The onsen's been pretty lovely so far. I didn't mention last night but
we (I) made the mistake of leaving the room windows open for a few
hours last night and spent much of the start of the night shooing 
moths out. I slept well after that though, and woke early again. My
friend wouldn't be up for another 4 hours so I just wasted time where
I could. I went on a walk this morning while it was still misty rather
than the rain which came later (we've had a typhoon pass by,) and all
the things I've read about Japanese game devs running around the woods
catching bugs makes a lot more sense. There are ridiculous numbers of
dragonflies:
The first I spotted today        /japan/images/dfly1.jpg
And another        /japan/images/dfly2.jpg
And yet another        /japan/images/dfly3.jpg
I also got a good pic of a bee(?) or a fly        /japan/images/bee.jpg

Of course it wasn't just insects, there was some lovely flora as well
I spotted a nightshade, for example        /japan/images/nightshade.jpg
This clustered blue flower is common, also an ornamental in the US        /japan/images/blueflower.jpg
I thought this might be an iris but I don't know now.        /japan/images/iris.jpg
Send me an e-mail if you can identify it, I'm curious. tekk.tonic@aol
There was also the little stream running by here itself        /japan/images/stream.jpg
It felt strange being here, it feels so familiar geographically to
be walking in this area. A bunch of the plants and animals are 
different, but Japanese ornamentals are so common in the US that even
the plant life isn't *that* unfamiliar. I'm just bad with species.

Our host has been lovely. Last night we'd arranged to have her take us
to the local grocery store, which was a godsend since it'd be 
something like a 2 hour walk each way, longer when laden with dinner. 
One bizarre bit of fun was that we couldn't find rice in the grocery
store. We planned on making curry for dinner but they had no bags
smaller than 2kg, which is ridiculous when we're just here for a
couple of days. We settled on having our red curry over noodles and
made our way back to the car with lunch, dinner,
and a couple of drinks to keep us company.
I got a 1.5l of barley tea, I don't find it bad at all though it
wasn't what I expected. I thought it was a genmaicha situation where
it was going to be tea flavored with toasted barley, but it's actually
just barley soaked in water itself. It's definitely nice and
refreshing, just not what I'd thought. 

After we had some lunch I went upstairs and took a nap...it lasted 5
hours. Oops. I guess that catches me up on my sleep at least. We were
planning on walking to the convenience store in town but it was nearly
dark by the time that I woke up so we just immediately started on
dinner. The other person staying at the hotel offered to help pay for
some of the food  and so we all had red curry noodles and
soju. The avocados here aren't as good as in the US, but I suppose we
had to find *one* piece of produce which isn't just objectively better

Tomorrow the typhoon remnants should be gone leaving it just overcast,
the plan is to go into town for the convenience store and a local
attraction, and perhaps in the afternoon hiking to visit a crater lake
around here. For the evening we've settled in, talked about how
ridiculous shogi is, drank a bit, and now I'm here writing.

I'm considering a dip in the spring after writing this, that sounds
nice c:

Addendum (cheating, it's 00:17,) I just got out of the spring. It was
really relaxing, also odd in the moment how normal it is. It was just
a bath tub which had a hole in the side to let the water trickle in,
but it smelled of hot spring water and the mineralization was there,
so I just got in and relaxed. A fun part of the fact that it's
constantly flowing in which I hadn't thought of is that, you know,
the bath is absolutely full to the very edge. When you get in it has
this massive overflow the drain in the floor has to clear out, which
was its own fun.

Still a day left at the onsen and I'm already happy with the whole
experience.
.