This morning we ate once again in the Japanese restaurant and then we boarded our bus to visit the Ashigara Village, for our Day in the Life experience. We visited a local market and saw some very interesting vegetables. Hiro explained what many of them were and how they were prepared, since I had never seen some of them, no less would know how to cook and eat them.

We then traveled on to a tea farm, where we sat at tables in a kind of greenhouse, and learned about how tea is grown and cultivated from a farmer who specializes in tea. We sipped some delicious cold green tea that is made by putting the green tea leaves in cold water and shaking. The tea can be ready in as little as 15 minutes or you can put in the refrigerator overnight. The tea is very light in color as well as in taste. The farmer also roasted the same leaves over a fire in a metal pan and made tea with those leaves for us, which resulted in a very dark and richly flavored brew, which I actually preferred.

The farmer invited us outside to explore his farm, and he showed us how the teas from the tea bushes are fertilized, harvested, and bagged in foil lined bags to be sold. He showed us his new machine, a large fertilizing machine that did the job in record time, going up and down the rows of tea bushes, a job he used to do with a hand held fertilizer machine that he walked with. He even let Allan climb up on his new mighty fertilizer spreader, which he was very proud of and called his Ferrari. The farmer uses very little fertilizer and pesticide on his tea, and he is hoping that this year, he wins an award for best tea. He is a young, hard working, and enterprising man, and we wish him much luck.

He also grows hydrangeas, which were lining the edges of his entire farm. They will be bursting into flower in a month or so, just in time for the hydrangea festival that will be taking place.

He grows rapeseed as well, a beautiful flower that can be eaten and the seeds turned into rapeseed oil. We walked among the field and just reveled in its beauty.

We returned to the greenhouse, where the farmer and some local women showed us the proper way to prepare rice, by first washing it and draining the water 3-4 times. He said the only way to cook rice is to thoroughly rinse it and then cook in a rice cooker, never on the stovetop.

They prepared the rice for us and served us a lovely lunch with soup, pickled vegetables, tempura, fish, and we also made our own rice balls filled with clams, tuna, and spices. We finished the meal with homemade cotton candy. We bid our goodbyes and Allan and I presented them all with Hershey candy bars as a thank you for their hospitality.

The farmer left us with these words…Ichi-go ichi-e (Japanese: 一期一会,) A one-time meeting that describes a cultural concept of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment. A lovely thought – treasure the moment, because you never know when it will come again.

We then took a short stroll over to the Seto Community House, that previously belonged to the Setos, a Samurai family that helped lead and protect the village for more than 300 years. In 1955, a descendent of the Seto family donated the house to Ashigara Village, and since then it has been used as a community center. The grounds feature a children’s playground and watermill, and the house often hosts seasonal festivals and local artists’ exhibitions. There remains a prominent vestige of the house’s past: a special front gate, beyond which no one besides the Samurai and his family were allowed to pass. Today, the center is open to all. We toured around and then boarded our bus and began the journey up the mountain to our hotel, traveling on a very windy road. Our driver navigated the traffic and the curves very well, and soon we were at our hotel, the Hotel Recove Hakone.

The staff greeted us and we all sat down to learn about…the hot springs…the on-site onsen, a traditional Japanese bathing facility that is the highlight of the hotel.

They passed out many papers with instructions on the dos and don’ts before entering the onsen, while in the onsen, and after experiencing the onsen. At first, it was sensory overload, and I thought I would certainly need the relaxing onsen after trying to remember everything, but gradually, we began to understand. Here’s how it goes:

You find a yukata awaiting you in your hotel room. (Allan and some of the other men were given larger yukatas right there and then, because of their height.) If you decide to go to the baths, you remove all of your clothing, except your underpants, and you don the yukata. This garment must be worn with the right side over the body, and the left side pulled over the right. (NEVER the opposite way, as that is how a corpse is prepared for burial.) Then you wrap the sash around your waist, (men wrap the sash around their hips). You must make sure the collar at the top is not too loose, and make sure your legs are not bare, by wrapping the yukata tightly. There is a small coat that can be worn over the yukata as well. The yukata was meant to be worn, if desired, while walking through the hotel at any time, not just on your way to or from the baths.

More information was imparted to us regarding the hot springs protocol, since most of the ladies and men on the tour decided we would take part in this activity. Here’s what it entailed:

A basket with two towels will be found in our hotel room; a large towel to dry off with after the baths and a very small towel to take and use as a wash cloth while in the baths. After you have donned the yukata, you put on the brown slippers that are to be worn when wearing the yukata outside of your room. (White slippers are also provided to be worn while inside the hotel room.). The hot springs are located in the basement, so you take the elevator, and the women use a pass code to enter into the women’s baths, but no pass code was required for the men to enter their baths on the other side.

Once inside, you find a locker, and you remove your yukata and your underpants and place everything except the small towel inside, lock it with a key, and put the key bracelet on your wrist. You then proceed naked to the shower area and sit on a step stool in front of a handheld shower where you thoroughly wash yourself from top to bottom with your small towel and with the soap that’s provided. You then hose yourself down to rinse. Many hand held showers lined the walls, so finding a place to wash was not a problem.

Once you are clean, you take your washcloth, proceed to one of the hot springs baths, and just slide in and relax, enjoying the warmth. You either put the washcloth on your head or place on the side of the bath, never in the water. There were a few baths, some very hot and steamy, one freezing cold, and one hot and steamy, but in a very cold room.

All of my now friends from the tour went together, and we had one bath all to ourselves. It was very relaxing. We stayed for about a half hour and then went back to the locker rooms and got the larger towels out of the locker, dried off, and donned our yukatas once again. The wet washcloth was placed in a plastic bag to be used again if we desired.

It was time to get ready for dinner at the hotel, and we all decided since we were already squeaky clean, we would wear our yukatas to dinner. The men did the same.

Our group had a room to ourselves and we were served many courses of traditional Japanese food. One of the courses was grilled yellow tail tuna, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Another course was Wagyu steak, which was delicious. (You can see the other courses in the photo below.).

We had fun chatting with each other and enjoying our dinner, and then it was time to head to our rooms for a good night’s sleep, as another busy day lies ahead of us.

The grounds surrounding the tea farm