The Trip to Kinugawa! Part 1

Hello, everyone~!

I went to Kinugawa from August 5th to August 7th to participate the summer camp of the seminar I've belonged to! Some of you might not be familiar with the seminar because the way we are given the class is different from the US's. We usually choose a seminar that each of the students in my department is interested in when we are sophomore, and he/she belongs to a seminar to learn about a field he/she wants to study, and to write your own thesis at last. So, I'll attend the seminar once a week for 2 years, junior and senior. As you can see, it's important for me to try getting along with other members of the seminar! That's why we went on this trip!

Well, have you heard of Kinugawa Onsen? It belongs to Tochigi prefecture, and it takes about 2 hours to go there from Asakusa. (It's a part of Tokyo.) It's famous for hot springs, and what I've wanted for this trip was "Kimochi-ii Ofuro"(Awesome hot springs) and "Oisii Gohan" (Yummy meals), so I got everything I wanted! Yaaaay! The picture on the left side was the entrance of Asakusa station, where the trip began.

After being on the train for about 2 hours, we arrived at the hotel finally! The first thing I saw when I entered the entrance of the hotel was a number of "omen" (This is not the name of the movie, it means "mask".) hanging on the wall! If you enlarge the picture on the right side, You can see Mickey Mouse, Daisy, Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Anpanman, and so on.

As I said, the reasons why we decided to go on a trip were to get to know each other, and more importantly, to do something that related to the field we've learned about: Communication! So, we watched a movie called "Crash" which was awarded with the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of the year at the 78 th Academy Awards ceremony. It's dealt with cultural conflicts between different races, but at the same time, it's also encouraged us to keep having hope for the people who lives in this world that is so diverse. I've seen it before, but I always find it interesting to listen to what others think about the movie I saw because it makes me realize that there are many different ways to look at things.

After watching the movie, we ate dinner! There were so many different kinds of foods on the table that I just couldn't decide what to eat at first. ^^ I decided to put all of the dinners' pictures here! So, please enjoy looking at the foods I really enjoyed! I hope they will help you imagine how they taste like... yum yum! I'm sorry if you're hungry now, hehehe. ^^

After the dinner, I guess this was one of the most important parts of the trip! It's time for OFURO! (Hot Springs!) Yaaaay! You might think it's just having a bath, but it's not! Some of you have read the previous post which I talked about going to a public bath near my house with a friend of mine, and as you can see from that, I love taking a bath!! So I was glad to be able to enjoy Onsen(hot spring) there! Yeah, I really was!!

I guess I should stop writing about the first day here.
I'm going to continue talking about the trip on the next post, so please look forward to it! ^^