Day 12 - To Gero and Bread

This was our last full day in the Gero area. Wow, time flies. This time, Dennis was feeling better and he was ready to go somewhere new. As usual, Rocky was busy with his work, so we both decided to check out Gero city.

This city is actually called Gero Spa, and it is famous throughout Japan for onsens. They even have a mixed, outdoor onsen in the middle of town, where you can publically see naked people in a city. But we didn't go there.

Instead, we check out the information center and got some handy road maps. Then we walked around the shops and stopped inside a gallery where we made some postcards with water paint. I decided to make a postcard showing the waterfalls I had seen the day before in Osaka. Dennis made a postcard of the Maze area with trees, fishing in a river and the fishing center. We were very impressed by the many postcards on display. Here, we met a nice old lady who takes care of the place, and two young girls who came from Nagano for a short trip.

After the postcards, we visited the Gero City Hotel office. Here, we met some people who could speak English, and they shared with us much information about the area, good for future tourism business! On this shirt trip to Gero, the people were very nice to us, and we got a lot of cookies and snacks to enjoy for later.

After this nice afternoon, we went back to Hida-Hagiwara where Ikumi was selling her bread. This was a very social evening, and we got the chance to meet many local people and kids. I really enjoyed hanging out by their stall. It was comfortable and fun. We had many disussions with the locals and I played with the kids. We even met a couple of cute young women for a change, and it was nice to flirt. Dennis explained that he felt a little sick, and was treated to some kind of Japanese massage on the shoulders. He was puzzled, as she kept her hand on his upper back, that she continously gave off heat from her hands. I think Dennis was now cured!

The evening winded down, and we went back to Rocky's for our final sleep. Dennis and I shared with Rocky our plans for the Taiwan trip where we will compete with 51 other teams for the best itinery in Taiwan. We went to bed both happy and excited about everything, that neither of us could sleep and we ended talking for most of the night, while Rocky was sleeping like a rock.