The inn, Yukie strolling(???) past the outdoor hot spring, and the view from our room. This part of Japan is known as "Snow Country" (I bet you'll never guess why!) and the transition from the coastal area (no snow) is dramatic - literally the train enters a tunnel in autumn and emerges in mid-winter. The famous novel Snow Country by Kawabata starts with this explanation, but every time I read it in translation I get worked up - It's always translated as something about the train coming out of the tunnel into whiteness, but in the Japanese there's no mention of a train until the second sentence. (Japanese sentences don't need subjects). The first sentence just says something like "suddenly out of long frontier tunnel Snow Country" That suddeness just can't really be translated into English. And the whole crux of the novel is contained in these few characters - you're crossing a frontier, Snow Country is a different world, Snow Country people are a different race, it isn't just the same as the other place with a little sugar frosting. Heavy stuff!!!! Maybe that's why it won the Nobel Prize.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing! Looks like I've been pretty heavily into the Japanese health drink.