Ohnuma Park

So I finally got around to processing the pictures I took at Ohnuma Park. (Ohnuma park was the place where I had to sing the froofy boy band song… yep, now you know what I’m talking about). It was really gorgeous, and the weather was great too. My friends and I rented bikes and rode around the lake a bit.

I took lots of pictures of the scenery too. There were islands in the lake connected by bridges so you could walk around on them.

This one goes out to the train enthusiast in my life. He knows who he is. This is a Japan Railways train headed for the JR station in Ohnuma. It's not a bullet train, but I'll be able to check those out first-hand on my trip back to Tokyo in August.


That mountain you can see in the background of some of the pictures is a now dormant volcano. Not only does it look cool, it also means that there’s hot springs! Yay! The hotel we stayed in had an onsen (public bath) fed with jacuzzi-hot water from the hot springs. I got to try those out Sunday morning. It was pretty cool because the onsen are set up with separate girls’ sides and guys’ sides. You go in, change from your clothes into your birthday suit (yup, your birthday suit, not your bathing suit), take a shower, and then are free to go enjoy the onsen. The hotel had an outdoor onsen as well, which was really nice. Inside, they had Jacuzzi-type onsen too with all the jets and bubbles and whatnot. No actual pictures of this one, but this is from Google and looks a bit like the hotel onsen.

We also got a huge dinner on Saturday night. There were so many dishes!

All the dishes

People taking pictures of all the dishes

On the left is a cooking bowl with a burner under it. This was for sukiyaki. You put all the ingredients you want in the broth, put a beaten egg on top, and then let it cook. Once you’re happy with it, you just extinguish the burner and eat it. (Well, there’s a little more time in between those two actions than that sentence implies, unless you want your taste buds lightly seared too).

There was sashimi (cuts of raw fish), tempura (lightly battered and fried fish and vegetables), cooked fish, meat with ikura (fish eggs) on top, and veggies with these sort of crab-veggie cakes. It was a lot of seafood, so my dojo compadre with a severe seafood allergy would have died (again, he knows who he is--and so does everybody else in the dojo), but it was delicious. :)

Oh, and there was rice too, of course. It’s pretty much a staple with any Japanese type meal.

I should note that not everything I eat over here is fish and rice. I get a lot of western-type food too, though often at surprising times. (I’ve had an omelet at dinner and a hot dog at breakfast.) (My just-woken-up brain had difficulty wrapping around the concept of a hot dog for breakfast that morning). It all still tastes good though. :)