask around, and this ojisan offered to drive us there! i love japanese! (did i just say that?)

so we bought stuff and finally headed back to our lovely ryokan to cook dinner. (and change into our yukatas!!) and we snacked along the way cos we were too hungry. it drizzled for a bit while we were walking home too. yikes.



and homeeee



trying to self-shoot our cozy dinner

as you can see, we aren't fantastic cooks but the results were still not bad. at least we had out fill. then it was time to work to set our kyoto-osaka plan into action before going to sleep.

so good night~