November 14, 2025 Breakfast at hotel Lunch at Unagi restaurant. Dinner at Hotel

November 14, 2025 Breakfast at hotel Lunch at Unagi restaurant. Dinner at Hotel

I got up at 3:30 and I finished my blog. Then at 5:30 Suzette and I went to a private bathing room on the first floor.

At 7:00 we went to the dining room for breakfast. I ate a bowl of rice with lots of pickles and clams.  We each ate an egg. Mine was in a bowl of miso soup. I also ate grilled mackerel and delicious fish cake rounds.

Here are some photos of the vast array of breakfast options:

Here is a picture of us at breakfast taken by Our fellow tour member, Kitty.

We have a traditional Japanese style room with a sofa placed in front of a lovely silk painting of wild chrysanthemum flowers.

                                       Tea and cookie in our room

The group met at 10:00 to go to the outside hot springs out of town up the river., a 45 minute walk.

Kaz ordered a coach to drive me and Sue and Larry so we would not need to walk.

The hot springs was the best I have ever seen, next to the river dominated by a series of small water falls and brilliant fall foliage. It was a unique experience to be lying in the hot springs with beautiful red Japanese maple  leaves falling on the water beside one.

Here are some pictures.

Here is a painting of the bath house that hung in the main building of the bath house.

Suzette joined us in the van for the return trip. Sue and Larry asked the driver to drop us at a fancy French pastry shop that filled cream puffs with fresh cream. We bought a cream puff and a glazed creme caramel topped with a chestnut but we later left them at the second bath house.

It was 1:00 when we walked 300 feet to an unagi restaurant and ordered a combination with a bowl of unagi with rice with pickles and two containers of broth and a cup of steamed custard with a shrimp, a cube of fish, and 1/2 of a shiitake mushroom. Suzette ordered beer and I got a weird barley drink.

The unagi was fabulous and the steamed Custard was amazing.

After lunch we went to boathouse No. 17 that was an old wooden structure with a beautiful ramp to the hot springs. We were the only ones soaking, so we talked across the wall that separated the Women’s from the Men’s pool and Suzette came in to the men’s dressing room to help me get dressed.

At around 3:00 we returned to the hotel and rested until 4:00 when Deborah gave an introduction to sake. We discovered that Deborah owns a sake import business based in Santa Fe that distributes to a distributor that Suzette uses for her bistro restaurant, so we have easy access to all of Deborah’s imported sakes.

After we tasted five sakes we went back to our room until 6:30 when we went to dinner.

Tonight we tried the sweet curry with rice and a couple of pieces of baked pork belly. We liked it very much. It had a slightly spicy flavor and a definite curry flavor. Then Suzette ate several grilled mackerel and I took an assortment of sushi and sashimi, including salmon, squid, blue fin tuna, omelet, mackerel, and bonito. Only the squid was impossible to chew.

We drank beer with dinner and Robin joined us for dinner.

After dinner we tried the yuzo and a peach like liquor and talked until 8:00 when we returned to our room and were in bed by 9:00.

Bon Appetit