Day 7 - Welcome to Rocky's

The morning, it was raining a lot. It was still the raining season and we didn't get out of our camping site until the afternoon. This day was nice, because we are now in the mountains of Japan. With the windy roads and cool rivers, I was quickly impressed by the beauty. The rivers have a strange way of keeping a thick mist floating above it, giving off a cool breeze on the body as we were scooting on by.

Now Rocky is a Japanese ski instructor friend we met while in Hokkaido. We became good friends when we worked together in the winter. He asked us to visit, and I made a promise I would, it was nice to be able to come and keep the promise. The days that awaited us were not expected. Driving into the unknown is exciting for the soul.

He wanted us to meet him around 4pm, so we stopped in a small town and did our laundry. The day had be woken up with a lot of happiness. Our team, Above & Below had been accepted, along with another 51 other teams, to compete in a 4 day trip around Taiwan to promote tourism to the country. Our hearts were filled with joy at getting the opportunity to compete in the contest, as we are confident we can do a very professional traveling job. go to www.taiwanbesttrip.com for more details.

We finally made it to

a town called Higa-Hagawara just north of a famous town called Gero. Here, we met Rocky, his wife, and his parents-in-laws.

"Welcome to the real Japan," says Rocky. After some tea and food, we drove to his home where he lives with his wife, Ikuma. There house was nice with a garden.

There, we had some fantastic Japanese cooking, and drank some sake before going to our first onsen. An onsen is a Japanese word for hot springs and in Japan, they take it very seriously. In fact, I never tried an onsen because of the fact you must go naked and hang out with other men. I felt pretty uncomfortable with this and never tried for this reason, but since it was Rocky's chance to be host, I couldn't say no.
My impression of the onsen was definitely relaxing and cleaning. They had various baths with different temperature both inside and outside. I was wondering how nice the ladies one was since ours was amazing. For me, it felt a bit strange having Rocky showing us around while we were all completely naked. But that's the beauty of travel, having to do things you normally wouldn't. The next day was going to be a lot of fun, so we needed to have a decent sleep and the onsen helped for that!

Now, we are in Maze, the heart of the real Japan!