Eating and Leaving

I forgot to take a picture of dinner, but I remembered to take the camera to snap these shots of our breakfast. Breakfast was at 8:00. Imagine waking up to this much food! As you can see things are served in separate dishes. Each person gets a serving of the same food on the same kind of dish. Little Brother's egg was cooked for him and served on a blue and white plate with lettuce. Ours was softly boiled and served in a soy and mirin sauce in a square bowl.

The selection of dishes (food and dishware) here is wide and varied. The food is seasonal. Some dishware has seasonal decorations. A green maple or bamboo leaf, morning glory, bellflower, sunflower, dragonfly, or watermelon (Little Brother's idea) are common decorations on dishware. As I look closely I can see that this dishware didn't have any special summer decorations.




As we were leaving our breakfast room, I asked the woman who had served us for a picture. In the picture of the whole breakfast table, you can see a bit of her kimono behind Little Brother and Big Sister. She sat on the floor on her knees and first served us rice (it is already on the table in the pictures) and then made tea for us. Here she is in the hallway about to put away futon in someone else's room. Imagine cleaning up while wearing a kimono! I have worn a kimono. It's not easy to walk in it much less bend!

When we went back to our room, our futon were already put away. Check out time was 10:00 so we had time to get ready to leave.

A Japanese Inn Stay

We stayed at this Japanese inn. I was surprised to see a big wooden sign near the entrance with our name listed with the names of the other guests.




These old containers were used to make sake. They were in an outdoor restaurant area outside the entrance of the inn.




A pond seen from the lobby.




This is a washitsu, a room that has tatami or grass mats. This room has nine mats. In Japan, room size is measured in mats. We had a suite of two rooms of tatami, a sitting area near a window, an entrance leading to our toilet's room, and a bath and shower that didn't work.

The inn was an onsen , an inn with a separate hot spring bath for women and for men. Most guests probably go downstairs to use the community showers and then bathe in the hot spring water instead of using the bath and shower in the room.

I have to add that we used to live in a much smaller space than this inn room. For seven years, we lived in an 8 mat room. It was the dining room, living room and bedroom for the four us.




Washitsu usually have a tokonoma or an alcove where decorations are displayed. The scroll is usually seasonal. This one is a summer view of Mt. Fuji.



Our beds were in the closet when we arrived. We moved to another washitsu downstairs to have our dinner. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of our dinner!





When we came back from dinner, our beds were made for us. They were all in the same room leaving the other room as a sitting area. The futon had no pads under them, but they were thick and comfortable.