Hot

This is where I was immersed up to my neck at about 3:30 this afternoon.

I had taken a tiny train up into a mountain valley, hiked up and over a ridge that prominently featured towering cypress trees, stands of golden yew and autumnally coloured maples with leaves the size of kitten paws. I wound past mountain shrines, down through a vermilion-painted temple complex and into another valley, to the townlet of Kuruma. I followed its single twisting one-lane road that runs just above the the gushing stream at the valley bottom, ultimately to revive my tired and not-so-fresh-feeling body in this ridiculously tranquil hot spring.

Tomorrow: Back to Tokyo, the long way.