We awoke the morning of August 24th with a plan to spend the day in Nagano at thermal baths (onsens). Nagano is famous for its thermal baths in the mountains where wild monkey’s bathe! They love the hot relaxing water. We really wanted to see them and possibly bathe with them too, even though the idea of wild monkeys grabbing at our exposed body parts was a little terrifying (as bathing nude is required for entry to all Japanese baths).
Fieke, Steph and I all purchased a rail pass for our last week in Japan, and the 24th was the first day of use. The rail pass allows for unlimited travel on all rail lines throughout Japan including the Shinkansen. For our whole road trip we had been using the local train lines, comparable in speed to trains in Canada. The Shinkansen is a type of train that travels 300 km/h, much faster than most trains in the word. The only problem is that it is very expensive.
For example, from Shizuoka (close to Ken’s house) to Fukuoka the Shinkansen costs about $200 each way and takes about 5 hours. On local trains (which we had been using exclusively) it takes about 18 hours, and using a Ju-hachi Keepu day pass it costs $20 if you do the whole trip in one day, and $40 if it takes you two days.
Ju-hachi Keepus are passes that allow for unlimited travel on all local train lines for $20 per day. This is how we traveled during our backpacking trip. So, since this was our first day with full access to the Shinkansen, we wanted to make sure we took full advantage of it!
We didn’t have a chance to check train schedules for Nagano the previous day, so we checked them that morning. We unfortunately found out it would take about 5 hours each way, and it was already 10am, and we were hoping to sleep at Ken’s house that night. We were disappointed that we couldn’t see the monkeys, but we decided to spend the day in Atami at an onsen there.
The onsen we visited was a small thermal bath, attached to a hotel. It was exactly what we needed to relax! And it was also an amazing escape from the torrential rain happening outside!!
The Shinkansen ride there and back was amazing. Our bodies took a bit of time to get used to the speed of the train though (it was a bit painful for our ears, as they kept popping). But that aside, it was the most luxurious train ride of our whole trip!
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