An awesome weekend!

(Also- you should view this video at its Youtube page- a lot of the text and some of the pictures are cut out when it is displayed here. So just double click on the video and you should get to Youtube)

As a belated birthday present to myself (but really because I wanted to leave campus and explore), I used the money my Aunt generously gave me as a birthday present to go to Tazawako and see the lake with the same name, stay at a ryokan, and go to Kakunodate. I went on this trip with two friends Katrin (from Germany) and Megan (USA).

Lake Tazawako is the deepest lake in Japan, and I am sure it is pretty, but when we got there it started to pour rain! Not cool. So we basically stood at the beach for 10 minutes and then spent the next 40 waiting for the bus to take us up to the Ryokan we were to stay at for the night.

A Ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn- that means tatami floors, no chairs, raised beds, and slippers everywhere! It was super fun to stay at Tsuru no Yu (lit. Crane's hot water) because we went into about 5 different baths during our stay. Needless to say, we smelt pretty sulfur-y afterwords. However, the most magical thing about this trip was that it snowed! I got to enter an onsen (hot spring bath) while snow was falling. It was so wonderful!!!!!! While waiting for the bus to get us back to the bus stop we all went on a little exploration, and boy was it pretty!

We then went to Kakunodate, which is a town famous for all its old Samurai Houses... but since we went on a Sunday, a lot of the houses were closed (they are run by families who live in the houses). But it was still cool, I look forward to visiting it again in the Spring.