Beautiful susuki covered mountains

Noshiyu ryokan

Kurokawa Onsen (in my dictionary) is the most perfect little hotspring town (in the world). The ryokan Noshiyu is an agglomeration of everything traditional, comfortable, and chic paying tribute to genuinely old and traditional things and scenes.





The lounge was particularly nice to spend time to relax..

The most perfect dinner at Noshiyu

This may have been the best Japanese course I had ever had. The ryokan Noshiyu in Kurokawa Onsen has very traditional looks, almost beyond traditional, like in another dimension. The dinner course we had was a mixture of art, tradition, and just simply good tasting food!





To top it all, the dessert was out of this world.. a divine yogurt thing.

Unzen

Unzen is the first national park in Japan, very close to Nagasaki. The mountain is an active volcano and there is a large jigoku or "hell", which is the source of hotspring that pipes hot water to each ryokan in the neighborhood.

 

Never to repeat...

Dejima in Nagasaki

For a long time, Nagasaki had been the entrance to Japan for foreign traders and the like. The very first (outside of Asia) were the Portuguese, who had a good deal of influence on Japan including on the language and food. But given the regligious influence and from fear of colonization, the Shogun built this small island Dejima in Nagasaki to limit the Portguese from going elsewhere in Japan. But the Portuguese left.

Then the Dutch became the dominant traders, so the Dutch ended up as the residents in Dejima for the next 200 years while Japan closed itself from the rest of the world. The Dutch paid the equivalent of US$1 million a year, and patiently stayed on.

It was very interesting and surreal to walk in the miniscule area (less than 10 minutes to walk across!) that was the only "foreign" place in Japan for such a long time.

Japanese ryokan

For the night after my (relative) splurge in Imari, we went to Ureshino to stay at a very nice Japanese ryokan. Ryokan is like a hotel but more personable and typically with lots of food for both dinner and breakfast. Ureshino has very well known hot spring, so we got the full package. The tofu served at breakfast was made from hot spring water and was super divine. And of course you have to have the ume or pickled plum to wake yourself up with a sour face.