Glorious onsen!

Betty and I had a wonderful splurge in the northern part of Honshu (the main island in Japan). She booked us at the "best onsen experience in Japan". We rode the train to Kinosake to a very small town to the Mikuniya ryokan. This included a gourmet dinner and breakfast, a massage and unlimited use of the 7 public onsens (public bathing pools) in town. When we arrived, our own private tutor instructed us on how to put on the cotton kimono-like dress called yukata and geta (the wooden sandals. We could then walk around town with just this on around town between the onsens. We had tea in our private room with tatami mats and a table (I'm NOT getting used to sitting on the floor! My knees just won' cooperate! I'm sitting at this computer on top of piles of pillows and trying to type!)  We then dressed in our yukata and geta and off we went to our first onsen. Okay, I'm not real comfortable walking around a bunch of strangers totally NAKED! But after the first one, who cares? You take only a little towel (that you store on your head) and first go to the sinks and soap down and rinse off. Then you go to the big pool and soak in really hot water! The first one they sent us to they said was the most beautiful, and it was. There was an outside portion with lovely rocks and waterfalls. We soaked for awhile and then dressed and headed to the next one, throwing only our yukata and geta on (not bothering with underwear!). We realized we didn't have time for another before our dinner would be served at 6:30. So back to our ryokan and our room.  Many dishes, with a lot of crab, both raw, grilled and boiled (at our table) were on the menu - crab being a specialty in this seaside town (it's near the Sea of Japan but it must have been over the hill as we didn' t see it). Next was our oil massage in the same ryokan. LOVELY but too short and didn't include a foot massage which I really missed! _Then back to our room  where our futon bed was laid out on the floor with comfy duvet coverlet. Betty opted to back to the ryokan's own onsen room that she had for herself. I was tired and went to bed. In the morning the onsens opened at 7 and we were at the door of another one. We took in 2 of them for about 1/2 hour each before our breakfast was served in a common room at 8:00. Can' say I am wild about Japanese breakfast and had fish breath in the morning until I found an ice cream cone to take it away! But it was an interesting experience, albeit an expensive one. We think we each paid about $300 for the whole one night experience.  It was interesting to see all the people, lots of couples, wandering around town in the evening and morning in their yukatas from the different ryokans. I did mention, I hope, that these pools were segregated - the men went in one area and the women in the other. All very healthful and relaxing! When we've seen so many Japanese businessmen in black suits (would like to have stock in THAT company!) rushing too and from work, they need to relax on the weekends or some time! When we mentioned them to some Japanese women who were practicing on us their tour guide English, she said the men had relaxed some - they even wear SHORT-SLEEVES sometimes now! Wow! ;) We wandered around this little canal town the next morning while waiting for our train back to Kyoto and on to Kanazawa where we are now. Must stop as Yu (one of the lovely hostesses here) is going to teach us how to make a Peace crane of origami that can then have a message written inside and then burned to send the messages up to the gods! These are like the peace cranes we saw in Hiroshima at the Peace Park memorial. More later!