Kusatsu? More like Coolsatsu

I already did the title joke 6 years ago with Kamakura (KamaCOOLa), but its still a very funny joke.

We said adios to Tokyo, taking a taxi to Ueno station.  Our next train was taking us 2.5 hours northwest to Kusatsu in Gunma prefecture (after a bus connection).  As the bus went up further into the mountains we started seeing snow, and eventually it started snowing.  West of us a bit Japan had a massive snowstorm go through that clogged and iced up transport.  Luckily we weren't affected and when we head that way tomorrow things should be running OK.

Kusatsu is a mountain town with a natural hot spring (Onsen) that comes out at a fairly blazing 122-201 degrees F.  The hotels and baths around it use the water for bathing after it's cooled.  Using other water to cool it would dilute the medicinal properties of the water which is a high mineral content (good for skin)  and fairly high acidity (good for skin conditions like eczema) The main spring in town Yubatake has the water flow down wooden troughs in a long series of waterfalls which let's the air cool it.  That cooled water is then piped around town.  Another method barely used now except for demonstration is by paddling the water into the air stirring it which does significantly cool it.

We got off our bus and headed down the hill to our Ryokan (traditional inn including meal, turndown, and onsen in this case).  The weather matched Minnesota here, high of 24 I think which makes it cozier.  The Ryokan is called Nyakamuraya which has about 6 or 7 cats wandering around to play with.  

We dropped off our bags and left to check out town.  The lady running it is very nice.  She didn't speak English but had English instructions for how to use the baths and dining.  We scheduled our times for dinner and breakfast.

We took some pictures, enjoyed the sulfury air, saw the town mascot,and watched the show of ladies performing the water cooling.  Its all very fun touristy although some of the gals doing the show looked like they'd been doing it since it started in 1960 and had run out of stream years go.  But it was very neat, got some great video.  Also there was a cute little yakitori hut/stand right outside our hotel so we grabbed a couple chicken skewers.

After going back and relaxing in our room we went to dinner. This was the most Japanese meal we've ever had.  We tried to eat everything although failed, it was a lot of food.  Some good, some great, some difficult.  Some things went well, others not.  Part of the layout included an iron pot with a ceramic lid and flame beneath it.  Inside was wax paper (maybe) and a piece of tallow.  We then had mushrooms, beef, and veg to cook on it.  Very early on I dropped a piece of meat on the floor and trying to pick it up quickly before anyone saw I put my finger against the very very hot iron pot.  Unfortunate but its fine.  I still ate the meat.  I also dropped my chopstick and continued to use it.  Don't judge, I also couldn't communicate super well with the server who spoke no English and spoke quite quickly without gestures.  But again luckily there were English instructions.  We sat on pillows on tatami mat.  The proper seating is feet tucked under your butt, not crossing.  I did that for a while then my feet would fall asleep and I'd alternate between crossing my legs.  Here's the food we ate which the english menu/instructions mostly identified:

-Grilled beef, mushrooms, vegetables

-Cod Roe

-Edamame and bacon in saffron and sauce

-Skewered grill river fish

-Tofu with fresh wasabi

-Slice of roast beef

-Small Seaweed salad

-Seaweed/greens? Salad that had tiny lil fish guys in it

-Fried sardine? With some pickled veg

-Mushroom soup

-Barley, pumpkin, something else porridge type meal.  I'm sorry I'm so vague, really not sure on some things.  The white thing in it was moist and neutralize?

-Salmon sashimi

-Rainbow Trout sashimi.  This one was wild in how absent of flavor it was.  Its like konjac but maybe even milder, so pretty ok with soy wasabi/garlic.

-Venison sashimi (more like rare with seared edges) was delicious

-Green asparagus stalk like veg in wasabi sauce

-Slices of daikon reddish i think

-Grilled mochi with sweet sauce

-For dessert pineapple, kiwi, and a Lil tiny piece of like a crepe layered cake

Phew.  We got through quite a bit.  Japan is big on eat everything/don't waste but man it was a lot.  I only ate the tail half end of the fried sardine.  Sarah was a trooper too as she doesn't care for fish but tried and ate most of all but that sardine.  We were there 2nd to last to leave of 5 groups (only 10 rooms in the hotel)  We thanked our server and headed back.

While we ate they were doing turndown service on our room.  Moved the table and organized our stuff and laid out the futon we're sleeping on tonight.  I love em, bit too hard for Sarah, I get it.

After tending to my burned finger against bit with water we went down to the basement where the onsen are.  They have 4 rooms you can use anytime.  There's a sign to flip to show its occupied but the door also latches.  Entry room to get ready and then in the room with the onsen a stool, shampoo and body wash to get clean before entering.  All standard stuff.  3 of the 4 were occupied and luckily got that 4th as another couple we could hear come in after us.  Great soak, water temp was nice and I avoided dunking my burned finger.  Great success!  

Got a couple train bento for the trip.  They weren't great, Sarah had a Tonkatsu one.  Little expensive but fun to try

CATegorically Fun Day

Sitting here with some feet stickers that have like menthol, gel, lotion,and also spikey pieces on.  They're for achey foot arches so we'll see how they do.

We had some baked goods and vanilla lattes at the cafe and bakery attached to the hotel.  We did that yesterday too and forgot to mention it.  Really good, I'm sure we'll do it tomorrow too.  Afterwards we left on the bus and a couple trains to Gotokuji, a temple with a lot of cat statues.

The temple was built in 1480.  In the 1600s the land became the domain of the Hikone clan.  One day a Hikone lord was riding by when a temple cat beckoned him inside, where he avoided a thunderstorm and had a nice chat with the temple master.  He paid to have the temple rebuilt and a shrine to the cat that brought about the fortunate meeting.  So the cats are offerings for good encounters or chance meetings (if you live a good life)

Very pleasant to get away from the central city, it wasn't very crowded and had a mix of tourists and older locals.  

On our way back Sarah spotted a sign for a shrine with a sumo rikishi on the sign.  Setagaya Hachiman shrine which dates back to 1091 and was once one of 3 major sumo wrestling events later in the Edo period.  We got some fortunes, accidently did it twice but they were all good.  Then we headed back to trains and the city.

The rest of our evening we spent in Shibuya which is a neat albeit touristy area of Tokyo.  We picked a place semi randomly.  There was a ton of food on the street and we opted for a Yakiniku place (grill your own food).  Honestly nice to just sit down for a while.  Beer and meat cannot be beat, but cheap Wagyu beef makes it quite the treat.  That's both cheesy and a haiku.  It was very good, 5600yen for both our meals and drinks.

After that we headed to Mandarake, which is a chain, but this particular location is sort of cave like.  You go down 2 flights of stairs to a basement space that is filled with rows and rows of bookshelves, narrowly spaced.  Along the outer sides are glass cases with vintage toys like Godzilla and Ultraman action figures from the 60s.  Trading cards, dvds, dolls,all kinds of stuff.  Luckily elevators to get out.

Sarah had her first Don Kihote experience.  That is the correct spelling for the Japanes chain where it's filled 8 stories high of whatever you could want.  Self care products, snacks/treats, liquor, chotchkies.  We were there for the bathroom but then got tucked in.  Also, amazingly they had trash cans you could use.  This is seriously a rarity in Japan.  Public trashcans aren't really a thing.

Next up we stopped by Lost Bar.  A Japan youtuber Chris Broad started this bar with his fellow Japan youtuber wife last year (or vice versa).  The door is a functional vending machine you have to slide to get into it.  So unless you know about it, you wouldn't know it's there.  Honestly it was a great getaway which I think was the intent.  Most customers were speaking English, 80s rock and pop playing, and had uncramped sitting space.  I had a Sake flight and Sarah had an Aquamarine, a vodka and curacao drink.  Our server was from Michigan, had taught English for 5 years in Gunma prefecture, tried Japanese corporate life briefly and said it was as horrible as everyone says, and then went to Tokyo to find work and eventually there.  Very neat

Last stop was at a Lawson for another convenience store dinner but as we found out they were doing a limited time partnership with Dragon Quest (video game series) and had a bunch of knick knacks related to it only sold there.  We put 200yen into a machine that squashes a penny basically. Sarah spotted they had a lotto game.  You buy like a pulltab for 750 yen and based on the number you get a prize.  We did 2 and Sarah got one of the higher prizes, a metal cup (based on metal slime characters) and I got a hard plastic poster.  Pretty fun.

Otherwise we bussed back, packed out stuff as we leave Tokyo tomorrow and getting some shuttle.

I'm tired and I'm not gonna rotate these images or order them all correctly.  I did edit the orientation now (next day)

Feets of Strength

Today was a trial by fire for both our feet, though Sarah was going in with an already sore ankle.  Sarah has a fitbit and the days total was at 6.96 miles.  Pretty good, though now she's in pain and soaking her feet in the very deep tub here.

It took us a while to get organized in the morning.  We woke up around 6am which isn't bad and think tonight we're pretty adjusted to the time difference.  High today was 52F and sunny.  Most of the time we didn't want our jackets on.  One thing we noticed was that the Japanese overall like or are used to it warm.  Outside everyone had coats on and many with scarves.  In stores it was unpleasantly warm in many and made us wish we had on short sleeves.

We first stopped at the Tokyo Metropolitan Govmt Building which has tourist info where we got some stamps for our collections (pictures below) and has a free observatory.  While a beautiful day Mt Fuji elusive had a cloud only covering him. Boooo hope we'll see him yet.

We then headed towards Kabukicho which has a red light district in it but really isn't much, not like Amsterdam.  It's really just fairly touristy but neat to look at.  For our first real meal in Japan we had... Kebab.  It was pretty ok for being very cheap.  350 yen so about $2.25.  We looked around the new building there finished in 2023, Kabukicho Tower.  It's somewhat gimmicky, set to look like how folks think of Japan with neon signs everywhere inside and overpriced restaraunts, arcade on the second level and I think fancier places upstairs.  We werent sure what was up further maybe a host club?  There were lots and lots of girls going up to the upper levels or at least 0 guys that we saw.

Down the road we played just a couple claw grab games and lost.  The big difference in the Japanese ones is they're more or less luck based in that the claw will or won't grab with full strength.  So you might be able to nudge the item towards a pit where you get it or enough money needs to be sunk in for the claw to actually grip it.

We saw the big godzilla head which maybe I just didn't notice last time and then went a little further out to the official godzilla store, which was surprisingly small.  Sarah got some godzilla minus one Bicycle playing cards as a souvenir and they're pretty cool.

We had pork bowls at this place I saw on the youtubes.  Slightly off the main drag, nothing in english and usually Japanese salarymen go there at night.  Their lunch hours are only 12pm-2pm.  Very good, and I know I'm gonna put too much cost info in here but the meal was $7.50 and by comparison that's cheaper than a big mac meal in the US by several bucks.  Just really good hunk of meat with wasabi mustard, eggs with gelatinous yolks, no tipping also ❤️.  I love love love having tax included in prices and no tipping culture.  Not like for saving but that it makes things so much easier.

After looking around more we stopped at a Starbucks and rested more with some Earl Grey Bouquet Latte that was a little too sweet and tasted a lot like fruit loops.   But resting was nice.

Afterwards we took the trains to Nakano station and then a shopping area called Nakano Broadway.  I was honestly expecting more here.  It was pretty interesting it was a big mall strip with covered hallways.  We went in a pet shop and an arcade, and a figure store.  But... a lot of stores were closed on Wednesday, some were permanent closed from Covid like shuttered storefronts.  I'd heard it was an alternative to the east side of Akihabara where there's lots of little video game and anime shops but apparently a lot of it got hid hard in Covid (according to the internet which isn't wrong).  The lower level was eateries and groceries.  We left back via train then did our first bus.  Very easy to use as it turned out.

Our last stop was FamilyMart for dinner.  Mmmm cheap convenience store food.  Venture on a few things. I tried a tuna mayo onigiri (rice ball) which is oook.  I was hoping it wasn't like canned tuna, but it was.  Japanese mayo is superior to other mayo and helped even it out but still not my cup of tea.  Got some sushi, Sarah got an egg salad sando, piece of fried chicken, and tried a chicken fried rice ball with pepper which should have been reversed in name to pepper fried rice with chicken.  Lots of black pepper.  Got a whiskey highball, tea, soda, and some lil pudding cups for dessert.  

That's it!  It's 7pm ish now and I'm about to add the pictures including the ones of Sarahs seat I said I'd add.  I apologize per usual that I probably won't edit typos or autocorrects in the blog so please don't hold it against me.

Me about to destroy the tutorial level of Densha de Go!  A train simulator.

I lied I only got a B rating.  The last train stop I was short by 3 meters :(

Shinjuku Park

Sneaky Fuji-san

This weapon shop only sold cosmetics booo 

Sarahs "The Suite" from yesterday.  The seat next to her was her permanent bed since nobody occupied it.

Long trip Short flight

 

Writing this up from our small hotel room in Shinjuku, Tokyo.  Our flight from Chicago went well and the flight here was great.  

Once we landed and got through customs we picked up a train ticket we had booked a few days out, got Welcome Suica cards which are like rechargeable cards that work for transport, and then got tickets for the Narita Express which took us here(ish) from the airport.  Its 7:30pm on the 7th right now.  Sarahs absolutely beat and I'm not much better.

The flight over was pretty fantastic.  I still need Sarahs pics and her recap but can maybe do that tomorrow.  I've never had such attentive and fantastic flight attendants.  I was in business class and was in ANAs newer setup called "The Room" and Sarah was in their First Class seat called "The Suite".  Had a multi course meal, and while I had a Sake I stuck to mostly water as being hydrated helps with jetlag.  I got about 4.5 hours of sleep.  The seat in bed mode is pretty comfy for me and the length was great (as a short person).  There was also nobody in my row so I only closed my cubicle doors when I slept.  

I don't have the energy to go into many details but hopefully the pictures help.  Either way I only watched one movie and really just sat and enjoyed the quiet flight that was like being on a sofa (seriously).  Sarahs was even better though.  Fastest 14 hour flight I've ever had.

Going to catch some Zs and like I said I'll try and have a better write up tomorrow

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Packed and Small Itinerary Change

Quick post just showing our packs and a change we decided to make.  Originally we planned on staying 3 nights in Osaka.  I (Alex) was already a little wishy-washy on that leg of the trip.  We changed those nights to Kobe, which is like a 30 minute train ride West of Osaka.  The reasons are:

• Osaka, especially the area we were going to be in is crowded with tourists and Kobe is I believe going to be a lot more chill
• Slightly improves time on both our day trips, but especially our trip to Awaji Island
• I've already been to Osaka and prefer not repeating too much on this trip 
• We still get to stop in Osaka for a good part of day on our way from Kyoto
• Kobe seems nice

So here's the updated map:

And our bags.  They're pretty tightly packed so I skipped the pic of the interiors.  As a guy I have the luxury of pretty easily squeezing my clothes in a single bag and had some room for Sarah's 2nd pair of shoes.  Weather will probably be around 35°-55°F so we have some layerable stuff, hats, those cheapo stretchy gloves.

Put our yen that we got ahead of time in my hidden cash belt.  Its not really about preventing stealing but just that I know I'll always have it on me.  The money we just get it from the bank although they take a percent off the top.  I've seen that getting cash at ATMs gives a better rate but we just like having some in advance.

We have some other stuff like small medicine container for like ibuprofen, dramamine, benadryl.  We have a little travel pack with a sink stopper and laundry soap for cleaning stuff in hotel sinks if we need to.  Passports, toiletries, and a couple battery packs.  I'm bringing my Kobo e-reader.  We've also printed off all our tickets, hotel info etc, so should be good there.

Next post will probably won't be until we start the trip!

Japan 2025 Itinerary & Budget

Alex here.  This year flew by, and Sarah and I are on the cusp of another exciting trip.  We're going to Japan on what was the original idea for our honeymoon.  However during wedding and honeymoon planning, Japan was still closed to travel due to Covid (didn't fully open back up until Oct 2022, and then it wasn't until May 2023 that they dropped all Covid restrictions).  As a result we went on a Europe trip where we were hosted by many of my friends from online (and had a lovely time).  But...now we're ready to burn some points and have the trip we've wanted to make.

I had a wonderful time in Japan almost 6 years ago now when I went solo.  It did get a little lonely by week 3 and I texted Sarah more often those days.  This time around I'm excited to have it as a shared experience.  In planning it I tried to strike a balance where I didn't want to repeat many things/places but also didn't want Sarah to miss out on things just because I'd seen or done them.

In my previous trip I largely planned my trip around seeing the 3 major central Japan cities Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo with transportation plans between them and then left the days open for *mostly* aimless wandering and some daytrips.  This time we'll have a little less "flexibility" since we'll be transiting more, but can still mostly pick and choose what we want to do.

Finally before the deets, the USD to JPY (Japan yen) exchange rate is insanely good right now so hoping it stays good for the next month.  When I was there, $1 = ¥110. If you figure a soda in a vending machine was ¥100-150 it was not bad. Right now $1 = ¥150. So the buck goes 1.5 times further.

Itinerary (8 Hotels, 18 days excluding flights)

January-----------
5:              Leave MN to Chicago via United (stay for 8ish hours at hotel)
6:              Leave Chicago to Tokyo via ANA
7-9:           Tokyo
10:            Kusatsu
11-12:       Kanazawa
13-15:       Stay in Takayama with stop in Shirakawa-Go and day trip to Hida Furukawa
16:            Gero
17-18:       Kyoto
19-21:       Osaka, day trips to Hiroshima and Awaji Island
22-24:       Tokyo
25:            Leave JP to Chicgo via ANA, then Chicago to MN via United

                My beautiful MS Paint Map of the trip

Budget ($7,088   or   $3,544/person):

A good amount of this trip was booked using points and for the budget purposes I'll have the total but won't try to compare them to the "actual" cost. For example, Sarah is flying out and back on First Class. (I'm flying out on Biz class and back on First). A single round trip first class flight on ANA from Chicago to Japan is currently: $24,704 What we paid for it was 150,000 points. So I'll have a separate section at the bottom on this.

Flights ($1,203): 

Airlines:  $1,203 (fees) + Points

Hotels/AirBNB ($1,966):   

The Knot - Shinjuku, Tokyo         $302 (3 nights) 
Nakamuraya Ryokan, Kusatsu     $235/ ¥35,600  (1 night) pay there
AirBNB, Kanazawa                      $171 (2 nights)
AirBNB, Takayama                      $350 (3 nights)
Shougetsu Ryokan, Gero              $670/¥101,200 (1 night) pay there
Park Hyatt, Kyoto                         Points
Henn na Hotel, Osaka:                  $238 (3 nights)
Andaz, Tokyo                                Points

Food ($1545):

For food I'm estimating at $30/each per day.  For days I'm not including flight days, days at Ryokans (which provide meals), and we have one meal reserved during the trip

Normal meals:                               $960
Yasaka, Kyoto:                              $585

Transportation ($1144):

Mostly trains between cities, 1 bus, and then local trains/subway

Intercity:                                        $1044
Intracity:                                        $100

Miscellaneous/Entrance Fees/Souvenirs ($1,050):

Trip Insurance                               $132 
Sumo Tickets                                $318
Other                                             $600 

Thanks for reading! Next post will be our packs and then in a little less than a month we'll be on our way!

POINTS (482,500 points - In case anyone cares):

This trip, or certainly the flights were reasons that I started getting into travel/credit card/airline points in the first place.  ANA (All Nippon Airlines) has notoriously excellent redemption rates for their Business and First Class seats, that is CPP (Cents per point), which is also to say that you can get a very expensive very nice flight for much cheaper.  But there's a LOT that went into this and a huge amount of time/research and truly a lot of lost sleep and stressful nights.  I'll just summarize the redemptions I made on this trip and then give a high level overview of the crap I went through to get those plane tickets.  If you read the blog where we are on the planes you can see why it was (hopefully :) ) worth it.

Chicago Regency Hyatt: free night certificate (annual perk of Hyatt card)

2x United Economy Roun trip flight Minneapolis to Chicago:  60,000 ANA points (transferred from Amex)

ANA First Class Round trip flight Chicago to Tokyo:  150,000 ANA points, (transferred from Amex)

ANA Biz Class out, First Class back Chicago to Tokyo:   112,500 ANA points (transferred from Amex)

Park Hyatt Kyoto 2-nights:  85,000 Hyatt Points (from Hyatt acct and Chase points transfer)

Andaz Tokyo 3-nights:  75,000 Hyatt Points (from Hyatt acct and Chase points transfer)

Ok, the ANA Flights.  These tickets are highly sought after and fairly difficult to get.  Other airlines like United or Delta would charge 700,000+ points for a single roundtrip First Class ticket.  Here's the bulletin points:

• ANA doesn't always have award seats available on planes and there's no consistency.  They typically only have 1 biz class and 1 first class seat available on each flight.  This is why our flight out we're in separate classes
  
  
• Because of the competitive nature of these seat awards (people wanting them) you have to book them RIGHT when they become available which is 355 days in advance the MINUTE the site updates with available seats (which is 9am JST/6pm CST)
  
  
• ANA requires you to book round trip for points booking.  And this is a big one.  What this means is that you might see an outbound seat you want, but you cant book it for 24 hours because you have to wait for return flights to become available for the next day so you can make it a round trip flight.  So the strategy is to book a flight out with a return flight the next day.  Then you have to move your return flight (which you can do for free) onto a return date you actually want, but you also are still competing with other people on this.
  
  
• Transferring points from American Express to ANA points can take up to 3 days (1 day for me).  This means you have to have the points in your ANA account READY TO GO to book the flight.  There's no going back, once the points are transferred they're there AND they will expire in 2 years.  So you gotta be sure you know what you're doing
  
  
• These are direct flights only so you have to reposition if you aren't near cities they fly out of (San Fran, Chicago, New York, Houston, Atlanta)
  
  
• The site allows you to book seats and be on the waitlist but it is a trap.  99% of the time the waitlisted seats will not become available and if any leg of the trip is waitlisted by the time you fly all legs are cancelled

Here are the things I did to achieve:

• Read a lot on the subject, listened to podcasts
• Practiced for days in advance to book award flights, make sure I understood procedure
• Called ANA several times just make sure I knew what their wait time was (it was like 45 minutes)
• Kept a window of available dates we could travel on (flexibility)
• Transferred 330,000 points from Amex to ANA (to cover up to needed 4 first class seats + extra just in case)
• Booked a flight out on the 6th (1 biz, 1 first) and a return on the 7th (2 first).  This also made me nervous because it meant that the return flight that I moved to would also need 2 first class seats available, something that was not frequent)
• Once I booked the flights I knew I'd have to wait several weeks (2 weeks) before there were return dates I could change the return flight to.  During this time I tracked every day what award flights were available (none/1 biz 1 first/etc)  To try to see a pattern.  These were stressful days
• The first date where a return flight was available I tried to move it on the website and received an error several times over the course of 15 minutes.  Then someone else took those flights.  This made me horribly nervous
• Next day seats were available and had called in advance and was on hold.  Got through and was able to move the return flights successfully.  Huge relief
• 3 days out 2 first class seats showed up again and I was able to call in and book for an even better trip length.  Then booked the United flights through them with leftover points