Private onsen and dinner

After a long hard day watching monkeys in the hot tub it was time for this group of primates to wash off the day's grime in our hot tub. Or rather, we thought we'd give one of the ryokan's other onsens a go. They have a couple of these onsens in the hotel available for all the guests. Guest without private onsens on their balconies I suppose. We do have a private onsen but we still wanted to sample what else was a available. We chose Gessen. It is indoors but it has a couple of big screen doors that can be opened to the outside. We thought it would be better to take the opportunity to have an indoor bath. No cold wind blowing up your... back. Gessen was a beautiful large stone bath. Very hot water which did need some cooling down. When you sit in the water for few minutes you notice that the lower half of your body is bright red and the top half normal skin colour. Michelle was only half way through her pregnancy and we worried the little fella she was carrying would be cooked early if we didn't cool down the water just a little.

Georgia had a ball splashing around in another big bath. She has taken to all the different onsens like a monkey to a rotenburo.

Family fun time in the tub

After the bath there was nothing to do but go to dinner. Don't you just love being holidays? Seriously, I could get used to this lifestyle. Dinner was again in the private dining room downstairs. Another feast. Similar to the night before, multiple courses, yet quite different. There is no danger of you getting the same meal two days in a row. It would be interesting, and very bloody expensive, to stay here a week and see how many days go by before you get the same menu again.

Snow Monkey sake

Steak

 
The futon fairies had been in our room  while we were out stuffing our faces. So the beds were made up and ready for us to crash into. Firstly though, Georgia had to finish watching a weird little show on TV about bananas. Then she went to bed in her porta-a-cot. I don't think I've mentioned the Phil & Ted's  travel cot yet, but even if I have it is worth mentioning again. It is an extremely light, 3kg, portable cot. It is designed for camping but can be used anywhere. At 3 kgs it adds almost nothing to your baggage limit when flying and it folds up very compactly. It is a bit of a bitch to put together, it is like putting up a tent, but once you get the hang of it you can get together in a couple of minutes.
 
After a hard day's monkeying around, and soaking in hot tubs, and stuffing ourselves silly at dinner there's only one thing left to do. Yeah, that's right. Take a bath in our private hot tub on the balcony. It was snowing lightly tonight so there couldn't be a better place to finish our last night at Kokuya than in our onsen.