Japanese Alps

Today we took a train ride into the Japanese Alps!  Wow are they beautiful.  I tried to take pictures from the train and just a few came out halfway decent.  Most of the pictures had too much glare or were too blurry from the speed of the train.

Guillermo getting ready to enjoy a Bento Box lunch picked up from one of the train stations.  

We shared both of these boxes.  Everything was delicious!

So, we are staying in a town called Takayama.  It is a precious little town and it is very cool here with rain on and off ever since we got here.  The place where we are staying is a typical Japanese place and it is everything I have ever dreamed of as far as a Japanese house.

As soon as we got to the place where we would be staying, they served us tea in our room.

In the room where the staff set up our beds while we had dinner in a dining room.  It was exactly as I pictured a Japanese room.

We had a fantastic dinner in the house in the evening.  Of course, I forgot to take my camera to dinner but fortunately, Fernando remembered so hopefully one of these days I'll get some pictures from him to put on here of our first authentic Japanese dinner.  It was quite an experience.  They called us from our room to our personal dining room where we sat on the floor at a short table.  They brought course after course of interesting and delicious food that by the time dinner was over, we were totally stuffed!

After dinner, we took a nice hot shower in their big bath room which also had a huge hot tub that we soaked in for a few minutes.  If you wanted a private bath, then you locked the door.  If not, then you just leave the door unlocked and anyone could come in and take a shower or get in the tub with you.  We opted to lock the door.  Then they provided us with robes called yakatas. This is all just so interesting and awesome.