More pictures today because, I dunno. This was a full day in Yuda Onsen, which really is right next to Yamaguchi City, the Prefectural capital of my ancestral home. Ancestral home. That sounds so regal when my family were probably dirt farmers. Mud farmers is more likely since that’s how rice grows.

I slept pretty well considering I woke up 3 times very early in the night. Unfortunately the alarm went off when I was in a deep sleep, or was I since I remember a weird dream about being in the Intel parking lot and a co-worker had a Ferrari instead of his ancient Civic, and a Hispanic dude was giving me a bicycle he’d welded together from odd parts. TMI, I guess. Either way I got a very slow start.

Breakfast was at the hotel, buffet style. I got a little of a lot of things. Not a little of everything since there were too many things.

That reminds me, I don’t remember seeing any natto.

We walked an hour to Rurikoji Temple which has one of the “three famous pagodas of Japan” according to one sign I saw. I was looking forward to seeing it. The temple had the main doors closed so we didn’t see much. I’m visiting temples less and less. They’re stately and calming but they remind me of funerals and my impending demise. Lately I like to stick to shrines.

Behind the temple, through the closed Misunokamigami pottery shop, was a horse and the Reiwa Great Buddha (also known as the Corona Buddha). It was started by an artist group to make 1000 smaller Buddhas which are held on shelves of the larger Buddha. Probably hard to see in the picture since you can’t go in the horse paddock.

Then we wandered around the temple grounds to see the magnificent pagoda.

Yep, it’s undergoing renovation. Phooey.

My sister’s friend was obessed with the 7Eleven smoothie situation, so we decided to try them for lunch. I’ve been eating too much so I figured that would help tide me over until cake in the afternoon, and then dinner.

You get the cup from the freezer, pay for it, and then go to the machine. At the machine you scan the bar code from the top of the cup, put the cup in the machine, and off it goes blending your smoothie. Mariko got a Cafe Latte smoothie and she said it didn’t taste coffee-y enough.

Of course we saw soft ice cream soon afterwards (I often eat soft ice cream for lunch when I’m wandering around Japan in the heat).

Basically we wandered around town, had some baked goods and coffee, and then walked back up the hill to the prefectural museum when we realized it was only 12:30. It was one of the smaller prefectural museums I’ve been to. Fun, but there are others that are much better.

Oh, and there are maps all over. One thing I have to say, copy writers need editors too.

We had cake and I finally tried a Japanese Mont Blanc which had chestnut cream formed into the shape of Mont Blanc. I always thought it looked like the shape of an Ultraman monster and couldn’t imagine it would be great but it was quite light and tasty.

Mariko had a cheese cream thing? It was light and fluffy as well. I think most everyone who reads the blog (yeah, both of you) know Mariko and you can ask her what this was directly. I forget.

We went back to the hotel to get some towels so we could try two of the seven (Mariko says six) foot baths in the area. Oh, looking at the map I see my mistake. They’re lettered b-g. I assumed they’d start with a. So two of the SIX foot baths in the area.

The first was calming but not that warm. Kind of underwhelming if you ask me but in a nice quiet side area.

We skipped the ones on the busy street and went to the one in the park. Lots of kids playing soccer in the field and hoo boy this one was much warmer. My feet and calves were red by the time I got out.

Oh, and I remember seeing another foot bath on another map so SEVEN. Neener neener.

After a rest we looked for restaurants in the area (lots more drinking places than just restaurants). We settled on Gusto, a family restaurant chain, because it’s close and I wanted to see the delivery robot. I would say, go for the robot, go for the cheap food, go for the drink bar, but I won’t say go for the food.

If you’re going to a family restaurant, there Fujiya, Royal Host, Joyfull in this area, or even Denny’s and I bet they’re all better. But those places don’t have a robot.

And that’s it for today. I should get to bed soon because tomorrow we have to get on a train from nowhere to even more nowhere to visit another cousin who lives where my grandma’s house used to be.