Nasu, Pt. 1

Greetings all. Last week Akemi and I travelled to Nasu, a town in Tochigi Prefecture a couple hundred miles north of here. Nasu is primarily all countryside, with scattered farms and even a vast protected wildlife preserve owned by the royal family. The main attraction is hiking, enjoying nature, and a handful of cheesy, tourist-trap museums (think central Florida). Unfortunately, we're in the middle of Japan's rainy season, so hiking up into the hills was a no-go as everything was muddy and visibility sucked. Akemi's dad even slipped and broke his arm while attempting to find a good vantage point to paint from earlier on the day we arrived. Our adventure on our first day there was limited to a bus ride around Nasu, with a crusty, disgruntled bus driver sporting a perfectly-coiffed pompadour, with a stop at The Cheese Garden, where they sell, well....cheese. Following that we enjoyed some time at a very relaxing onsen (natural hot water bath). Dinner at Tokyu Harvest, next to my inlaws' rental cottage, was superb. It was buffet-style (can you believe that, in Japan?), but it wasn't your typical Shoney's grease-fest! It was all incredible Japanese cuisine. I'll split this post into multiple entries, as I have a lot of pics from the trip.



This is the shinkansen (bullet train) we took from Tokyo Station to Nasu.