279. in the woods

Last Sunday, on 28th February, little sis and I got up early to make our way to the woods. We booked a little cottage with a private onsen located somewhere near Mount Fuji before she arrived in Japan. She's up for anything, so she figured she wanted to try staying in the middle of nowhere for a night.

It took about 2 hours to get to Kochibuzawa station, we got bento sets on the way there. Once there, we had udon at a nearby standing counter and got on the bus that we thought would take us to our cottage. We got on the wrong bus that brought us to a factory outlet instead.

We were surprised there were so many factory outlets in the middle of the woods. From Zara to ABC Mart. We got some soft serve and looked around for an hour before deciding to take the bus back to the station. In the end, I bought a really cute Sylvanian Family tomato garden. Everything was almost half of the usual price! They even had koala and kangaroo miniatures which I've never seen before. (I bought them because Australia) 

We got back to the station at close to 4pm and decided to just get on a taxi to get to the cottage. It didn't take too long but the drive was literally to the middle of nowhere, deep in the forest.

We checked in and went straight to our cottage. It was a lovely little cottage and looked like something out of The Moomin's. I love forest-type (mori-kei) things, so I was pretty happy with the cottage. It was really quiet and peaceful, something I really needed. A break from the busy city. 

It was a two-storey cottage, with two beds, a kotatsu, several extra futon, a big television, a living room area, separate bath, shower and toilet and our very own private onsen outside.

Little sis decided to walk around the woods before going for dinner. There was nothing much to see but trees and other cute houses. Since it's the end of winter, the trees were still barren. We talked to an old man walking his dog. The dog started barking at little sis (as always, dogs hate her for some reason), so we moved away from the dog and walked around the cottages. There were pretty cute houses and some of them really had the "cabin in the woods" feeling because everything was mostly made out of wood and they had cut up logs in front of their houses. I particularly liked this cute pink house.

We were getting hungry, so we decided to walk to the reception area to have dinner.We had a ryokan styled dinner. It was good but expensive. There was literally nothing else around the area, so that was the only place we could eat. We got back to our cottage close to 8 and watched some variety television shows before getting into the onsen.

It was really nice to have your own private onsen, I don't have to worry about my tattoos (though they are so small =_=), or worry about being naked in front of strangers. We could also see the stars from our cottage so we spent even longer than expected in the onsen. We didn't do much but watch television and lazed around the house before going to sleep.

We got up at 7am the next morning since I had classes in the afternoon. Little sis and I decided to use the onsen another time before leaving the cottage.

We checked out at 9am and there was a free shuttle service to the station. It took about 2 hours to get back to Tachikawa. I studied for my test on the way back. 

It was a really nice getaway, everything was peaceful and serene. I wished we could have stayed another night. My brain always feels like it's on overdrive when I'm in Tokyo for too long. You're always rushing off to somewhere, you're always on the move. It gets so noisy inside of my head sometimes that I lose focus on the things I really want to do. I'm glad little sis decided to stay somewhere so far away and quiet. It really did do me some good.