Izu Peninsula

We drove 5 hours last Saturday morning almost to the bottom of the peninsula. The last 50 miles took 2 hours though. Once you get down into the peninsula a bit, the roads get super twisty and hug the coast line. It would have been awesome in something that wasn’t a minivan.

When Heather was a pre-school teacher last year, she taught two Japanese girls. Their dad was a surgeon on assignment at Ohio State. They moved back to Yokohama last year and we met up with them at the hotel. The two Japanese girls are the same age as Nathan and Caroline so they were so happy to play together the whole weekend.

The hotel was like a hybrid hotel/traditional ryokan. The floors were all tatami mats, and there were no beds, only futons. Honestly, futons are the bomb. I have never had a bad sleep on a futon. When we first arrived, there is a table in the center of the room and chairs around it. Then when you go out for dinner, the staff (or elves) sneak into your room and set up the futons for bed time. It was really cool.

There were a few onsens on site. A men’s, women’s, and two private onsens. We went to one before dinner, then again around 11pm before going to bed. One was outside right next to the ocean and you could just sit there and listen to the waves. Its hard to describe how amazing that is.

But dinner and breakfast were awesome. We had a set time to be at dinner. We went in our slippers and yukata (basically a bath robe). And it was a 5 course meal. The entire table was ready with appetizers when we walked in and the kids just thought life couldn’t get any better. They all sat right down and started eating. Nathan was the funniest. He is usually the whiner and difficult eater, but he was so infatuated with the setup, he dug right in.

After dinner we just sat in the room and drank beer and talked. The kids did various kid things and stayed up way too late! The next morning we walked down to the coast and enjoyed some decent weather. The entire weekend was pretty cloudy and rainy, but it didn’t matter since this vacation was all about staying inside and relaxing.

On the way home we stopped at Kenny’s House. We laughed at the name, but it was a little Japanese mochi shop. Their specialty was that they put full oranges inside a mochi ball. It was delicious. The kids were pretty whiney though. They stayed up way too late and woke up way too early. But they slept a lot on the car ride home, so it worked out.

Short weekend getaway, but it was nice to see some old friends from America and have a new experience. We’ve never done anything like this.