Karuizawa Sunday

Woke up super early today at 6:00am to go to another ALT friend’s house to pick her up, and then picked up another ALT at Takasaki Station to go to a meeting point in Yoshii for an ALT outing to Karuizawa today! We met up in the parking lot of a supermarket with the other ALTs, bought lunch from the supermarket, and then set off around 9:30am, a bit late from our original time of 9:00am! Drove all the way to the first stop of the day – Usui mountain bypass lookout! The drive there was REALLY nice with gorgeous autumn scenery all around us. The mountains were peak colours which made the drive very enjoyable. The pass was quite high up so the leaves up there had all fallen, but the view was still very grand with mountain layers painting the horizon. After that we drove to the 2nd stop of the day – Shiraito Falls. We had our supermarket bento lunch here as well, before going to the waterfalls. It was very pretty, especially with the autumn leaves in the background. From there, it was on to our last scenic stop of the day – Onioshidashi Park. This was a park made from the lava from Mt. Asama’s eruption in 1783. The magma rock formations all looked super cool and dramatic, and apparently the park’s name comes from the people saying that it was as if the devil had pushed the crater and caused these formations to form. Spent quite a while there taking photos, but it was getting really cold, so we made our way to this cool as outlet shopping mall (Prince Shopping Mall) for some shopping and dinner! I couldn't believe the prices at the Adidas shop here. There were shoes for ¥4000 and tracksuits and jumpers and stuff for like ¥2800 which is so cheap for Adidas!? It was crazy. Had ramen for dinner because you’re just meant to eat hot soupy noodles in this cold weather. Our final stop for the day was Karuizawa Sengataki Onsen which was super great. I think it’s one of my favourite onsens I’ve been to on JET so far! One of the more expensive ones (¥1300 for weekend entry) but the facilities and pools were really nice + they had a sauna too! Hardly anyone was there as well, so we almost had the whole place to ourselves. Finished up around 20:30, and made the drive back home. Bought some peach cider from the onsen place for the drive back, and it was really nice!