Sad to leave Takayama but on to the next place. We had to check out before 10 but had a little bit of time to kill. We grabbed another hot chocolate and some small taiyaki (little pancake fish with filling)
Our cheapo rubber galoshes were pretty much ruined the day before but luckily there wasn't much slush we'd have to walk through today.
We got to the station and got some assistance getting the tickets to Gero. Gero is another Onsen town like Kusatsu, and one of "the big 3" most famous Japan Onsen towns. The water here is alkaline, at the same level as milk or toothpaste, around ph 9 I think. By comparison Kusatsu was highly acidic at ph 2.3 or so which is basically lemon juice.
Gero also has 2 other meanings in Japanese, one is "to puke/vomit" but they try not to focus on that one. Gero gero is also the sound frogs make so they went with that as a town mascot. There's very cute frog guys around. We stopped at a frog shrine to pay our respects. Its not that old, like 10 years, but its cute. When you toss a coin in the box a motion sensor sets off a little fortune or saying from a speaker. We tried to get a couple frog related snacks but the stores were either sold out or in the case of frog pudding closed. We did get a couple frog souvenirs though.
We only had about an hour to look around as our hotel transport was coming to pick us up at the station at 3pm. The town is filled with onsen hotels and ryokans and we opted for one that has a private bath in the room (Shougetsu). We have never before been greeted by staff bowing and bring us to the most gorgeous hotel checkin seat for tea while we filled in our info and gave passports. They luckily had an English speaking person to explain everything, although really not too much to it.
Like the ryokan in Kusatsu we had dinner at a selected time where they also did turndown service for us. I had selected a meal that was advertised as Hida beef on the website, thinking it was more centered around that (no info on what the meal actually was). It was in fact their typical course which was very nice but had some difficulties for us :) I managed to eat about half of my fish intestine in grated yam (with gold leaf on it). I didn't know what it was beforehand but Sarah had translated the menu. It wasn't that bad but my body involuntarily gagged on it and that scared Sarah off. The shark liver wasn't too bad and I ate it all. Urchine wasnt too bad. First time for us trying Abalone which is quite expensive and regulated, and tasted crablike with an octopuslike mouthfeel. There was less exotic stuff but again difficult for our palettes. We got through just about everything though. The meat was great amd the desert was the best honeydew pieces, orange I've had. Forgot the name but a strawberry with red bean inside mochi was delicious. Served with sweet sake.
Our server was an absolute delight though. An excitable younger guy from Tokyo who spoke very good english but also was nice to carry on simple conversation with me in Japanese. He was kind of flamboyant and genuinely felt happy to be with us and told us so. Had a great time and Sarah and I had some good laughs as we powered through the food together.
After the meal we returned to our outdoor bath and we admired the view. There's also a cedar bath I'm currently soaking my feet is as I write this. Very nice and sauna like. Not snowing but its still quite lovely here.
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