From the delightfully urban Kanazawa we were off to Yamanaka Onsen for an onsen experience. With its active volcanoes, Japan has thousands of natural hot springs or “onsens” scattered around the country and Japanese love sitting around soaking up the natural minerals. These onsens – some indoor, some outdoor, mostly sex-segregated but some mixed – have become a major part of tourism here as towns and inns and restaurants and all that have developed around the best of them. And as we’ve learned from previous trips to Japan, the tourist towns with great onsens often have it right in the name, thus Yamanaka Onsen.

Onsens have a lot of cultural rules you need to learn before using them. First and foremost, you must shower and clean up before getting in; it’s completely unacceptable to just hop in the same water that others are soaking in. Clothes are explicitly prohibited. Most onsens ban people with tattoos, oddly. But once you have that all figured out they can be wonderfully relaxing.

Along with onsen towns you’ll often find ryokans as well. Ryokans are traditional Japanese inns typically featuring tatami mats on the floor, communal onsens, and breakfast and dinner served on small tables in your room. After dinner the staff remove the dishes, move the table aside, and roll out the futons to sleep in. In the morning, then, they roll the futons back up, store them away, and bring the table back for breakfast. It’s a fun was to live for a couple days, but one of the implications of all that is that during the day there’s no bed in your room to relax or nap on. They have a couple modest chairs, but that’s all.

The meals are a big thing in a ryokan. The style is called “kaiseki,” roughly equivalent to the Western notion of haute cuisine. Dinner will consist of multiple courses – in our case, nine courses for dinner – and each course can have three or even four different dishes. You sit at the table – a table that’s about 12 or 14 inches off the ground, meaning you’re sitting on the floor the whole time; I discovered that that’s getting harder and harder to do as I age – and the woman comes in wearing her beautiful kimono, kneels down, serves the course, and leaves. You eat, she comes back, kneels to clean the dishes, serves the next course, and leaves. You eat, she comes back in, kneels, etc., etc. It’s quite the production.

The two mysteries for me are how she can keep kneeling down and getting back up over and over and over again (and yes, it’s always a she), presumably for other guests in their own rooms as well. I’d be utterly exhausted by it. The other mystery is how big the storage area in the ryokan must be to keep all the dishes they use. Like I said, nine courses, multiple dishes for each course, and we never saw the same dishes twice in the two days we stayed there. That’s a lot of dishes.

For our onsen experience we chose Yamanaka Onsen, a beautiful little town on the Daishoji River in western Japan. The river ran right next to our ryokan and at night, with the window open just a little to let the cold night air in, the sound of the river was like a sleeping pill. The town has developed a wonderful little parkway along the banks of the river with a path that runs maybe a three-quarters of a mile or so. Cherry trees, picturesque bridges, colorful flowers, pretty much the image of Japan in the spring you’ve always dreamt of. Our ryokan had its own lovely and private outdoor onsen on the top floor of the hotel so that’s where we would soak after our walks around the town.

To be sure, there’s not a lot to do in these onsen towns beyond little walks, eating, and soaking. On the other hand there’s a lot to be said for days of little walks, eating, and soaking, particularly when it’s all done in a beautiful town up in the Japanese Alps. Unfortunately, the ryokan/onsen experience is also really expensive, so we limited this to a two-day splurge. Amazing food, beautiful environment, lots of cherry blossoms, but then it was time to move on. We have one more stop on our own in Japan, in Nagoya, and then we join a Grasshopper Adventures bicycle tour for 13 days on Shikoku Island.

Kanazawa is an up-and-coming destination out on Japan’s west coast. In fact, while we were here it was listed on a travel web site that I periodically browse as a finalist for their “up-and-coming destination of the year” award. A city of nearly half a million people, a bullet train line from Tokyo was recently completed, making it a quick get-away even though it’s nearly 200 miles of the capital. Highlights include the grounds of a massive 16th century castle that burned down in the late 19th century, a great modern art museum, one of the most beautiful gardens in all of Japan, abundant cherry trees, and a huge, clean fish market.

Getting there, as usual, was half the joy. You know the bullet train – the Shinkansen – is going to be on time, you know it’s going to be clean, and you know it’s going to be quiet and comfortable. It’s little short of heaven for traveling. Since the original line opened in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka, it has expanded to now include over 1,700 miles of track with trains speeding along at between 150 and 200 miles per hour. And of course it’s still expanding; an extension to Sapporo up on the northern island of Hokkaido is currently underway with an estimated opening date of March 2031.

It’s worth noting that while we love these trains, they aren’t cheap. The roughly 90-minute ride from Nagano to Kanazawa ran us about $81 each. Definitely worth it, but not cheap.

And what did we find in Kanazawa? Cherry blossoms, lots and lots of cherry blossoms. It couldn’t be more obvious that we managed to hit peak season here. Just everywhere you look there are more cherry trees in full bloom with a wide variety of shades from almost white to brilliant pink. It just makes you happy walking around under all that beauty.

The city’s big claim to fame is the Kenroku-en garden, known as one of the three great gardens of Japan. (The other two, if you want to know, are located in Okayama and Mito, two other cities I’ve never heard of.) Construction of the garden dates all the way back to the early 17th century, with various rulers of the region expanding and improving it all the way through the 19th century. It even includes what is widely accepted as the oldest fountain in all of Japan. We spent a lovely late morning wandering around enjoying the park, though admittedly some other tourists had figured out that it was the place to be, too.

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art was a highlight for us, though with an asterisk (*we paid to see a special exhibit but couldn’t figure out how to see the permanent collection, if indeed there is a permanent collection). The exhibit we saw was a collection of work by Manabu Ikeda, a Japanese artist who draws fantastical and incredibly detailed works with pen. His most recent epic piece – Rebirth, a tribute to the recovery after devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake – took three-and-a-half years to complete while in residence at a museum in beautiful Madison, WI, and was on display. Again, as with so many exhibits we go to, I’d never heard of him, but his work was damned interesting.

The fish market in Kanazawa – the Omi-cho market – is a big deal, too. It’s appropriately described as a “bustling warren of fishmongers, buyers, and restaurants.” What was most amazing to us is just how clean it was, like so much of Japan. For all practical purposes from the smell, at least, you’d never have known it was a fish market. Pleasant enough so that we went to one of the random restaurants there and had a great lunch. Lots of sashimi, not surprisingly.

Speaking of restaurants, Mark had an interesting observation while we were in Kanazawa. When he does his research on TripAdvisor and we find what we think will be a great little restaurant that we’ll love, we almost always love it. But there are almost always a bunch of other Westerners there, too. When we just wing it – go out and find something that looks like it’ll work for us – we sometimes strike out, or at least find that it’s a double instead of a home run. But in those cases there are usually no other Westerners or at least very few.

And that was Kanazawa. We learned, for the fortieth time or so, that we should really focus on the location of our hotel. We stayed at a place that was just wrong, maybe 10 minutes northwest of the train station, when we really should have been 15 or 20 minutes southeast of the train station. It just made it more of an ordeal getting to anything we wanted to get to.

Oh, and one thing to love about Japan. Sometimes it seems as though you’re traveling in a world of morticians; it’s apparent that Japan hasn’t gotten the memo that circulated in the states a few years ago that says you don’t have to wear a suit and tie to work every day. Here? There are more black suits and white shirts than you’ll see in a month in most places stateside these days. But, the upside of all those old Japanese men in charge? There are more public restrooms – clean as can be – than anyplace in the world. Sometimes in a park you’re within eyesight of two and even three different rest rooms. My theory is that these older guys, like me, have enough prostate and bladder issues that they want to be sure they’re never far from a toilet. Thanks guys!

Some time ago Mark saw pictures of snow monkeys in Japan and he needed to see them in person. Well, the easiest place to do so is a bit outside of Nagano, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics, so off we went. We stayed in the little town of Obuse, a 30-minute ride on a commuter rail kind of thing outside of Nagano, which was a mistake. It’s supposed to be this cute little tourist town but we found it just really dull. In fact, given the dearth of restaurants in Obuse we ended up taking the train into Nagano every night for dinner. Obuse was pretty, our hotel was beautiful, and it was a good place for early morning runs, but otherwise it was not much to write home about.

A quick word about where we are. This area of central Honshu is known as the Japanese Alps, about two-and-a-half hours west of Tokyo by bullet train. Now, I’ve been to the Alps, and while these are nice mountains, often beautiful mountains, I’m not convinced they’re exactly Alpine. Getting here was fun, though; we just love the Japanese bullet trains. Wonderfully comfortable, easy, and punctual. You could probably quite literally set your watch by their arrival and departure times (if people still have to set watches in this era of Apple Watches…). Just sit back, relax, read, get up and walk around, and suddenly you’re on the other side of Japan.

Now, back to the monkeys. In their natural habitat you’ll only find monkeys in the tropics or subtropics, except in Japan. The Japanese macaque is the only non-human primate in the world that lives in a cold climate, and as the name suggests they’re only found in Japan. A 1992 documentary, Baraka, made the snow monkeys in this part of Japan famous by showing them bathing in hot springs surrounded by snow. Cute pictures and thus a tourist industry was born.

From Obuse the train out of Nagano continues to the town of Yudanaka, where you catch a bus that leaves you off perhaps a mile or two from the hot springs. At this point you’re high enough in elevation that in early April there’s still lots of snow, but it’s a warm spring day so the walk was beautiful. Eventually you get there … and there they are, a bunch of monkeys hanging out in the snow, jumping in and out of the hot springs, picking nits from each other, taking pictures of the tourists and all that. They were cute and it’s crazy watching them play in the snow and all that.

At the same time, it’s definitely kind of fake. These are monkeys that are seriously accustomed to hundreds and hundreds of tourists. Lonely Planet says the monkeys are “lured from their natural habitat … with food.” And the hot spring isn’t natural; it’s built there for the monkeys. So yeah, definitely not the most authentic naturalist experience you’ll ever have but still cute. My favorite part was the walk through the forest up to the park, but either way it was a pleasant little day trip.

Otherwise we spent our time in Obuse … going into Nagano. The highlight of the city is the Zenkō-ji Buddhist temple, founded in the 7th century and home of Japan’s oldest Buddhist treasures. One statue, said to have arrived in Japan from Korea in 552, is kept in storage here. As a “hidden Buddha,” it is not shown to anyone, including the chief priests or even the emperor himself. According again to Lonely Planet, not even the last 37 emperors have seen the statue. One wonders what’s really in there.

One piece of good news from Obuse/Nagano was that there were very few cherry blossoms. Why is that good news? I read just after leaving Tokyo that officials there had determined that our last day was the cherry blossom peak; from that point it would be all down hill. We were afraid that maybe we weren’t going to see many more as we continue traveling around Japan for a couple more weeks. Not to worry, though, here on the western part of Honshu they haven’t even started yet.

Now for the grim news from home. I was just ready to start writing this a couple days ago, had all the pictures loaded and everything, when we learned that my little ten-year-old great-nephew – my brother’s grandson – has had a relapse of his cancer. He was diagnosed back in October 2015 with a rare and usually fatal case of neuroblastoma, a nerve cancer that typically attacks children. After nearly two years of brutal treatment he was found to be cancer free last July, just days after we buried my Dad. As one of my friends who’s a bit more religious than I am (that’s a low bar) put it, “It’s as though your Dad went to heaven and said ‘OK, you got me. Let the kid go.'” It was truly a gift that we had something to celebrate that week.

Well, the good news didn’t last. Earlier this week they went in for his quarterly checkup only to find that at least two tumors have returned. And this time there is no treatment and no hope of survival. It’s a body blow; things like this aren’t supposed to happen to little kids. And yes, it makes it a little tough to write about how great these travels are knowing what my brother and his family are going through.

So there you have it, snow monkeys and family tragedies. I guess that’s life in a nutshell sometimes.