Gero: onsen town

Sunday, April 13, 2014
Gero, Chubu, Japan
We had a bit of time before the train to the next destination (Gero), so we went for a walk around Kanazawa Castle again. We saw a huge hawk getting chased by a couple of crows (I guess he didn't want any trouble) and a lot of sakura blossom snow (Kanazawa is a bit colder, so sakuras are still in fool bloom here).

Then we grabbed our luggage from the hotel and walked to the train station, where we got some lunch and boarded a train to Toyama and there we had exactly 6 minutes to switch to another train going to Gero . The second train ride was extremely scenic, as it was going through mountains and tunnels, passing many waterfalls, streams, power plants and bridges. At one of the stations, our train made of 3 cars had another several cars attached to the front of it, it was interesting to see.

We got off on our stop, Gero Onsen at around 3:30 PM. We got a map of the city and some advice from a girl at Tourist Information (her English was very good) and then walked to the ryokan. The town is pretty much a hot spring resort with nothing much to do but to go to onsens (hot spring spas). Our ryokan (Izumi-so) also has an onsen with indoor and outdoor baths!

After we checked in and unpacked, we went for a walk around town. It's very small and we could cross it from one side to another in 20-30 minutes. We checked out free foot baths (where you can sit down, put your feet into hot mineral water and relax for a while), Gassho Village (an open-air museum of traditional straw-roofed farmhouses) and a frog shrine (since Gero sounds like frog sound in Japanese, kero-kero).

It was getting dark already, so we went to have a dinner (some sort of rice and beef bowl, but fancier) and then dropped by a convenience store to get some snacks (I got melonpan, green tea pocky, dried seaweed and aloe yogourt). Then, finally, we went into our ryokan's onsen. It was pretty small, but very nice, with sitting shower room, hot indoor bath and warm outdoor bath. The water outdoors had very nice temperature, the air was fresh and cool, so the whole experience was very relaxing!
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