I'm going to try and speed through a bunch more pictures this time, the better to catch everyone up to date with what I'm actually doing.

Still going to stay in the past for a little bit.

... inclined to make some sort of corny joke involving time but nothing is coming to me.

Ok!



That night, just walking outside and through the town. Really serene man made river cuts through the town, somewhat symbolically dividing our shabby (but still pleasant) hotel from a monstrous luxury hotel on the other shore. I believe Cilian said the other hotel cost three to four times what ours did for the cheapest rooms...



The next day we decided to go deeper into hot springs country, having already taken a skin removing hot spring dip earlier that morning (men and women were seperate, also no cameras allowed), so we got aboard a tram style thing that wound its way up the side of the mountain towards where the hot spring waters were harvested from.



Pictures don't quite adequetly capture it, but still a very cool sight. We're cruising along a sort of mountain tram trail at the moment, and every once in awhile we get to glimpse out off the side of the mountain.




Having transferred to a ... air ferry? Forget what they're called... um... on wires. Up high. Anyways, now that we're in that thing (you know), we get to cruise directly up above where the extremely hot sulfer laced water comes pouring out of man made holes in the ground. Normally it would probably be coming out anyways, but man is always there to speed mother nature along. I believe the channels were quite a bit dryer than usual, have no idea why however.






We actually get to land and walk among the hilltops where the sulfur naturally comes out. Supposedly this whole area used to be filled with very large trees until shifts in the land resulted in the creation of multiple hot springs. Some plants can still live here, but not forests.

Yeah, I'm looking a bit scruffy here. Without V around to remind me to shave I do it a little less than I should. haha... I'd say that by the time I come home I'll have a beard, but more likely than not if I didn't shave for the remaining 4 months it would stay at that same length.

This area smelled pretty heavily of sulfur and there were multiple warning signs saying not to stay too long lest you keel over from the multiple roaming clouds of poisonous gasses. However that didn't seem to deter the many japanese families that seemed to all have multiple thousand dollar cameras, energetic little kids, and the occasional elderly patriarch/matriarch.

Also there were black eggs (cooked in the hotsprings!) for sale *everywhere*. Supposedly eating one gave you seven more years on your life. I had one. Meh.

...

Tune in tomorrow for the next update! Somewhat similiar time! More than likely the exact same place!

バイバイ！(pronounced, bai bai. An informal way of saying goodbye. Guess the root!)