In the morning, we went back to Matsumoto-jo. G hadn't been inside the last time he was there, so he went to check it out. Since I had been in recently, I wandered around Matsumoto with my camera.
After, we headed out towards Kusatsu onsen in Gunma prefecture. The drive through the back roads was quite nice, though a bit foggy.
We saw a sign with a picture of a nice rotenburo, so we stopped at what turned out to be a hotel over a golf course. But the rotenburo was nice, so we relaxed for a bit.
Headed out and pulled into Kusatsu onsen (town). Found a nice little ramen shop, and the lady there recommended a free onsen. It was free, also very much old-style - no faucets for soap or scrubbing, just scalding hot water to rinse off with before you dip. The bath water was so hot, that you had to slowly, slowly ease in, and then NOT MOVE. Moving felt like your skin was being poked by red-hot needles. But in a good way. Really. After a few minutes in the bath (and that was all we could handle). We walked around some of the shops for a bit, and then left.
On the way back, we drove through the Agatsuma Gorge, which was really beautiful, though we were too early for the fall colours. Partway through, we saw three big structures under construction, and snapped a couple photos of what we thought must be some new highway, though it just seemed to end in the side of the hills.
After we got back, someone was talking to me about the Yanba dam, and after a bit of reading, I realized that the towers we'd seen were the beginnings of the Yanba dam. It was in the news because, even though it's been under construction off and on since the early 1950s, the new government decided to halt the project, which has stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Interesting to see a bit of current events with my own eyes, even if I didn't know it at the time.
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