Winter Flowers and Onsen

Robai (Plum Blossoms)

One of my favorite winter trip is to visit Robai-en, the plum garden in Nagatoro.   The word "garden" is an understatement, for you can see almost the whole mountain dazzling in a beautiful yellow color from the plum blossoms.   These flowers only bloom in the winter time, therefore February (late winter) is the best month to visit. After taking a romantic stroll in Robai-en, taking lots of photos, it is best to have an overnight stay in a ryokan "Japanese inn" and enjoy a a warm hot spring bath, here we call "onsen".   There is a ryokan near Nagatoro, just off Chichibu station, that has private a bath in the room, named Araki Kousen Ryokan.   In Chichibu area there are many choices of ryokan at different level of price.   A good quality and reasonable ryokan starts from 12,000 Yen per person to 20,000 Yen per person (breakfast & dinner included).   A room with a private bath usually costs about 20,000 Yen per person/night.

Check out this railway map on HOW to get to Chichibu station (note: Nagatoro is just two stations away from Chichibu): http://www.seibu-group.co.jp/railways/tourist/rosen.pdf

Check out also Official Site for Chichibu town:

http://www.city.chichibu.lg.jp/cgi-bin/odb-get.exe?wit_template=AC010000&wit_oid=icityv2::CommonGenre::1487&m=1&d=

Onsen

The Japanese love hot springs (onsen) and many people head for one when they go on holiday,

 especially in the winter time.   Onsen is known to be effective in curing various type of minor illnesses (in fact there are some onsens that are especially well known for healing certain illness, such as skin problems, poor blood circulation, joints/muscles aches, etc.)

In the past hot springs are used for both women and men, where they bathe together or the so called mixed bathing.  However nowadays, women and men bath separately and there are only very few onsens allowing mixed bathing.

Various types of onsen: 

*rotenburo (=open-air bath) where you can see natural surroundings outside, usually located in the garden, by the river, by the ocean

*myoban onsen (=bath with oranges) where they put oranges (unpeeled) into the baths, known to be effective as beauty treatment

*mushiburo = similar to that of sauna, except that the steam is made from the hot spring water entering through a pipe)

*sunamushiyu = hot sand bath, where the bather steams his body by burying himself in hot sand, the sand is heated using hot spring water.