Favorite place to travel in Japan

[Tsuzuki]

Originally Posted by masaegu

Samurai007 made an excellent point! Go explore the back streets in any town you might visit including Tokyo. You sure will get to see the different sides of a town. You will miss so much if you only choose to stroll on the busy main streets. Stores and restaurants tend to be more unique and friendlier on the back streets because their counterparts on the main streets often tend to depend solely on their good locations for more business and neglect on proving good service.

Anyway, my favorite cities are Kobe, Sapporo, Hakodate, Fukuoka, etc.. Too bad they are all so far from Tokyo, which is where I reside. For onsen, I highly recommend Noboribetsu and Gero.

really ?? hm....

[samurai007]

Originally Posted by masaegu

Samurai007 made an excellent point! Go explore the back streets in any town you might visit including Tokyo. You sure will get to see the different sides of a town. You will miss so much if you only choose to stroll on the busy main streets. Stores and restaurants tend to be more unique and friendlier on the back streets because their counterparts on the main streets often tend to depend solely on their good locations for more business and neglect on proving good service.

Anyway, my favorite cities are Kobe, Sapporo, Hakodate, Fukuoka, etc.. Too bad they are all so far from Tokyo, which is where I reside. For onsen, I highly recommend Noboribetsu and Gero.

For a great onsen, I recommend Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama. Bitchin' Botchan - The Joys of Dogo Onsen Dōgo Onsen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's one of the oldest in Japan, and has been visited by Emperors and most famous Japanese people of the last 1500 years. It supposedly has healing properties, and I have to say, it worked for me! I caught a cold only a few days into my trip through western Japan by hiking to the top of the mountain on Miyajima Island. I was sick all through my time on Kyushu, but after spending an hour or so soaking in Dogo Onsen (which is very hot, by the way... I had to keep getting out when it became too hot for me!), I felt much better. And by the next morning, my cold was gone!

The people there were very nice too. I didn't know that you're supposed to bring your own towel to Dogo Onsen. They have towels you can rent for 100 yen, but they are hand towels, not meant to dry you off, but for washing before you get in. A girl who was leaving the onsen overheard that I didn't have a towel, though, and simply gave me her own towel to keep! That was so kind of her, that my souvenir from Matsuyama (I bought 1 from each major place I visited) was a little wooden doll of a Japanese girl in a kimono, to remind me of her.

When a westerner such as I entered Dogo Onsen's bath room, it was like a spaghetti western saloon... everyone stopped and stared at me. But as soon as I headed toward the shower instead of getting directly in the onsen, they went back to talking. After I washed and got in, one Japanese guy came over and told me they were surprised I knew what to do in an onsen, had I visited one before, how long was I in Japan, etc. We talked for quite a while! (Striking up conversations with random Japanese people seemed to happen pretty often while I was there, especially in places that were off the beaten tourist path.)

[Tsuzuki]

nkay ^^
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